In my Latin Subjunctive (p. 142) I stated that no one could produce any examples of the imperfect subjunctive used in primary sequence indirect questions of the type ‘It is not known who was reigning in that country at the time when the Romans invaded it’—with the exception of a few passages in which a preceding clause containing an imperfect or pluperfect prepares the way for the imperfect subjunctive (e.g. Cic. Amic. 2 ‘meministi … profecto, … cum is … capitali odio a Q. Pompeio … dissideret, quocum coniunctissime … uixerat, quanta esset … admiratio’).

In an article in Greece & Rome (vol. xvii, pp. 128–9) Mr. Eric Laughton claims to have found a clear example of the imperfect subjunctive so used without any historic subordinate clause to prepare the way for it. His instance is Cic. Att. 3. 20. 1 ‘tibi uenire in mentem certo scio quae uita esset nostra, quae suauitas, quae dignitas. ad quae reciperanda … incumbe, ut facis’. Laughton takes this to mean ‘I feel sure you recollect what a life mine was’; he is supported by Tyrrell and Purser (vol. i, p. 399), and in view of the following words (ad quae reciperanda) this interpretation seems to be the natural one at first sight. But I cannot help feeling that, if Cicero had meant this, he would have written quae uita fuerit. To my mind, this is not a case in which the sense specially calls for an imperfect. Indeed, in Cicero's mood of despondency, it would actually be more natural for him to say ‘what a life mine once was’—the perfect tense implying that that life is gone for ever. I therefore think it much more likely that quae uita esset means ‘what a life mine would be’.