Journal of Latin Linguistics 2013; 12(1): 5169

DOI 10.1515/joll-2013-0004

Pierluigi Cuzzolin

Some remarks on quia as a subordinator

ater verbs of saying and thinking
Abstract: The Accusativus cum Ininitivo, a syntactic construction proper to Latin
and a few other Indo-European languages, was gradually replaced in Latin by an
explicit subordinate clause and did not survive in Romance, except as a rather
sophisticated Latinism in literary texts. The new subordinate clause was introduced in particular by the conjunctions quod and quia, whose occurrences outnumber those of other conjunctions such as quoniam or ut.
However, the fact that quod and quia occur much more frequently than the
other conjunctions and oten in the same context should not conceal the fact that
there are some basic diferences between them. In particular, as for their origin,
whereas the development of quod as subordination marker can be explained
according to the dynamics of the internal history of Latin, nevertheless a sociolinguistic analysis of the irst examples of quia shows that this conjunction is the
result of Greek inluence.
Keywords: subordination; sociolinguistics; Graecism

Pierluigi Cuzzolin: Universit di Bergamo, Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature Straniere e

Comunicazione, Piazzetta Verzeri, 24219 Bergamo. E-mail: pierluigi.cuzzolin@unibg.it

Viro docto atque magistro Antonino Bartonk, gratissimo discipuli animo

1Foreword
As is well known from the history of Latin, beginning in the irst century CE (if not
even earlier; see below, Section 3.) the Accusativus cum Ininitivo (henceforth AcI)
started to be replaced gradually by a complement clause, regularly introduced by
a conjunction as a subordination marker (the AcI had none) and with the verb
occurring in a inite mood, either indicative or subjunctive. In addition, its grammatical subject was regularly expressed in the nominative case.
This change occurred with numerous classes of predicates, but the phenomenon was particularly remarkable with the predicates of saying and thinking. Incidentally, while other and possibly more precise labels are used to classify such

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classes of predicates, I still prefer to use the terms saying and thinking because
they explicitly refer to one of the most crucial parameters of analysis, i.e., their
higher or lower degree of assertivity.
The dramatic, though gradual, replacement of the AcI one of the most
relevant in the history of the Latin syntax because of its consequences on the
grammatical system has been dealt with in a huge number of works in the last
hundred and thirty years.1
Nevertheless, despite the many contributions devoted to this topic, several
aspects of this change, including the way in which it developed, remain problematic or unsatisfactorily explained thus far. Several motivations that have been
proposed to account for the general change itself, i.e., why Latin abandoned the
AcI and replaced it with the quod-construction, are not all equally convincing.2
Many pages have been written about the substitution of the subordination
pattern: not only the diferent aspects of the change have been stressed, but all
the relevant parameters involved therein, i.e., person, number, mood, modality,
speakers commitment, to mention only a few crucial ones. These have been revised, and their relevance to the change has been reassessed as thoroughly as
possible.
For instance, investigations have revealed that the moods employed, i.e., the
indicative and the subjunctive, do not occur randomly: it has been quite reliably
ascertained that the indicative is mainly associated with factual assertions,
whereas the subjunctive is rather associated with possible, non-factual, or even
counterfactual assertions (on this still useful distinction, see Cuzzolin [1994:
6074]; but further investigations could help to complete the picture in more
detail).
In addition, in one of the few contributions devoted to the analysis of Latin
AcI in typological perspective, Christian Lehmann (1989: 177178) has correctly
pointed out that such a construction was structurally rather diferent from the
majority of the subordinate clauses and it was not well integrated with the subordination system of Latin. Therefore, the adoption of a construction structurally
conforming to the regular pattern exhibited by the other subordinate clauses in
Latin, seems to be a plausible, possibly even inescapable development, without

1A concise but very useful assessment of the previous investigations can now be found in Greco
(2012: 1550). Ater Mayens seminal work (1889), the contribution that stands out among the
other fundamental steps in the research is Perrochat (1932). Cuzzolin (1994) is the latest contribution explicitly devoted to a reassessment of the whole topic from Early to Late Latin, at least to
the best of my knowledge.
2This term is not employed here in the technical sense of the construction grammar, even
though it can be quite close to it.

