I’m (more or less) used to past mixed conditions with the protasis in the subjunctive and the apodasis in the indicative (e.g. Seneca "Mors ad te venit; timenda erat si tecum esse posset), but I’ve just come across one in the present in a letter of Erasmus and I’m having trouble remembering coming across this before:
Nam bene vīvere, nisī vīvāmus, nōn possumus.
Is this a frequent thing that I’ve just somehow failed to notice before? Or is this kind of mixed condition in the present unusual?
I wouldn’t think it’s particularly unusual. “We can’t live well if we’re not to live.” A little more subtle than the indicative perhaps. Does this fit the context? There’s a Senecan dictum on old age that I (ipse senex) take to heart: est plena voluptatis si illa scias uti. “Old age is full of pleasure if only you’d know how to use it.”
Grātum! I hadn’t run across that Seneca before—this seems to be just a construction I somehow managed either not to have encountered or (far more likely) to have encountered but not registered until now.