This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[*] 177. I. (a) In protasis and conditional relative sentences depending upon an optative which refers to the future, the optative rather than the subjunctive is regularly used to express a future condition. E.g. “Εἴης φορητὸς οὐκ ἂν, εἰ πράσσοις καλῶς,” “you would be unendurable, if you should be prosperous.” AESCH. Prom. 979. Ἀνδρὶ δέ κ᾽ οὐκ εἴξειε μέγας Τελαμώνιος Αἴας, ὃς θνητός τ᾽ εἴη καὶ ἕδοι Δημήτερος ἀκτήν. Il. xiii. 321. Πῶς γὰρ ἄν τις, ἅ γε μὴ ἐπίσταιτο, ταῦτα σοφὸς εἴη; “ for how could any one be wise in those things which he did not understand?” XEN. Mem. iv. 6, 7. Δέοιτο ἂν αὐτοῦ μένειν, ἔστε σὺ ἀπέλθοις. Id. Cyr. v. 3, Id. Cyr. 13. Εἰ ἀποθνῄσκοι μὲν πάντα ὅσα τοῦ ζῆν μεταλάβοι, ἐπειδὴ δὲ ἀποθάνοι μένοι ἐν τούτῳ, ἆρ᾽ οὐ πολλὴ ἀνάγκη τελευτῶντα πάντα τεθνάναι; if all things partaking of life should die, and after dying should remain dead, must it not very certainly follow that all things would finally be dead? PLAT. Phaed. 72 C. Ὡς ἀπόλοιτο καὶ ἄλλος ὅ τις τοιαῦτά γε ῥέζοι, “may any other man also perish who shall do such things.” Hom. Od. i. 47. Τεθναίην, ὅτε μοι μηκέτι ταῦτα μέλοι, “may I die, when I (shall) no longer care for these!” Fr. i. 2. (Here ὅταν μηκέτι μέλῃ might be used without change of meaning. See the second example under b.）
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.