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Some remarks on quia

thereby implying any teleological drit. Ultimately, typology can help us to envisage at least one good reason for this change.
However, as I had tried to point out some years ago (Cuzzolin 1994), the usage
of inite moods not only was better suitable for the grammatical system of Latin
than the ininitive, but ofered some other advantages: for instance, it enabled the
speaker/writer to exploit semantic nuances rigidly neutralized in a construction
such as the AcI.
(1) (Bell. Hisp. 36, 1; tr. Way 1955)
dum haec geruntur legati Carteienses renuntiauerunt quod Pompeium in potestatem haberent
In the course of these proceedings envoys from Carteia duly reported that
they had Pompeius in their hands
Just to illustrate this particular feature, in an example like (1), the employment of
the quod-construction instead of the AcI is crucial: the subjunctive mood allows
the writer not to commit himself to truth of the content of the subordinate clause,
inasmuch as the claim that Pompeius was in the hands of the Carteienses was not
completely true (see also Cuzzolin 2013: 29). Such a fundamental distinction between the writers opinion and the envoys reported opinion in example (1) would
have been simply impossible with the AcI: in a structure like that, exclusively allowing for a factive reading, the speaker/writers commitment to the truth of the
assertion was implicitly taken for granted.
The assumption that the indicative and the subjunctive moods are used
ascommitment marker and non-commitment markers, respectively, is to a very
large extent correct, although cases exist where it is diicult to decide whether
this is the criterion primarily responsible for the mood distribution.
Another puzzling, certainly under-investigated aspect of this change is the
relationship between the conjunction that introduces a complement clause and
the diferent degree of the speaker/writers commitment.
The selection of the conjunctions that introduce the complement clause has
not received due attention thus far, as if it were a minor point within the whole
investigation. In particular, why and how the speciic conjunctions involved developed the function of introducing the complement clauses are issues that have
been dealt with only to a partial extent: neither of them originally was a simple
subordination marker. According to a widely accepted but ultimately simplistic
viewpoint, quia would be associated with objective statements, whereas quod
would rather correlate with subjective statements. If the situation were really
so,then it would always be easy to envisage the motivation of the occurrence of
quia and quod. However, the data show that quia can also occur in subjective

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statements with the verb expressed in the subjunctive mood, and quod is easy
toind in objective sentences with the verb occurring in the indicative mood. In
other words, pairing quod=non-factual and quia=factual turns out to be a tendency, not a mandatory rule (Cuzzolin 1994).
Moreover, it must also be borne in mind that other conjunctions are attested,
albeit less frequently, such as quoniam, ut, cum, quomodo (still useful Mayen
1889), but only some of them are attested since the AcI started to be replaced. For
example, a conjunction such as quomodo typically occurs rather late for the irst
time but becomes more frequent in Late Latin (from the third century onward)
and especially in the so-called Christian Latin (Herman 1963).
For the purposes of the present paper, I will focus on quod and quia, since
they occur in the vast majority of the cases recorded, at least at the beginning of
the process of replacement, concentrating irst on quia.
Even in the best handbooks and historical grammars this change is not
treated with the depth it deserves and several aspects of this change are glossed
over rather quickly, if they are mentioned at all.
A fundamental aspect of this treatment is the fact that apparently no distinction is drawn between the functions of the two conjunctions, as if they were
perfectly interchangeable as subordinators. This assumption is correct only to a
limited extent.
First of all, there is an etymological diference between the two conjunctions,
no matter how close to one another they are:
On the evidence of L[atin] and Av[estan] ... in PIE there were two related paradigms which
were widely confused.... Not only has leveling confused the paradigm of the stems in *kw-,
but the original makeup of the many non-paradigmatic forms ... can hardly even be
guessed at, so diverse are the attested forms. (Sihler 1995: 397398)

Secondly, there is a curious asymmetry that involves the meaning of these two
conjunctions: even though both conjunctions are supposed to be the direct case
singular and plural of the relative pronoun and of the interrogative/indeinite
pronoun, respectively, quod developed a polysemic value while quia basically did
not, given that its fundamental meaning was because, obviously except ater
verbs of saying and thinking.3

3I just wonder whether this diference is ultimately to be traced back to the basically phoric
(both anaphoric and cataphoric) function of the stem quo-, opposed to a diferent function (deictic?) of the stem of the interrogative-indeinite pronoun, i.e., qui-. The issue cannot be discussed
here.

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Some remarks on quia

Therefore the basic question can be formulated as follows: it is not surprising

that the AcI was replaced by a subordinate clause structurally conforming to the
syntactic pattern exhibited by the other subordinate clauses of Latin, since such
syntactic changes are not infrequently documented among the worlds languages
(Cuzzolin 1994). This leads to the question, why then to replace the AcI by means
of a subordinate introduced by quod and especially quia? In this contribution I try
to provide an answer to this question.
The present paper is organized as follows: in Sections 2 and 3 attention will
be concentrated on the correlative diptych, the pattern from which quod probably
derived its function as subordination marker; in Sections 4 and 5 the origin of
quia will be dealt with, also making a comparison with the Megarian form ,
perfectly corresponding to quia; in Section 6 the quia-construction will be analyzed according to recent proposals along sociolinguistic parameters. Some inal
conclusions will follow.

