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It is a characteristic of a certain kind of academic writing (or amateurish misconceptions thereof) to join prepositions by conjunctions with only one object. Some examples:

The realization of the good of all in and through the act of each is the social ideal. (Practical Ethics, William DeWitt Hyde)

Or the common idiom: "in and of itself".

Are there any examples in classical literature of two prepositions being joined by a conjunction with the same object?

Obviously, I am not interested in cases like "per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso."

A word search for "in et" (with word boundaries) shows only result where "in" is treated as a noun, i.e. "the word in."

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    Interesting question! It might be useful to search a text corpus for patterns like "in X et per X" (with any two prepositions), where the X's are the same. If this is common, then one could argue that it is the idiomatic option for "in et per X". I lack the aptitude to make such searches.
    – Joonas Ilmavirta ♦
    Commented Dec 20, 2016 at 22:29
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    The Vulgate is full of "in X et per X". Post-classical, though
    – Rafael
    Commented Dec 21, 2016 at 13:31
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    Dubious: DRN 2.393: aut quia ni mirum maioribus est elementis / aut magis hamatis inter se perque plicatis. This could be analysed as an adverb. I think the problem is that prepositions and adverbs are not entirely separate in Latin/Greek, and I think in in your example could be analysed as an adverb as well, if we should ignore traditional terminology for English momentarily and analyse it with the same lack of separation in mind.
    – Cerberus ♦
    Commented Dec 24, 2016 at 5:48
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    Varro, Res Rusticae, 1.35.2.5: dum in xv diebus ante et post brumam, ut pleraque, ne facias. I think this one is incontrovertible [strange how we spell this word with a -t-, incidentally]. It seems necessary to interpret ante as ante brumam, or it wouldn't make sense to me.
    – Cerberus ♦
    Commented Dec 24, 2016 at 6:17
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    @Cerberus 's Varro example is the only example of this phenomenon in the Oxford Latin Syntax, which calls it "very rarely attested": books.google.com/…
    – TKR
    Commented Dec 29, 2016 at 0:02

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DRN 2.393: aut quia ni mirum maioribus est elementis / aut magis hamatis inter se perque plicatis.

This one is somewhat dubious. It could be analysed as an adverb. I think the problem is that prepositions and adverbs are not entirely separate in Latin/Greek, and I think in in your example could be analysed as an adverb as well, if we should ignore traditional terminology for English momentarily and analyse it with the same lack of separation in mind.

Aeneid 4.671: Karthago aut antiqua Tyros, flammaeque furentes / culmina perque hominum uoluantur perque deorum.

You might call this simple ellipsis, because only the head of the object of the two prepositions is absent after the second preposition—but, then, isn't what you're after really ellipsis of a prepositional object?

Cicero, Rhet. Her. [sp.], 4.68.16: Id fieri poterit, si, quae ante et post et in ipsa re facta erunt, conprehendemus.

Here the same applies as in my quotation from Lucretius above.

Varro, Res Rusticae, 1.35.2.5: dum in xv diebus ante et post brumam, ut pleraque, ne facias.

I think this one is incontrovertible [strange how we spell this word with a -t-, incidentally]. It seems necessary to interpret ante as ante brumam, or it wouldn't make sense to me.

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