Asyndetic juxtapositions of different tenses or moods of the same verb are very much a feature of legal/official language in Latin. At Cic. Phil. 5.46 (76) the following occurs in a proposal by Cicero for a senatorial decree: libertatem populi Romani defendant defe<nde>rint. By contrast earlier in the same speech two instances of praesideo in different tenses are coordinated, but there the pair is not in a formal motion: 5.37 Galliaque, quae semper praesidet atque praesedit huic imperio, ‘and Gaul, which always protects and has protected this empire’. Even in official language, however, asyndeton is not invariable. In the same speech again (at 5.53) in another such motion we find qui … auctoritatemque huius ordinis defenderint atque defendant. The order of the same two verb forms has been reversed. The coordination gives a better clausula than either (asyndetic) defenderint defendant or defendant defenderint.

In English (for example) when three or more terms are in a coordinated sequence the normal structure is ‘AB and C’, with what is sometimes called ‘end-of-list’ coordination (see e.g. Haspelmath 2004: 572, index s.v. ‘end-of-list’): e.g. bacon, lettuce and tomatoes; Friends, Romans and countrymen. Latin had, up to a point, the same structure (in several forms because of the number of coordinators in the language), but how significant was it, and is it straightforward to interpret? For et and atque used thus (and associated textual problems) see Pinkster (1969). For -que see Adams (2016: 62–4, with some bibliography), with full details for Cato Agr. Pinkster (1969: 266), speaking of the different Latin coordinators found in this structure, says: ‘Que seems to have been most normal in “Classical” Latin, followed by zero, et, atque respectively’. This follows the generalisation: ‘in Latin A B & C is a normal pattern, occurring beside A B C and A B Cque’. According to Dyck (2010: 101) on Cic. S. Rosc.31, citing Pinkster, ‘xyzque appears to be the commonest way of organising three items in Latin’. That is not so. Torrego indeed states (2009: 472) that ‘the marked “A, B, & C” pattern’ ‘is not encountered often in Pre-Classical and Classical Latin, yet it becomes the standard pattern in Romance’, and his examples show that his formulation ‘A, B & C’ was intended to embrace all the Latin coordinators. In fact what Pinkster calls ‘zero’, that is asyndeton throughout (ABCD etc.), is much more common than the use of -que, and also common are what I would call sequences with multiple coordinations, that is with coordinators used within the list, not least to indicate internal unities. I will illustrate this pattern in section 3.

Frequently a coordinated pair (or longer sequence), of adjectives, nouns or other parts of speech, is split up by the insertion of a word or phrase to follow the first member of the coordination (see e.g. Devine and Stephens 2006: 586–91, calling the pattern ‘conjunct hyperbaton’; also Hofmann and Szantyr 1965: 693, Gray 2015: 65–6). A classic example in English is brave man and true. In Latin too it is often homo (or uir) that is the intrusive term, as at Cic. Har. resp. 28: Brogitaro Gallograeco, impuro homini ac nefario, Sest. 56 Brogitaro, impuro homini atque indigno illa religione (in both places with the same referent);1 see further e.g. for homo, Cic. Att. 5.15.3, 5.21.6, Fam. 1.9.19, Prov. cons. 15, etc., and for uir instead of homo, Cic. Fam. 7.18.1 esse fortem uirum et constantem, Fin. 2.80 et bonum uirum et comem et humanum fuisse, Livy 8.8.16 strenuus uir peritusque militiae. At Catull. 12.8–9 (est enim leporum | differtus puer ac facetiarum) puer has the same function.

One of the most frequently used terms in this book is ‘opposites’, and that is a reflection not only of the role that oppositions play in thought and communication, but also of the marked tendency for Latin to express oppositions asyndetically, particularly in certain genres, such as philosophy and historiography.1 On the first point it is worth quoting Lyons (1977: 277)

This chapter is diverse, in that it deals with Virgil and Homer, Ennius and some other early poets (Pacuvius, Livius Andronicus, Naevius), and Lucretius. It is about asyndeton, particularly with two members, in poetry of the higher genres (including some tragic fragments) mainly in the earlier Republic. The chapter does not follow a chronological order. It starts with the latest writer of the group, Virgil, because his use of asyndeton can be straightforwardly described, and the description opens the way to comparisons between poets and to discussion of the influence of one writer on another. Was Virgil influenced by Homer, or by Lucretius or Ennius? Where does Lucretius stand in relation to early poetry? Explicit coordination will also be referred to, and will allow asyndetic coordination to be seen for what it is.

I have tried in this chapter to comment on every (possible) instance of asyndeton bimembre comprising two words in the following books of Livy: 4, 5, 9, 23, 30, 34, 38, 42. These books occupy about 697 pages of modern editions (OCTs and Teubners), which makes them collectively at least as long and probably longer than the whole of the Histories and Annals of Tacitus (see the conclusions below, 3.1). It will become clear that this type of asyndeton is rare in Livy. Quite a few of the examples numbered below are also open to doubt.