2A look at the correlative diptych

It is well established that the original pair of the correlative diptych was formed
by the two pronominal roots *kwo- ... *to- (Haudry 1973). This precise sequence
iswell documented in the oldest IE languages such as Hittite and Vedic. It especially occurs in some gnomic sentences such as quot capita, tot sententiae that
belong to the oldest layer of Latin and are probably to ascribe to one of the early
stages of Proto-Indo-European.
As pointed out many years ago by the French scholar Armand Minard (quoted
by Haudry 1973), beside the regular correlative diptych also the so-called
inverse correlative diptych is attested, in which the sequence of the two elements is reversed, giving as a result the sequence *to- ... *kwo-.
The fortunes and misfortunes of the two subtypes of correlative diptych in the
various IE languages where they are attested would deserve an investigation on
its own. It is interesting to observe that in Latin one of the changes it underwent
was the substitution of the pronominal element *to- with another pronominal
stem, i.e., *i-, the one that occurs in is, ea, id or even the stem *ho- of the pronoun
and adjective hic, haec, hoc. This change simply witnesses the progressive decay
of the stem *to- in Latin: it did not survive as an independent pronominal stem,
but only in some opaque formation like is-te this (with a diferent apophonic
degree) or as a base for adverbial conjunctions such as tum then. But, as I had
tried to point out years ago (Cuzzolin 1994), the correlative diptych is one of the
sources probably the most important of the replacement of the AcI through
the quod-sentence. If the correlative diptych is a pattern from which the type

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of subordination ater verbs of saying and thinking is supposed to derive, it is

reasonable to imagine that the second member of the pair, i.e., quod, underwent
a reanalysis and ultimately was re-categorized as a conjunction, once the irst
element of the pair started to be omitted. This happened no matter whether it
wasbased on the stem *to-, *i-, or *ho-. This crucial shit is shortly described in
Hofmann and Szantyrs syntax (1971: 572; see the next section).
From the beginning, quod and quia maintain some basic diferences, which
have been better investigated in the late stages of Latin. This is probably due to
the fact that the fate of quod and quia diverged in the history of the Romance
languages.4

3Remarks on the origin of quod

There are still many details on the origin and history of quod and quia in Early
Latin that remain to be investigated in order to precisely understand how they
could develop their function as subordination markers. However, the situation
has been better described for the origin and development of quod, than has the
history of quia, which is more puzzling.
A long quotation from Hofmann and Szantyrs syntax is in order here:
Die Entwicklung der Konjunktion quod aus dem Ntr. Sing. des Relativums lt sich noch
im Altlatein verfolgen. Zum Teil ist es direkter Kasus dieses Pron.... so quod wenn des
gesetzsprachlichen Typus idque ei ... facere liceto, quod sine malo pequlatuu iat (Lex Corn.
de XX quaest. (CIL I2 587), 1,4, ferner in quod was das betrit da des Typus quod ad me
scribis de sorore tua, testis erit ipsa Cic. Att. 1, 5, 2. Zum andern Teil ist quod Akk. des inneren
Objekts, der wie id usw.... frh adverbialisiert wurde und die Bedeutung da (aus in
welchem Punkte), dann weil erlangt hat. Z. B. Plt. Aul. 199 est quod te volo ... appellare,
dann freier 203 est quod visam domum ... Wie beim eigentlichen Relativ steht ot im Hauptsatz ein Korrelativ, z. B. Plt. Asin. 262 sed quid hoc, quod picus ulmum tundit ... Auch das rein
kausale quod zeigt seine relative Natur noch deutlich durch die demonstrativen Determinativa im Hauptsatz. (Hofmann and Szantyr 1971: 572)

This is precisely what our data show, at least in the two oldest examples
attested:

4The issue of the origin of It. che, Fr. que, Sp. que, Port. que, Rum. c, all meaning that goes
farbeyond the aim of the present paper. However, it is worth pointing out that the hypothesis
that these conjunctions would derive from quia, although generally accepted, is not completely
satisfactory.

