Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Repetition and Consistency Can be Awfully Nice!

As we transition into Sulpicius, especially after having at times such a difficulty with Prudentius, I am relieved to find the same repetition that we saw in Prudentius but with much more consistency.  As in the Psychomachia, I find Sulpicius repeating the same words or similar words/phrases quite often.  The difference is that I am finding that we attempts to use every possible definition for these words, even when they are in close proximity to one another as Prudentius did.  I sighed a bit when I realized that once I look up a word for Sulpicius it seems, for the most part (obviously we just started to I don't want to blanket statement too much) that I will be able to use the same definition the next time I see that word.  He is fond of certain phrases too, and I mean really fond!  I have lost count of the number of times he begins a sentence with "tum vero" or a range of other conjunctions that seem to show up at the beginning of just about every sentence I have translated so far.  He is also incredibly fond of "mirum in modum," "in vice quodam," and to an extent "sub idem fere tempus."

I also found it interesting that he seems to use "civitatis" for city here as opposed to "urbs."  I am not sure if this is common in later literature, but I am fairly positive that I have not come across a work in my own studies yet where "civitatis" is chosen so frequently over "urbs," which shows up for the first and only time so far in Section 6, well into the work.  Perhaps I am making a bigger deal out of this than it is, but it certainly struck me as something different about this work.

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