Quid si Non

THERE ARE EIGHT PASSAGES in classical Latin literature introduced by quid si non . . ., and the primary purpose of this article is to collect them. This has not been done before. Considered individually the passages have caused doubt, difficulty, even deletion: but once assembled they illuminate each other and reveal an idiom in the sense of an expression having a significance other than its grammatical or logical one.' Not that it is altogether clear how one should understand the words non-idiomatically. There would seem two possibilities, either to pause after the quid (punctuating with a comma or a query) and translate in the form am I to say? Suppose x hadn't been the case ... ?, or to make no such pause and translate would have happened if x hadn't? In modern editions some of the passages are normally printed the first way, some the second. But this can hardly be right. A set form of words is likely to have produced a set response. Moreover, even after picking and choosing in this manner one still fails to make satisfactory sense in six of the eight passages. What the context demands in these six cases (and readily admits of in the other two) is an assertion of positive fact conveyed with a tinge of exclamation or surprise, suggesting a translation like It's not as if x wasn't the case! or And yet x really did happen! Of course in this I am speaking of function and of how we may translate. Formally the Latin sentences remain questions-or rhetorical questions if the subdivision is valid'-exactly as an English letter to a bank manager beginning Will you please transfer...? conveys a command and will in many languages be best translated as such, even though in English it remains formally a question. The passages are: Quintus Catulusfr. 1 Morel; Livy 4.5.3; Propertius 1.9.15, 2.34.11; Vergil Aeneid 4.311; Ovid Amores 1.13.33; Petronius 42 (bis). In addition there are six passages in Ovid where quid si . though not followed by non, appears to demand idiomatic interpretation of the same type. They are: Heroides 7.53; Am. 1.1.7, 3.6.89; Ars 3.197; Tristia 1.8.33, 2.497

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