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Some remarks on quia

(2) (Plaut. Asin. 5253; tr. de Melo 2011)5

Equidem scio iam ilius quod amet meus
Istanc meretricem e proxumo Philaenium
Well, I already know that my son is in love with that prostitute from next
door, Philaenium
(3=1)(Bell. Hisp. 36, 1; tr. Way 1955)
dum haec geruntur legati Carteienses renuntiauerunt quod Pompeium in
potestatem haberent
In the course of these proceedings envoys from Carteia duly reported that
they had Pompeius in their hands
The examples just quoted are chronologically ordered; yet, the example from
Plautus still raises some problems that I have discussed elsewhere (Cuzzolin
1994, 2013: 36).6 The main source of quod as a subordinator ater verbs of saying
and thinking is therefore the correlative diptych. That is, the development that
the correlative diptych underwent brought a new subordinating conjunction, i.e.,
quod,7 into existence. The conjunction developed its new function as a subordination marker out of a coordination pattern that made it possible for quod to
be used with its new function ater these verbs. All this happened independently
of the inluence Greek could exert on Latin, a fact that became culturally relevant
certainly at a later stage. This idea has been constantly upheld in the last decades
despite many counterarguments (Calboli 2009).
However, according to the data we possess, it is clear that the correlative diptych is responsible only for the origin of quod as a subordinator, not for quia. In
Early Latin the only stage relevant here for our investigation the data we possess never attest a diptych where the second member of the pair is quia. In addition, quia never introduces complement clauses depending on nominal or adjectival predicates.8 Obviously, quia frequently occurs preceded by an antecedent.

5If not indicated otherwise, all translations are taken from the Loeb Classical Library texts.
6According to the parameters of analysis, our data clearly show that the substitution of the AcI
ater verbs of saying and thinking gradually spread from the more assertive to the less assertive.
Since scire to know by deinition possesses a very low degree of assertivity, it should have
replaced the AcI rather late. In fact it is the irst verb that documents this change in the history of
Latin.
7I am aware that phenomena like the one I am dealing with in this paper have also been discussed and analyzed within the framework of (one of) the grammaticalization models available.
However, I prefer to leave out of the present paper the issue concerning the relationship between
the substitution of the AcI and grammaticalization.
8Even in this case, further investigations are needed.

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However, at least in the beginning the set of its antecedents was limited to adverbs or pronouns based on the stem *kwi-/kwo-. Only at a later stage the set of
antecedents of quia started to coincide with the set that used to occur in the diptych with quod.
But, if the correlative diptych could not have been the pattern from which
quia developed its function as a subordinator ater verbs of saying and thinking,
what is its source then? Although the question has remained basically unchanged
for more than one century, it is now possible to formulate some novel remarks on
this conjunction, as argued below.

4Remarks on the origin of quia

It is usually assumed that at a certain stage quod and quia should sound synonymous and it is likely that they had to be interchangeable. Formulated diferently, quod and quia ended up sharing the same functional distribution, more or
less to the same extent. But this assumption tells us nothing about the origin of
quia.
However, at the very beginning of this process, the situation should have
been diferent and between quod and quia a clear diference must have existed for
the speaker of Latin. The essential on this point is expressed in Hofmann and
Szantyr (1971):
Seine [of quia; PC] ursprngliche Funktion ist nur noch im altlateinischen ... und
archaisierenden ... quianam warum denn erhalten ... Sonst lsst sich die alte Natur des
bereits vorliterarisch zu einer Nebensatzpartikel gewordenen quia nur mehr erschlieen.
Sozeigt es als kausale Konjunktion seine Entstehung aus fragendem warum bei Plt. und
Ter. noch darin, dass es im Dialog sehr huig in der entstehenden Antwort auf eine
nach dem Grund sich erkundigende Frage des Partners steht ... (Hofmann and Szantyr
1971: 574)

It has already been observed above that, contrary to quod, the antecedent of
quia was almost always corradical. It means that quia developed its function as
a subordinator out of a pair in which both members were kw-elements, corresponding even etymologically to the wh-elements of the generative tradition,
such as the ones that occur in example (4). Here the antecedent is the interrogative pronoun quid what. In (5) the antecedent is the interrogative adverb quor
why:9

9The fact that in some critical editions editors read cur is irrelevant.

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Some remarks on quia

(4) (Plaut. Epid. 5859; tr. De Melo 2011)

nam quid ita? :: quia cottidie ipse ad me ab legione epistulas mittebat.
How so? Because he himself sent me letters from the army on a daily basis
(5) (Plaut. Amph. 687; tr. de Melo 2011)
quor negas? :: quia uera didici dicere
Why are you denying it? :: Because Ive learnt to speak the truth
Unfortunately, documentation is neither so old nor so complete to enable us to
follow step by step the process by which quia changes its grammatical status from
the supposedly plural of quid to a conjunction. The path along which it gradually
developed can only be reasonably hypothesized. As mentioned above, if quia is
the original plural forms of the neuter pronoun quid, it is necessary to suppose
that it lost its pronominal nature to acquire a more general, adverb-like status.
From a formal viewpoint, the hypothesis that quia is the neuter nominativeaccusative plural of the interrogative stem *kwi- is generally accepted. It has long
been noted that quia would perfectly correspond to the form what?, attested
in the Greek dialect spoken in Megara, both from a formal and functional point of
view: Formal und sachlich entspricht dem quia-nam gr. megar. ...; dem
megar. entspricht lautlich ntr. plur. indef. ion. () att. () aus kwi a
(Leumann 1972: 473; this etymology is accepted and simply repeated as such in
Beekes 2010 Etymological Dictionary of Greek).
Nonetheless, this point deserves further discussion.

