Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:
section:
This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
Chapter II
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
[*] 208. （Future.) The future infinitive with ἄν can be equivalent only to the Homeric construction of the future indicative with ἄν. But as ἄν is not found in Homer with the future infinitive, this construction rests chiefly on the authority of passages in Attic writers, and is subject to the same doubts and suspicions as the future indicative with ἄν in those writers. (See 197.) Unless we exterminate the latter, there can be no objection to this as its representative. In the following passages it is still retained on the best MS. authority. Νομίζοντες, εἰ ταύτην πρώτην λάβοιεν, ῥᾳδίως ἂν σφίσι τἄλλα προσχωρήσειν. THUC. ii. 80. (Here the direct discourse would regularly have had either the future indicative without ἄν, or the aorist optative with ἄν.) The same may be said of THUC. v. 82, νομίζων μέγιστον ἂν σφᾶς ὠφελήσειν (where one MS. reads by correction ὠφελῆσαι). See also THUC. vi. 66; viii. 25 and 71; and PLAT. Crit. 53D ; PLAT. Crat. 391A. “Σχολῇ ποθ᾽ ἥξειν δεῦρ᾽ ἂν ἐξηύχουν ἐγώ,” “I declared that I should be very slow to come hither again.” SOPH. Ant. 390. (Here the colloquial style may account for ἥξειν ἄν, as for ἥξει ἄν in PLAT. Rep. 615 D, unless we take ἄν with ἐξηύχουν. See 197.) In PIND. Ol. i. 108, we have εἰ δὲ μὴ ταχὺ λίποι, ἔτι γλυκυτέραν κεν ἔλπομαι σὺν ἅρματι θοῷ κλεΐξειν. As the future optative is never used with ἄν (203), this can never be represented by the future infinitive with ἄν.
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.