“[p. 41] but expresses them all by one and the same form, just as Marcus Cicero did not use fiturum in the masculine or neuter gender—for that would clearly be a solecism—but employed a form which is independent of any influence of gender.” 1 Furthermore, that same friend of mine used to say that in the oration of that same Marcus Tullius On Pompey's Military Command 2 Cicero wrote the following, and so my friend always read it: “Since you know that your harbours, and those harbours from which you draw the breath of life, were in tile power of the pirates.” And he declared that in potestatem fuisse 3 was not a solecism, as the half-educated vulgar think, but he maintained that it was used in accordance with a definite and correct principle, one which the Greeks also followed; and Plautus, who is most choice in his Latinity, said in the Amphitruo: 4
Número mihi in mentém fuit,not in mente, as we commonly say. But besides Plautus, whom my friend used as an example in this instance, I myself have come upon a great abundance of such expressions in the early writers, and I have jotted them down here and there in these notes of mine. But quite apart from that rule and those authorities, the very sound and order of the words make it quite clear that it is more in accordance with the careful attention to diction and the rhythmical style of Marcus Tullius that, either