5Lat. quia and Meg. : a real correspondence?

Although between Lat. quia and Meg. there is a formally perfect correspondence, the hypothesis that they continue the same original form *kwi h2 was challenged a century ago by Wackernagel:
Aber schon Ahrens ... hat das Bedenken erhoben, da der Plural des Neutrums in solchem
Sinn ungebruchlich sei; niemals kommt st. warum vor. Wiederum vom Standpunkt
des Latein aus hat Skutsch ... quia fr den Plural in Anspruch genommen; das ist formell
gleich untadelig, wie die entsprechende Erklrung von , und semasiologisch gleich
unwahrscheinlich: wo heit quae warum??. Es scheint am richtigsten, sich vorerst mit der
Tatsache der Identitt von quia mit , zu begngen und ein indogermanisches (oder
graeco-italisch?) *qi a anzusetzen. (Wackernagel 1912/1913: 268; my emphasis).10

10I wonder whether this is the reason why Bartonk (2011: 178) describes this form as neurit
zjmeno indeinite pronoun. It must also be noted that the form *qi a is an old notation. It corresponds to the updated form with laryngeal *kwi h2.

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As far as I know, the challenge issued by Wackernagel has never been considered
and discussed by linguists; it still needs an adequate investigation, especially
from a theoretical viewpoint. It is probably correct to claim that an interrogative
pronoun used in the plural represents a highly marked form and surely this point
would deserve a typological survey of the worlds languages; but, to the best of
my knowledge, such a survey has not been conducted yet. The solution is therefore to accept, at least for the time being, the correspondence between quia and
on a phonological and morphological basis.
From the functional viewpoint it is interesting to compare quia and /, to
the extent that it is possible on the basis of the very few examples.
The comparison is that of the Greek form , attested in the Megarian
dialect,11 employed by Aristophanes in the Acharnanians a couple of times,
clearly as a parody:
(6) (Aristophanes, Acharnanians 757; tr. Henderson 1998)
. ::
Then youll soon be rid of your troubles. Thats right
(7) (Aristophanes, Acharnanians 784; tr. Henderson 1998)12
. :: ;
But this one isnt even suitable for sacriice. Indeed? In what way unsuitable
for sacriice?
In the scholia of this comedy, v. 757 is explicitly glossed with the following words:
. . ;
. Instead of . What else does remain other than this?13
Unfortunately for us, in the scholia there is no mention of any feature that the
audience could have identiied as taken from a dialect nor is any other information given on how Attic speakers could react to this form.

11The presence of the Megarian dialect in Aristophanes comedies is analyzed by Colvin (1999),
and some useful remarks occur in Bartonk (2009).
12I quoted from the most recent Aritophanes edition, which is undoubtedly correct but pragmatically neutralized and stylistically plain. More vivid and pragmatically satisfying was the
previous translation by Bickley Rogers, irst published in 1924. I quote it here: So youll lose all
your troubles. What for no? (757), But shes no good for oferings. What for no? What for nae
guid for oferins? (784).
13The text from which I quote is Wilson (1975).

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Some remarks on quia

However, the two examples from Aristophanes, if they are reliable as linguistic documents and do not simply mock the uneducated igure of a countryman,
already show the irst step of the path that leads to their status of conjunction. In
neither example does performs the proper function of interrogative pronoun
but rather possesses the generic value of interrogative marker; and the chance
that in example (4) it could well refer to (the troubles the guy from
Megara is sufering) is actually non-existent.
Interestingly, the fact that Aristophanes uses twice in his comedy reveals that this pronoun should be easily recognizable and typical of the variety
spoken in Megara; it is also likely that it should be heard frequently enough to
make it popular and recognizable as such also to the speakers of other Greek
dialects in which this particular form was absent. What I want to stress is the
factthat it was probably more widespread in everyday colloquial speech than we
suppose.
The same pronoun also occurs in Pindar, although only one time, as , the
form corresponding to , which is usually classiied among the boeotisms, the
traits typical of the Boeotian dialect that occurs in Pindars odes:
(8) (Pindar, Olympian 1, 8284; tr. Race 1997)
,
,
;
But since men must die, why would anyone sit
in darkness and coddle a nameless old age to no use,
deprived of all noble deeds?
Also in this example, syntactically is extra-clausal inasmuch as it does not ill
any argumental position. Its status is more conjunction-like, i.e., the irst step
along the path that leads to a full conjunction status, like in the case of we
have just considered.
Unfortunately the two forms both the Megarian variant and the Boeotian
do not occur in suiciently broad contexts as to allow us to draw any conclusion about its syntax, even though it is clear that in the examples cited the
function of both and is adverbial or adverb-like. This means that this interrogative pronoun, at least according to our very scanty number of examples,
had already developed new functions during the ith century beside the original
one.
Although the doubts expressed by Wackernagel (and Ahrens before him)
have some validity, nonetheless it is diicult not to accept the equivalence between quia and , at least formally. As far as I know, there is no language of the

