Context: Caesar’s conflict with the ruling faction in the senate.
ceterum Caecilio Metello tribuno plebis turbulentissimas leges aduersus collegarum intercessionem ferenti auctorem propugnatoremque se pertinacissime praestitit, donec ambo administratione rei publicae decreto patrum submouerentur.
trial translation:
Caesar most stubbornly supported Caecilius Metellus tribune of the plebians , who was proposing some very seditious laws, despite the opposition of the other tribunes, until the senate by decree debarred both of them from the exercise of their official powers.
Surely this sentence means that the senate action was the result of the Caesar-Metellus combination. Can we say that this is a result clause, sometimes called a consecutive clause?
“Can we say that this is a result clause, sometimes called a consecutive clause?”
That’s a good way to think about it. Actually, as far as I can tell, A&G doesn’t mention the use of donec with the subjunctive in this kind of clause. However, Lewis & Short indicate that usage fluctuated between indicative and subjunctive:
It’s good to remember that grammatical terms such as “result/consecutive” clauses and “purpose/final” clauses were invented by grammarians to categorize usage, and that usage doesn’t always conform to the “rules” laid down by grammarians, which, after all, are simply attempts to describe usage. Although A&G says that donec in the sense of “until” takes the indicative, obviously Suetonius here used the subjunctive–probably because he felt this as similar to a “result” clause introducted by ut.
Gaffiot indicates that donec + subj. has a “[nuance consécutive restrictive] jusqu’à ce que pourtant enfin”, something like “until though at last” (if I do not betray it).
Not to be pedantic, but surely this should not be thought of as a result clause but as a temporal one. The subjunctive may in context serve to lend a consecutive nuance, or it may just be indefinite (“until such time as”), or it may be representing the word used in the decree (quasi-indirect speech). It can’t really be tied down. Donec, like dum and many others, quite often takes subjunctive outside of purist late republican authors like Cicero (who dislikes even donec itself).
Woodcock, A New Latin Syntax (Cambridge, MA 1958), secs. 222-224, confirming mwh, seems to suggest that the original distinction between donec with a past-tense verb (1) introducing a clause of actual occurrence with indicative and (2) introducing an intended or anticipated occurrence with subjunctive eventually gave way to the subjunctive in both cases.