This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[*] 664. 1. Indirect quotations with ὅτι, ὡς, etc., form the chief part of the class of substantive sentences, in which an assertion introduced by one of these particles is the subject or the object of a verb. But these sentences have no peculiar construction, except after verbs implying thought or the expression of thought (verba sentiendi et declarandi), as they elsewhere have the simple indicative or any other form which would be used in the corresponding independent assertions. See οὐχ ἅλις ὡς ἐκείρετε κτήματ᾽ ἐμά, “is it not enough that you wasted my property?” Od. ii. 312; πολὺ κέρδιον ἔπλετο ὅττι ὑπόειξεν, Il. xv. 227; τοῦτο ἄξιον ἐπαινεῖν, ὅτι τὸν φόβον διέλυσαν τῶν Ἑλλήνων (668), PLAT. Menex. 241 B; τοῦτ᾽ ἀδικεῖ, ὅτι ἀχρεῖον τὴν ἐπιείκειαν καθίστησιν, DEM. xx. 155. 2. The infinitive of indirect discourse belongs to the large class of subject and object infinitives (745; 746; 751), being distinguished from the others of this class by preserving the time of its tense from the finite verb which it represents (85; 667, 3).1
1 See Schmitt, Ueber den Ursprung des Substantivsatzes mit Relativpartikeln im Griechischen, in Schanz's Beiträge, Heft 8.
Macmillan. London, Melbourne, Toronto. 1889. reprint edition:. St. Martin's Press. New York. 1965.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.