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world in which the unmarked form of the pronoun to ask something is plural.
Nonetheless that quia and are the plural of the interrogative pronoun seems to
be the likeliest analysis.

6A sociolinguistic analysis of the

quia-construction
At the beginning of this paper I used quod-construction to provide a general
label that deines the type of syntactic patterns that replaced the AcI. For the time
being, however, it is necessary to employ the speciic label quia-construction.
This term exclusively refers to the complement clauses introduced by quia, distinguishing it from the quod-construction (which in general terms, beside the quodconstruction proper, is used as hyperonym for both constructions; on this terminological problem, see Cuzzolin and Molinelli 2013: 9899, 102). This seems to be
necessary, because the quia-construction shows a couple of peculiarities that are
not shared by the quod-construction.
The regularly expected replacement of the AcI by means of the correlative
diptych was only represented by the conjunction quod. The issue therefore is
howquia could creep into the functional domain of quod. The fact that these
two conjunctions are close to each other (though not identical!) both in function and in etymology cannot be a satisfactory reason to account for the fact
that quia started being used where quod was expected (but see below). In addition, it must be observed that this correspondence probably sounded acceptableto the speaker only at a relatively late stage, and was not immediately
established.
Recently, however, ater decades when the replacement of the AcI was investigated from the point of view of its consequences on the grammatical system of
Latin, the distribution of quod and quia ater verbs of saying and thinking have
been re-examined from a sociolinguistic perspective. And some interesting proposals have been put forward that deserve some comments.
This perspective, although not completely new, was not extensively exploited
in the oldest handbooks. In Hofmann and Szantyrs volume devoted to syntax
and stylistics, for example, we read the following statement:
Im allgemeinen ist hervorzuheben: die Huigkeit von quia im Altlatein erklrt sich daraus,
dass es hier der hauptsachliche Trger des kausalen Satzverhltnisses ist ... Nach den
Verba sentiendi und declarandi erscheint quia weder altlateinisch noch klassisch ...; es
begegnet hier im freien Gebrauch zuerst ... in den vulgren Partien des Petron. (Hofmann
and Szantyr 1971: 585586; my emphasis)

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Some remarks on quia

According to the two renowned scholars, quod and quia ater verbs of saying and
thinking never occur in Old or Classical Latin, but only from post-Classical Latin
onward, and freely used in the vulgar parts of Petroniuss novel. That these two
conjunctions are freely used (im freien Gebrauch) is exactly what scholars have
recently started calling into question. First, let us quote the four examples that
occur in Petroniuss text as it is preserved. Beside each example I also indicate the
character who utters the sentence:
(9) (Petron. 45, 10; tr. Heseltine 1913)
Sed subolfacio quia nobis epulum daturus est Mammaea, binos denarios et
meis (Echion)
My nose prophesies a good meal from Mammaea, two pence each for me
and mine
(10) (Petron. 46, 4; tr. Heseltine 1913)
Ego illi iam tres cardeles occidi, et dixi quia mustella comedit (Echion)
I killed three of his goldinches just lately, and said a weasel had eaten
them
(11) (Petron. 71, 9 tr. Heseltine 1913)
Scis enim, quod epulum dedi binos denarios (Trimalchio)
You remember that I gave a free dinner worth two denarii a head
(12) (Petron. 131, 7; tr. Allinson 1930; available on line)14
At illa gaudio exultans: uides, inquit, Chrysis mea, uides, quod aliis leporem
excitavi? (Proselenos)
Look, Chrysis, look she cried, how I have started the hare for other folk
to course
The irst two examples, quoted here in the order in which they occur in the novel,
are uttered by Echion, who is qualiied as centonarius (the ireman who used
mats for extinguishing ires, according to the deinition provided by the Oxford
Latin Dictionary, s.v.), surely a poor guy in a very low social position, whose language has been described as one of the most incorrect in the whole novel (Boyce
1991; DellEra 1970). The third extract occurs in one of the speeches that Trimalchio, the wealthy and vulgar parvenu, gives during his famous dinner. The fourth
and last example is uttered by an old magic woman and procuress.
Also the names chosen are etymologically transparent and reveal something
about the characters they are associated with: if it is easy to interpret Trimalchio
14Strangely enough, in Heseltines translation this example remains in Latin.

