“Andwould that your king himself – had he been driven by the same south wind – were present: Aeneas!” – Queen Dido
Marcus Tullius Cicero,Epistulae ad Familiares 14.4.1:
Quodutinam minus vītae cupidī fuissēmus!
Oh,would that we had been less fond of life! (Writing from exile, Cicero uses the pluperfect subjunctivefuissemus in an optative clause introduced byutinam to express a wish that was unfulfilled in the past: In hindsight, would death at that time have been preferable to his family’s current state of despair?)
