Asyndeton with an active verb form alongside a passive form of the same verb is rare in Latin. Just five clear-cut (single-word) instances have been noted, as far as I am aware, and to these may be added a slightly extended pair in Tacitus (see the next paragraph but one). Pairings of active and passive forms are more common when there is a coordinator (see Wills 1996: 295–8 for an extensive but mixed collection of material mostly from poetry, a good deal of it comprising not coordinations but actives and passives near each other in different types of clauses; for the coordinated type note e.g. Tac. Ann. 3.55.2 plebem socios regna colere et coli licitum). Wills states (296) that ‘the combination of voices in a “bimembre asyndeton” was possibly idiomatic’, a view that is at variance with the evidence, given that such pairs almost always have a coordinator. It will also be seen below that the few asyndetic examples are not a single type, such that the term ‘idiomatic’ might be appropriate.

In Latin, terms with the prefix in- occur in numerous asyndetic patterns, some of them of considerable age and stylistic interest. I am mainly concerned with adjectival pairs of which both members have the privative prefix in-, but will deal with other patterns as well to demonstrate the range of types. Material from Greek (showing terms with alpha-privative prefixes) will be cited, and reference will be made too to the Iguvine tablets and to the Rigveda. Presumably the type was inherited as distinct from developing independently in different languages. Prefixes other than in-/alpha-privative are also not infrequently repeated in asyndetic sequences (see further below, 7), but it is the type with negative prefix that is most distinctive.

Asyndetic pairs dependent on a single preposition have tended to be treated as problematic by editors and scribes, and manuscript variations are not unusual. I have not, however, noted explicit discussions of the issue by editors (see however Preuss 1881: 53). The criteria that may be used by an editor in judging possible cases of asyndeton include structural factors, and an author’s practice elsewhere. I start with a structural pattern and variants, and then refer to two possible asyndeta of this type in Caesar’s Bellum ciuile, which are dealt with in detail in XVIII. Finally, I consider possible examples in several other writers.

By ‘accumulation’ I mean the juxtaposition of one asyndetic pair with another pair, or with more than one other, or the placement of an asyndetic pair alongside or within coordinated groups of various lengths and types. An asyndeton bimembre is in an accumulation if it is not free-standing but is part of a sequence of items that are coordinated syndetically or asyndetically, or have a mixture of both types of coordination. Accumulations have come up frequently already in these introductory chapters, and they will come up more extensively in the later chapters dealing with writers and genres. Accumulations are a prominent location for asyndeta bimembria, such that they are one determinant of this type of asyndeton (see XXXII.3.1). Two words that are usually coordinated may well be used for once asyndetically because they are placed in such a sequence. My aim here is simply to introduce accumulations containing asyndeta bimembria with a little more detail than has been provided so far, but the most comprehensive lists and classifications will be found in later chapters, particularly on Cicero and the historians.

In this chapter I consider asyndeton in Caesar’s Civ., of which there is now a reliable text with apparatus (Damon 2015a). My aim is not merely to classify asyndeta but to consider whether there are criteria that may be used by an editor in deciding on the text when manuscripts have variation between coordination and asyndeton; the chapter is mainly about textual criticism. The passages discussed, which embrace the totality of possible asyndeta (bimembria) in the work, are numbered in bold.

In an earlier chapter (I.3) various ancient commentators were cited on the supposed ‘speed’ or ‘rapidity’ of asyndeta ([Long.] 19.2, Suet. Caes. 37.2, Aquila 41). It is easy to see how such an idea might have come about. An asyndetic sequence as looked at on the written page has fewer words than a syndetic, and fewer words might mean that a shorter time is needed for the articulation.

It is often said, not least in relation to Greek tragedy, that if the two members of an asyndetic pair are not of the same syllabic length the longer term will usually be placed second. The rule for Greek seems to be stated mainly in reference to asyndetic pairs of verbs. Diggle (1994: 99), for example, says: ‘When, in his lyrics, Euripides juxtaposes a pair of verbs in asyndeton, he observes the practice of sound rhetoric: he makes the second verb equal in length to the first, so that it may balance it, or he makes it longer, so that it may outweigh it.’ Twenty-two examples are quoted, with just one case where the rhetorical tendency is not observed. The pairs quite often have the same fore-element. On p. 100 Diggle states that he has included in the list only passages where the verbs are absolute or have a common object.

A compound verb is sometimes placed immediately after its simplex. Such juxtapositions are not all of the same type.

It is sometimes stated or implied that asyndeton is older than syndetic coordination. This is a view that is put bluntly by Timpanaro (1994: 7): ‘Senza dubbio l’asindeto è più antico dell’uso di congiunzioni copulative’. He was aware of the frequency of -que compared with asyndeton in what he calls carmina, and therefore falls back on the idea that the few instances of asyndeton are archaisms of a type that was losing ground (1994: 8). Luiselli (1969: 165–6) likewise says that in carmina syndetic coordination is more common than asyndetic, but suggests that asyndeton was probably more ancient and that it was gradually replaced later by syndetic coordination. But why should asyndeton have been more ancient than explicit coordination? It is to be assumed that underlying the belief is a sense that absence of coordinators must be more ‘primitive’. In fact the coordinator that in Latin has the form -que must be very ancient, as it has cognates in a wide variety of early Indo-European languages (see e.g. De Vaan 2008: 506; also Penney 2005: 40–3, and particularly Dunkel 1982). Dunkel (1982: 141) simply says: ‘Oldest were asyndeton and single *-kwe’.

Pairs of certain semantic types show no more than a weak tendency to occur in asyndeton bimembre: overt coordination is more frequent. There may be a unity of some sort to the terms, which makes them susceptible to occasional asyndetic coordination, but that unity is no more than a background to the asyndeton. It is necessary to look at contexts and structures to see if it is possible to identify factors motivating the absence of a coordinator.