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as the one who is X three times, where the preix Tri- performs the function of
the superlative of X, whatever malchio can be related to, and Proselenos alludes
to her being very old (her name could be paraphrased as the one who was born
before the moon), the name Echion, the person that apparently is the only one
who employs quia, is not telling and an etymological approach to the word
snake is rather useless.
There is, however, another viewpoint in which personal names can cast more
light on the issue dealt with here. It is interesting that the name , contrary
to the other two, is an actual Greek name, documented exclusively in Southern
Italy, and more precisely in Campania, once at Puteoli, once at Herculaneum, and
twice at Pompeii (Fraser and Matthews 1997: 184). Therefore, it is very likely that
the Latin spoken by this character mirrors some typical traits of Latin, diatopically marked as a variety spoken in Campania. But I wonder whether the area involved where the roman plot takes place and Echion lives could have been colonized by people coming from the regions where the speakers are supposed to
have retained as a linguistic habit.15 Obviously, this is only a suggestion
that needs further investigations, which may result in a revision of the Greek colonization in Southern Italy.
But lets go on. To Jzsef Herman, for instance, one owes this interesting and
more substantial remark, explicitly concerning the choice of the conjunction
quia:
[ propos de quia], non encore gnralis de lusage vulgaire . Il devait sagir dune
raret, dune variante frustre et peut-tre mme lgrement comique des compltives avec
quod, elles-mmes peu courantes encore. (Herman 2003: 141)

According to the late Hungarian scholar, quia could have been, and probably was,
a rare variant of quod, felt funny, even odd enough to make people smile, whenever they could hear or, less frequently, read the word.
But there is more. Recently one of the best experts of Latin, James Adams,
hasrevised the entire issue concerning the replacement of the AcI in Petroniuss
novel through an in-depth scrutiny of the scanty number of examples. Adamss
conclusions are novel and, as I wrote elsewhere, they deserve attention (Cuzzolin
2013: 33, 35). According to James Adams, the special character of the vulgarisms
in Petroniuss text does not consist of replacing the AcI through a subordinate
introduced by a conjunction; what is vulgar is precisely the choice of that particu-

15Independently of the correctness of the suggestion presented here, it is also interesting and
remarkable to observe that the form quianam, traditionally compared with , also occurs in
Cn. Naevius, supposedly born in Campania, but deinitely with a strong Campanian background.

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Some remarks on quia

lar conjunction, i.e., quia instead of the allegedly expected quod. This vulgarism
might have been located, not in the complementing of verba dicendi et sentiendi
by a subordinate clause, but in a perversion of the more educated constructionby the analogical replacement of the correct subordinator quod with quia
(Adams 2005: 197; my emphasis).
Both Herman and Adams have thus added a couple of interesting features to
the discussion and they have convincingly argued that:
1. quia probably was a variant of quod;
2. quia used instead of quod represented a linguistic infraction.
These two conclusions are convincing but could also be in slight contradiction,
unless we assume that:
1. if quia was a variant of quod, it should belong to a low register, surely lower
than quod (substandard, at least in origin?);
2. if the choice of quia was really perverse, just to quote the adjective used by
J. Adams, then it was perverse to such an extent that not even analogy could
conceal the fact that it was incorrect and an actual infraction.
However, if both remarks are correct, and I think they are, and moreover, if the
speakers in Petroniuss novel break a linguistic rule, then this raises the question:
on what linguistic level should the linguistic infraction be located?
Obviously, the sentence could not be ruled out as ungrammatical because
itwas not; probably it could or should only sound infelicitous. But why? Again,
surely not on diaphasic grounds: all the examples are colloquial and taken from
rather informal speeches; nor is it diastratic, all characters equally belong to the
crowd of common people, including the wealthy Trimalchio.
The only level on which this infraction is to be located, in my opinion, is the
diatopic one: Echion is inevitably betrayed by some linguistic peculiarities of his
own idiolect he cannot dismiss: the usage of quia instead of quod is just one of
them, as already noted in the literature (Boyce 1991; DellEra 1970).
Needless to say, it is diicult to correctly evaluate the fact that in these examples the AcI is replaced by the complement subordinate. It is interesting, for
instance, to observe that quod occurs twice and quia also twice. However, it is
probably more relevant to stress the fact the examples where quia occurs are
uttered by the same character, i.e., Echion centonarius.
Obviously, given Petroniuss versatility as a great artist, given that he loves to
play with diferent registers, mixing up the most trivial grammatical mistakes and
the most reined linguistic techniques, just to reproduce an artiicial and kaleidoscopic world of parvenus, freedmen, slaves, prostitutes, procuresses, and pimps,
one could also think that to employ quia instead of quod is the actual perversion

