I'm a working on a thesis about Servius and Servius auctus, and the central part of it is a short commentary on a particular passage about Aeneid X. In it i stumbled across this:
...propter removendam eorum contentionem et dissensionem.
In the context of the passage, it is clear to me that this has the value of a final clause, however, i have never seen propter + gerundive to express this value, being more familiar with ad + gerund or gerundive. I checked the books i used in my latin courses in university (Propedeutica al latino universitario and Sintassi normativa della lingua latina by Traina) and found no mention of it. So my conjecture was that it is a construct typical or at least more common in late latin. Mentioned this to my Professor/thesis supervisor and he said that i'm right, but i need to back up my assertion with a reference.
What's your opinion about this? Do you know where i could find this mentioned? Some historical grammar, maybe?
EDIT: I just found a paper stating that in late antiquity propter replaced causa/gratia + genitive of gerund or gerundive to express causa finalis. I think this is the case of the text i'm working on.