InGreece and Rome, vol. xvii, No. 51, pp. 128–9, Mr. E. Laughton, referring to pp. 140 ff. of Mr. S. A. Handford's The Latin Subjunctive, put forward Cicero, Att. 3. 20. 1 (‘tibi venire in mentem certo scio quae vita esset nostra, quae suavitas, quae dignitas’) as an example of the imperfect subjunctive in an indirect question in primary sequence, where a preceding imperfect or pluperfect tense has not been employed in mitigation of the violation of sequence. In vol. xviii, No. 54, p. 138, Mr. Handford replies that esset probably means ‘would be’, as Tyrrell took it in Cicero in his Letters, and adds ‘so we are still without a clear example of imperfect subjunctive used in a primary sequence indirect question to express durative (or iterative) action’. In vol. xviii, No. 55, p. 18, Mr. Laughton ‘retreats fighting’, but hopes that ‘some day Mr. Handford's challenge may meet with an unequivocal response’.
In paragraph 3 of the Praefatio to book x of Seneca's Controversiae we read, of the brilliant, but casual declaimer, Scaurus, ‘ex his omnibus sciri potest, non quantum oratorem praestaret ignavus Scaurus, sed quantum desereret’ (‘all this goes to show, not how great an orator the lazy Scaurus was, but how great he missed being’). The variant scire posset in excerpt. Montepessulana can safely be ignored. Though I am sure we should all wish to see an example quoted from a more reputable author than the Elder Seneca, this sentence, occurring as it does in a carefully written preface, confirms Mr. Laughton's intuition that this ‘rational mode of expression’ is not impossible in Latin when the sense of the dependent verb is ‘obviously durative’.
