Page:Essay on the Principles of Translation - Tytler (1791, 1st ed).djvu/40

 Tribunorum militum consulare jus diu valuit. The ambiguous sentence is, Dictaturæ ad tempus sumebantur; which may signify either "Dictators were chosen for a limited time," or "Dictators were chosen on particular occasions or emergencies." D'Alembert saw this ambiguity; but how did he remove the difficulty? Not by exercising his judgement in determining between the two different meanings, but by giving them both in his translation. "On créoit au besoin des dictateurs passagers." Now, this double sense it was impossible that Tacitus should ever have intended to convey by the words ad tempus: and between the two meanings of which the words are susceptible, a very little critical judgement was requisite to decide. I know not that ad tempus is ever used in the sense of "for