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in the text, the relevant mistake, and not that the AcI has not been used. This is
Adamss viewpoint, brilliant as usual, but only supplementary to what, at least in
my opinion, is the basic linguistic datum.
However, if one evaluates all scanty evidence brought to light so far, it is easy
to see that all the data conspire to one direction: the crucial point is that the two
examples where quia is employed are uttered by Echion centonarius and therefore they are better explained as a typical feature of a native speaker of a Greek
variety rather than of Latin. In this case quia can be described as a Graecism.
In my opinion, the fact that the Megarian form exists tells us a parallel
story of a phenomenon under the surface.
In the literature on this topic there is an equivalence implicitly accepted
byscholars, i.e., that the conjunction quod would correspond, at least functionally, to Gr. whereas quia would correspond to , functionally as well. I also
wonder whether some Greek could establish a metalinguistic correspondence
between a form such as , if it survived and continued to exist, and quia.
It goes without saying that one should have more linguistic material at his/
her own disposal to draw more reliable and irm conclusions. The number of
examples is really limited and further investigations on the GreekLatin bilingualism in Southern Italy would be necessary to corroborate or even disprove the
suggestion put forward here.
At this point one could wonder whether there is any advantage to claim that
quia is a Graecism. An observation is in order here. Concerning the birth and
development of constructions such as dicere quod and dicere quia, in Cuzzolin
(1994) it was claimed that both of them could not be described as Graecism
because they used to occur also in texts and cultural environments where the
inluence of Greek was absent (this does not mean that the Greek culture was
unknown). In my opinion, it is easy to observe that especially quod developed the
function of a subordination marker ater verbs of saying and thinking along completely Latin paths. On this basis I was also against the overly simplistic idea that
quod and quia were the transplantation, as it were, of and into Latin. This
correspondence has some ground, but it is not the one that can account for
boththe occurrence and the distribution of quod and quia in the irst examples
attested and investigated in the present paper.
It was easy also to imagine that, given the contiguity of quia with quod, the
former expanded its functional load as to invade the domain of the latter. This is
a likely scenario, but probably it has to be slightly corrected and improved; in any
case, if it happened, it took place gradually in time and therefore does not relect
the original situation.
It is likely that quia might indeed go back to a Greek origin. The diference
from what is usually claimed is that it was probably introduced into Latin by

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Some remarks on quia

Greek speakers trying to speak Latin, if I have correctly evaluated the evidenceprovided by Petroniuss examples. Quia is not the consequence of the imitation of Greek literary models, otherwise it would have occurred in authors of
stylistically elevated prose, not in the speech of a poor guy in a very low social
condition.
The advantage of this perspective is that one does not have to do with a
mechanical imitation of the Greek style using quod and quia ater and in
literary texts from a late period onward in any case, later than the time when
thephenomenon is attested. A late inluence of Greek on Latin is almost natural
(Calboli 2009). Here we have to do with a real situation of languages in contact
this implies the contact of diferent communities of speakers instead of a generic inluence of Greek on Latin.
To sum up, there are good reasons to airm that the replacement of the AcI
bymeans of quod-constructions ater verbs of saying and thinking represents a
purely Latin phenomenon, whereas quia-constructions represent a highly probable Graecism. Needless to say, this is the situation as we can envisage it at the
beginning of the process by which the AcI was replaced. What comes ater that,
especially the variety of the so-called Christian Latin, belongs to another story,
which has to be analyzed and interpreted according to other parameters.

7Conclusion
With respect to the results I achieved in my dissertation about twenty years
ago,some conclusions can be now slightly revised. For instance, I had strongly
supported the claim that the replacement of the AcI by means of the quodconstruction could not be treated as a Graecism, a position I still defend. The replacement of the AcI was not triggered by the inluence exerted on Latin by Greek
simply because this process starts in environments within Italy where Greek was
not used. This development would have taken place in longer times but apparently it was already in progress in the second century BCE, as example (1) shows.
What is probably disregarded is the fact that the original substitution would have
involved only the conjunction quod. If there was any inluence of Greek on this
process, it certainly appears in the choice of quia, which at its origin could not be
perceived as synonymous with quod.
The conclusion is that, with regards to their origins, one should keep apart
the quod-construction, which represents a development proper to Latin, from the
quia-construction, which is most likely due to the inluence of Greek (it is likely
that this inluence was exerted in particular by speakers of some special varieties
of Greek).

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