W. M. Lindsay, Syntax of Plautus

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We must then regurd the Syntax of Plautus, as well as his vocabulary and the arrangement¹ of his sentences (and, I would add, his Prosody, e.g. Phillippus, volŭptatem, volŭptas mea) as a faithful representation of the cultured every-day speech of his time. Of course every-day speech does not follow the strict laws of the logical expression of thought. What is known in our Grammars as Constructio ad Sensum plays a great part in it. This Constructio ad Sensum is a powerful agent in the development of Syntax in Latin and in all languages. For example, the notion of ‘concern’ ‘interest’ was in Early Latin expressed by refert, which, I think, is most naturally explained as re (Ablative) (with the sense of classical Latin ex re; cf. Capt. 296 “tua re feceris”, and see my note on this line) and fert ‘it tends’ (cf. via fert ad urbem, Ter. Andr. 188 “dum tempus ad eam rem tulit”), ‘it tends with (Engl. ‘to’) my interest.’ In course of time (later than Plautus and Terence) the verb interesse came to be used in this sense, and proceeded to take the same construction as refert, viz. mēā interest.

Examples from Plautus are:—

• Pers. 70 “ubi quadrupulator quempiam (Accusative) iniexit manum (= comprehenderit), tantidem ille illi (Dative) rursus iniciat manum”;
• Truc. 762 “postid ego te manum iniciam quadrupuli, venefica”;
• Asin. 88 “nunc verba in panca conferam (= breviter exponam) quid te velim”;
• Bacch. 161 “ecquid in mentem est tibi (= meministi) patrem tibi esse?”;
• Pers. 66 “animus induci (= credi) potest eom esse civem et fidelem et bonum”;
• Capt. 579 “nunc iste te ludos facit” (= deludit; cf. II. 25);
• Aul. 253 “quem senecta aetate ludos facias”
• Rud. 900 “nam nunc et operam Indos dat (v.l. facit) et retia”;
• Rud. 791 “si te non ludos pessumos dimisero.”

On the use of an Accusative with depereo, demorior, and even amore perditus sum, all three being equivalents of deamo, see II. 40