Age/agite: the Artistic Re-elaboration of a Polyfunctional Interjection in Virgil’s Works

In this study, I try to establish the use and functions of the interjections age and agite in Virgil’s works, on the basis of ancient grammatical tradition and of the theory of pragmaticalization. In Virgilian poetry, age and agite can function as discourse and pragmatic markers. Moreover, age and agite create collocations with other elements. My focus is on some of these collocations, which are recurrent and appear with the same value in similar contexts. Both literary and non-literary and unofficial testimonia of Latin are consulted in order to determine where these collocations were in use and in what kind(s) of language. The data show that Virgil drew several collocations from the language of comedy and lively prose, drew one collocation from the learned poetry of Catullus, and invented some new ones. Therefore, his prevailing modus operandi consisted in re-elaborating well attested collocations in texts, which (artistically) reproduced colloquial Latin. This chapter offers an in-depth analysis of Virgil’s artistic re-elaboration of this colloquial material.