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[*] 670. （a) After past tenses the indicative and optative are in equally good use; the optative being used when the writer incorporates the quotation entirely into his own sentence, and the indicative when he quotes it in the original words as far as his own construction allows. The indicative here, like the subjunctive in final clauses after past tenses (318), is merely a more vivid form of expression than the optative, with no difference in meaning. We even find both moods in the same sentence. E.g. Οὗτοι ἔλεγον ὅτι Κῦρος μὲν τέθνηκεν, Ἀριαῖος δὲ πεφευγὼς ἐν τῷ σταθμῷ εἴη καὶ λέγοι, κ.τ.λ. XEN. An. ii. 1, 3. (Here τέθνηκεν contains the most important part of the message.) Ἐκ δὲ τούτου ἐπυνθάνετο ἤδη αὐτῶν καὶ ὁπόσην ὁδὸν διήλασαν, καὶ εἰ οἰκοῖτο ἡ χώρα. Id. Cyr. iv. 4, Id. Cyr. 4. Ἐτόλμα λέγειν, ὡς χρέα τε πάμπολλα ἐκτέτικεν ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ καὶ ὡς πολλὰ τῶν ἐμῶν λάβοιεν. DEM. xxvii. 49. Ὅμοιοι ἦσαν θαυμάζειν ὅποι ποτὲ τρέψονται οἱ Ἕλληνες καὶ τί ἐν νῷ ἔχοιεν. XEN. An. iii. 5, 13. （b) The perfect and future were less familiar than the other tenses of the optative, so that these tenses were sometimes retained in the indicative even when the present or the aorist was changed to the optative. See the last two examples under (a). In indirect questions the aorist indicative was generally retained (see 125). Some writers (as Thucydides) preferred the more direct forms in all indirect discourse (320).
Macmillan. London, Melbourne, Toronto. 1889. reprint edition:. St. Martin's Press. New York. 1965.
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