Post by Bitmap on Apr 28, 2023 9:46:10 GMT
Apr 28, 2023 5:21:20 GMT LCF said:
There is a research paper that I've found by Googling but it's behind a pay wall 
. I wander if it's related to this question. Do you know where Varro or Quintilian talk about? this?Septimus casus: the history of a misunderstanding from Varro to the late Latin grammarians
Abstract This paper reviews approaches to what is known as the septimus casus from Varro and Quintilian to the late grammarians. It emphasizes the different points of view adopted to describe the seventh case in the history of Latin grammar, and suggests that some descriptions have arisen from simple misinterpretations of earlier sources. The paper confirms that Varro may have had a concept of a seventh case. Interestingly, an unnoticed connection has been detected between the earliest approaches and those in Servius’s commentaries on Vergil, where the opinion differs greatly from those in the artes grammaticae
www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/joll-2017-0011/html
I have that article, but obviously I can't really share it here if it is behind a paywall. It's also 2.8 MB, which would be rather big for this forum. I could share it in the chat if you want and if you happen to be there.
The passage they discuss regarding Varro is from ling. 8,16 ... they discuss different conjectures:
(Varro ling. 8, 16)
Propter eorum qui dicunt usum declinati casus, uti is qui de altero diceret
distinguere posset, cum uocaret cum daret cum accussaret, sic alia eiusdem
discrimina quae nos et Graecos ad declinandum duxerunt, sine controuersia
sunt qui‹n›que; ‹sunt qui sex putent›: quis uocetur ut ‹H›ercules, quemadmodum uocetur ut ‹H›ercule, quo uocetur ut ad ‹H›erculem, a quo uocetur ut ab
‹H›ercule, cui uocetur ut ‹H›erculi, cuius uocetur ut ‹H›erculis.
And this is what Calboli made of it:
(Varro ling. 8, 16)
propter eorum qui dicunt usum declinati casus, uti is qui de altero diceret
distinguere posset, cum uocaret, cum daret, cum accusaret, sic alia eiusdem
‹modi› discrimina, quae nos et Graecos ad declinandum duxerunt. sine
controuersia sunt qui‹d›e‹m›: quis uocetur, ut ‹H›ercules; quemadmodum
uocetur, ut ‹H›ercule; quod uocetur, ut ad ‹H›erculem; a quo uocetur, ut ab
‹H›ercule; cui uocetur, ut ‹H›erculi; cuius uocetur, ut ‹H›erculis
In the manusscript, it seems to say "q que" there.
Quintilian supposedly makes a difference between two ablatives:
(Quint. inst. 7, 9, 10)
Accusatiui geminatione facta amphibolia soluitur ablatiuo, ut illud
‘Lachetem audiui percussisse Demean’ fiat ‘a Lachete percussum Demean’.
sed ablatiuo ipsi, ut in primo diximus, inest naturalis amphibolia: ‘caelo
decurrit aperto’: utrum per apertum caelum an cum apertum esset.
(Quint. inst. 1, 4, 26)
Quaerat [scil. praeceptor acer atque subtilis] etiam sitne apud Graecos uis
quaedam sexti casus et apud nos quoque septimi. Nam cum dico ‘hasta
percussi’ non utor ablatiui natura, nec si idem Graece dicam, datiui.
The paper says that scholar falsely took Quintilian's notion of a seventh case as a distinction between the ablative with a preposition and the ablative without a preposition. They claim that it was a distinction between the ablative proper (the separative, I assume) and other uses of the ablative like the instrumentalis or the ablative absolute. Incidentally, that was also my first impression upon reading "septimus casus" – a distinction between separativus and instrumentalis.
However, that clear-cut distinction was distorted by later grammarians.
As for Varrro, they claim that Calboli shows that the notion of a seventh case had already been there in the first century BC, but is not attested until Quintilian.
The traditional view was that Varro listed the cases as nominative, vocative, accusative, ablative, dative, and genitive.
However, Calboli's interpretation of the 6 cases listed is vocative, ablative without preposition (septimus), accusative, ablative with preposition, dative, and genitive. I think he does so on the basis that some Roman grammarians did not consider the nominative an actual case while others did.
I haven't read everything in detail, but that's about the gist of it concerning Varro and Quintilian.