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Repeated Action, the Potential and Reality in Ancient Greek

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

K.L. McKay
K.L. McKay*
Affiliation:
Australian National University
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Extract

One of the remarkable features of ancient Greek is its tendency to use the optative with ἂν in circumstances in which English would use a more direct statement or question with present or future indicative. When judged in relation to time (as has been usual for several centuries) this optative is in some circumstances seen to have past reference, but there was from Homer through to the classical period a growing tendency for such ‘past’ potentials to be expressed by means of the past tenses of the indicative. My studies in Greek aspect have led me to discount the time element in considering the ancient Greek verb, and I have stated in my Greek Grammar for Students that even in potential statements using the indicative the distinction between the imperfect, aorist and pluperfect tenses ‘is purely that of aspect, the time reference being understood from the context’. In this paper I wish to explore this area a little more and to make some suggestions about some uses of the imperfect tense which I now see are related to the development of potential expressions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 15 , 1981 , pp. 36 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1981

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References

1 A version of this paper was presented at the AULLA XXI Congress at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand on 2 February 1982.

2 Schwyzer, E. Griechische Grammatik 2. p. 328.Google Scholar

3 McKay, K.L. Greek Grammar for Students: A concise grammar ofclassical Attic with special reference to aspect in the verb (Dept. of Classics, The Australian National University 1974 and 1977),Google Scholar 27.5.2. This work is hereafter referred to as ‘McK. Gram.’

4 Even a scholar like J. Humbert, who asserts the predominance of aspect over tense, has a tendency to revert to temporal explanations.

5 For further discussion of method in this type of study see McKay, K.L. ‘On the Perfect and Other Aspects in the Greek Non-literary Papyri’, BICS 27 (1980), 24 f.;Google Scholar and On the Perfect and Other Aspects in New Testament Greek’, Novum Testamentum 23 (1981), 291 ff.

6 Cf. Humbert, J. Syntaxe Grecque (Paris 1954), 139, 355;Google Scholar Schwyzerpp. 323 f.; LSJ s.v. εì.

7 Howorth, R.H. in CQ 5 (1955), 72–93 CrossRefGoogle Scholar attempts to give a statistical account of Homeric usage, but places too much emphasis on time distinctions, ignores the paratactic origins of conditional sentences and makes little allowance for dialectal transfer of formulae.

8 For the open and excluded potential see McK. Gram. 27.4.2, 27.5 and Appendix B.

9 See pp. 39–40 below.

10 McK. Gram. 27.4.2, 27.5.2, and also App. A. 24 ff.

11 Further examples may be found in McK. Gram. 27.4.2, 30.3; Schwyzer pp. 324 ff.

12 I use ‘imperfective’ for the aspect and ‘present’ and ‘imperfect’ for the tenses (i.e. indicative forms of the aspect). See McK. Gram., in which my aim was to depart from traditional terminology only when it seemed important to avoid confusion.

13 Stanford, W.B. Aristophanes, The Frogs (Macmillan 1980), ad loc.Google Scholar

14 P. 323. Of course a wish is a form of expression of will, and it must have been from such origins that purpose clauses developed, but ȉνα with a wish seems unlikely for the developed language.

15 27.5.1 and App. B.

16 27.5.1.

17 This is in fact the first negative example quoted in McK. Gram. 27.5.1.

18 Cf. Schwyzer p. 328.

19 See McK. Gram. 27.4.1–5.3, App. B 11–12.

20 See McKay, K.L. ‘The Use of the Ancient Greek Perfect down to the End of the Second Century AD’, BICS 12 (1965), 9 f.Google Scholar

21 E.g. Stanford on Ar. Frogs 911–13. Schwyzer pp. 348–50 lists imperfect and aorist examples separately and compares iteration with the potential, but apart from a preliminary reference he does not discuss aspect in relation to this usage.

22 P.40.

23 Cf. McK. Gram. App. A 30–1.

24 There is another at line 438 in this play, and enough elsewhere to suggest it was a common expression of surprise.

25 Stanford (ad loc.) takes line 39 as an ‘imperfect of intention’, but I do not see how these two examples can be different from one another.

26 See McK. Gram. 24.2.4, and cf. 24.3.3.

27 See McK. Gram. 32 and 33. Note that βούλεσθαι in Xen. Mem. 1.1.5 (p. 38 above) represents έβούλετο.

28 See McK. Gram. 24.4.3–4, 24.6, App. A 24–8.

29 It is to be noted also that in Hellenistic Greek there was a tendency for the imperfect to take the place of the optative for the potential, and this would be more natural if the imperfect were not essentially a past tense.

30 See Denniston, J.D. The Greek Particles 2 (Oxford 1954), 32–7.Google Scholar

31 Note àρα, not άρα. It seems to be widely assumed that if àρα is normally attached the usage can be regarded as formulaic, and therefore not bound by normal rules. But formulae are the result of normal usage, and while they preserve archaisms they have only a limited capacity to distort the language. For a discussion of aspectual significance in a range of formulae see my article in BICS 27 (1980), 37 ff.

32 LSJ s.v. ειμί, F.

33 I confess I am not absolutely clear about the exact meaning of the passage, and ‘straightness’ and ‘the straight’ are at best rough approximations to Aristotle’s contrast. In particular I have difficulty in defining the force of the dative in το εόθεϊ είναι: does it mean ‘the essence belonging to “straight”’ or ‘what is with (and so has) straightness’? There seems to be no doubt that it amounts to something like ‘essential straightness’. The expression is mainly found with adjectives (e.g. άγαβω, κακω), but also occurs with nouns (e.g. μ.εγέ#ει).

34 It is easy in English to transfer unconsciously from interrogative to relative ‘what’, but τί is clearly interrogative.

35 Occasionally ουσία is found instead of το τί εστι in such unemphatic circumstances.

36 36Incidentally, I suggest that ποήσω is not future indicative (‘if I am going to do’), but aorist subjunctive (‘if I am to do’), which better suits both the general context set by the opening question with ειπώ and the particular restrictions Dionysus is applying.

37 Wilkinson, N.K. ‘Aspect’ in the Syntax of the Verb in the Poems of Homer (Ph.D. thesis, A.N.U. 1980), 179 ff.Google Scholar

38 Ruipérez, M.S. Estructura del systerna de aspectos y tempos del verbo griego antiguo (Salamanca 1954), 115, 166.Google Scholar