Friday, 29 April 2016

Ablative absolutes with future participles

I vividly remember my school master telling me in my upper-sixth year that there was only one ablative absolute with a future participle in Latin literature and that we were looking at it. I do not, however, recall what the unseen passage was.

Now, thanks to the persistence in doing good of a colleague, there is a candidate, Ovid, Heroides, XVIII (Leander Heroni) 111-112:

iamque fugaturā Tithoni coniuge noctem
     praevius Aurorae Lucifer ortus erat;


This has a strong claim to being the one instance, if there is only one. I remember reading about Hero and Leander and being told a cautionary tale about confusing transitive fugāre with intransitive fugere (not to mention the difference of conjugation).

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