Tote is Matthew's signature narrative connector, appearing far more frequently in his Gospel than in any other New Testament book. It marks the next beat in a sequence of events — 'then Jesus was led into the wilderness' (Matt 4:1), 'then Herod secretly called the Magi' (Matt 2:7). While sometimes purely temporal, it often carries a sense of consequential flow: because this happened, then that followed. Its consistent rendering across languages — 'entonces' (Spanish), 'alors' (French), 'dann' (German) — confirms a stable adverbial function with no ambiguity.