Will

“PREPOSITIONS
219. Prepositions were not originally distinguished from Adverbs in form or meaning, but have become specialized in use. They developed comparatively late in the history of language. In the early stages of language development the cases alone were sufficient to indicate the sense, but, as the force of the case-endings weakened, adverbs were used for greater precision (cf. § 338). These adverbs, from their habitual association with particular cases, become Prepositions; but many retained also their independent functions as adverbs.

Most prepositions are true case-forms: as, the comparative ablatives extrā, īnfrā, suprā (for †exterā, †īnferā, †superā), and the accusatives circum, cōram, cum (cf. § 215). Circiter is an adverbial formation from circum (cf. § 215. b N.); praeter is the comparative of prae, propter of prope.[1] Of the remainder, versus is a petrified nominative (participle of vertō; adversus is a compound of versus; trāns is probably an old present participle (cf. in-trā-re); while the origin of the brief forms ab, ad, dē, ex, ob, is obscure and doubtful.

[1] The case-form of these prepositions in -ter is doubtful.”
― J. B. Greenough Joseph Henry Allen, Allen and Greenough's New Latin Grammar

“Qua na stat nagin pront davant la porta, uschia che jau m'avischin e splunt in zic timida. Ina dunna cun schlappa e scussal alv m'avra. Probablamain la cuschiniera. Immediat cumenza ella a discurrer per tudestg. Jau na chapesch betg pled e na sai betg tge dir. Dus egls severs m'examineschan. Ella para da spetgar ina resposta. Qua cumpara tuttenina in'autra dunna davos ella. Quella porta in bellezza vestgì e surri en maniera simpatica. 'Haben wir Besuch, Roswitha?', dumonda ella la cuschiniera. 'Nun ja, dieses Mädchen is hier aufgetaucht. Ich weiss nicht, ob es stumm ist oder unsere Sprache nicht spricht.' La cuschiniera guarda sco sch'ella n'avess betg grond gust da sa fatschentar pli ditg cun mai. 'Ist schon gut, Roswitha, du kannst sie mir überlassen.' Jau hai empruvà da suandar lur discurs cun tutta fadia, ma n'hai tuttina chapì nagut. Ussa sa drizla la dunna cun il surrir amiaivel a mai: 'Buna saira, jau sun la patruna da quest hotel.' Ella ma tanscha il maun. 'Discurris Vus rumantsch?' Surstada dun jau dal chau. Cun quai n'aveva jau betg quintà. Ella è bain la patruna tudestga, pertge sa ella pia rumantsch? Sche mes parents discurrivan davart ils Tudestgs, eran els adina plain aversiun: 'Taidla, Catrina, quels pensan ch'il rumantsch saja la lingua da las muntognas, dals purs. Ils Tudestgs n'empruvassan mai da communitgar cun nus. Ma quai è bain en urden, nus stain gugent tranter nus.' L'experientscha d'ier m'ha confermà quai. Questa dunna qua è dentant tut autra.”
― Laura Schütz, Hotel Destin

“Everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere spring had come and gone. The season had swept far to the north; it had climbed mountains; it had passed into the sky. Like a sound, spring spreads and spreads until it is swallowed up in space. Like the wind, it moves across the map invisible; we see it only in its effects. It appears like the tracks of the breeze on a field of wheat, like shadows of wind-blown clouds, like tossing branches that reveal the presence of the invisible, the passing of the unseen. So spring had spread from Georgia to North Carolina, from Virginia to Canada, leaving consequences beyond number in its wake. We longed for a thousand springs on the road instead of this one. For spring is like life. You never grasp it entire; you touch it here, there; you know it only in parts and fragments. Reflecting thus as we started south on that first morning of summer - on the day of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year - we were well aware that it is only on the calendar that spring comes to so sudden a termination. In reality its end is a gradual change. Season merges with season in a slow transition into another life.”
― Edwin Way Teale, North With the Spring: A Naturalist's Record of a 17,000-Mile Journey With the North American Spring

“Neither in Greek nor in Latin was there a word with which to express the general notion of 'labour' or the concept of labour 'as a general social function.' The nature and conditions of labour in antiquity precluded the emergence of such general ideas, as of the idea of a working class. 'Men never rest from toil and sorrow by day, and from perishing by night,' said Hesiod (Works and Days 176-8). That is a descriptive statement, a statement of fact, not of ideology; so is the conclusion, that it is therefore better to toil than to perish, and better still to turn to the labour of slaves if one can. But the world was not one of toil and sorrow for everybody, and there lay a difficulty. The expulsion from Eden had the saving feature that it embraced all mankind, and hence, though it linked work with sin and punishment, it did not degrade labour as such. A fate which is everyone's may be tragic, it cannot be shameful. Sin can be washed away, not natural moral inferiority. Aristotle's theory of natural slavery in the first book of the Politics was an extreme position, but those who did not accept it merely turned the doctrine round: men who engaged in the mean employments or in the slavish conditions of employment were made inferior by their work. Either way there was no consolation.

All this, it will be objected, is based on the views of the upper classes and their spokesmen among the intellectuals, not on the views of those who worked but were voiceless. But they were not wholly so. They expressed themselves in their cults, for example, and it is to be noted that though Hephaestus (the Roman Vulcan), the craftsman among the gods, was in a sense a patron of the crafts, and especially of the metallurgists, he was an inferior deity in heaven and he received little formal worship and few temples on earth. The most 'popular' classical cults were the ecstatic ones, particularly that of Dionysus/Bacchus, the god of intoxication (in more senses than one). Through Dionysus one did not celebrate toil, one obtained release from it. Those who worked also expressed their views in their demands for land, already noticed, and in their failure to ally themselves with the slaves on those relatively rare occasions when the latter revolted.”
― Moses I. Finley, Ancient Economy (Sather Classical Lectures)