Ōlim in the the Tacitean Corpora

Abstract

In studies on Latin adverbs the discussion of a specific temporal adverb in a certain corpus is rare. Moreover, an adverb peculiar to the treatises of Tacitus has not yet been analyzed in the studies concerning his language and style. Our study fills a gap, to a certain extent, on the adverbs’ researches in Latin prose and in the Tacitean corpora by examining the characteristic and unique usages of ōlim in his treatises. We surveyed selected studies dealing with general and specific adverbs, as well as with the language and style of Tacitus. Our grammatical approach adopted here is descriptive. It offers a thorough analysis of a specific adverb in a prose opus of one author, which is a restricted and homogeneous corpus. This enables us to present the full documentation of ōlim in the selected corpus of Tacitus. Our main results are: ōlim is documented in all the books with two meanings “formerly” and “long ago”. It occurs in proximity to posterior adverbs for emphasis, contrast, etc. The modified part of speech is mostly explicit: finite verbs in the past, participia, adjectives, infinitives or more than one element. Its prevalent position is before the modified part of speech, sometimes after it or it has two positions regarding the modified element. A comparison of ōlim between the treatises yielded identical and different features. Keywords: chiasmus, explicit, finite verb, multiple clause, ōlim, parallelism, posterior, syntactic position