In early Greek the Subjunctive sometimes plays the part of a Future,
e.g.
Homer Il. 1, 262 “
οὐ γάρ πω τοίους ἴδον ἀνέρας οὐδὲ ἴδωμαι.” So in
early Latin, e g.
This usage is mainly confined to 1 Singular and must have something
to do with the employment (from very early times) of 1 Singular Subjunctive
as Future in the Third Conjugation, e.g.
dicam, faciam (while
dixo,
faxo are like
amasso, prohibesso, the S-Aorist Subjunctive), and (at a later stage
apparently) in the Fourth, e.g.
sciam beside
scibo, audiam beside
audibo in Plautus. In a sentence like
Rud. 1356, etc.,
sed conticiscam,
it is impossible to say whether the verb is Subjunctive (like
taceam) or
Future (like
tacebo). From this use of 1 Singular
taceam ‘I will be silent,’
‘I had better be silent,’ it is but a step to the ordinary uses (in all
periods of Latin) of 1 Plural, e.g.
taceamus ‘let us be silent,’ ‘we had
better be silent,’ and of all Persons in Conditional Sentences, e.g.
taceam, si sapiam; taceamus, si sapiamus; taceas, si sapias. Similarly
it is but a step from
Pseud. 240, “
modo ego abeam”, to the use of
ut (uti) in
Pers. 575 “
modo uti sciam, quanti indicet”, ‘only I wish
to know what price he offers.’ To disentangle the various threads
of which the Latin Subjunctive is composed is not easy. For example,
Plautus uses
velim and
volo almost indiscriminately, but it baffles
us to detect the precise original sense of
velim (Optative? Future?
Potential?). In
Amph. 928 “
valeas, tibi habeas res tuas, reddas
meas”, the three Subjunctives would, if they occurred in separate
sentences, be classified as Optative, Permissive and Imperative respectively.
But the crudeness of such a distinction is evident
when we find them together in the same line. In Greek the
Optative Mood has retained a separate existence; but Latin
Optatives,
sim, velim, edim, duim, creduim, etc., were all merged in
the Subjunctive mood before the time of Plautus, whose language
retains only doubtful traces of the distinction between
edam (Subjunctive)
and
edim (Optative),
creduam (Subjunctive) and
creduim (Optatove) (see my Latin
Language, p. 514; and on the occasional Potential use of the Perfect
Subjunctive, above,
21). Even in the Indo-European language the
provinces of Future and Subjunctive were not definitely discriminated, nor
even of Future and Optative. In
Pers. 16 Future and Subjunctive (= Optative) seem
to play the same part:
“
A. O Sagaristio, di ament te. B. O Toxile, dabunt di quae exoptes”, but
dabunt
(cf. “
ita me di amabunt”
Ter. Heaut. 463;
cf.
Poen. 869）
may conceivably be an affirmation like the Future in Ter.
Heaut. 161
“
A. utinam ita di faxint! B. facient.”
(On the Tenses of the Subjunctive used in Prohibitions, see
VIII. 9）
