This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[*] 536. The Greek generally uses the indicative in relative clauses depending on general negative sentences, where in Latin a subjunctive is more common. A general negation is really particular. E.g. Παρ᾽ ἐμοὶ δὲ οὐδεὶς μισθοφορεῖ, ὅστις μὴ ἱκανός ἐστιν ἴσα πονεῖν ἐμοί, i.e. no one who is not able (no one unless he is able), nemo qui non possit. XEN. Hell. vi. 1, 5. Οὐδεὶς γὰρ οὐδενὶ ὠργίζετο ὅστις μὴ ᾤετο ἀπολεῖσθαι, for no one was angry with any one who did not think that he was about to perish (i.e. εἰ μὴ ᾤετο). Ib. vii. 4, Ib. 37. Οὐδαμοῦ πώποθ̓, ὅποι πρεσβευτὴς ἐπέμφθην ὑφ᾽ ὑμῶν ἐγὼ, ἡττηθεὶς ἀπῆλθον τῶν παρὰ Φιλίππου πρέσβεων, nowhere, whither I was sent as ambassador, did I ever come off worsted by Philip's ambassadors. DEM. xviii. 244.Here the leading sentence is particular, on no single occasion was I worsted, so that ἐπέμφθην is regular; if the nearly equivalent universal affirmative on every occasion I proved superior had been intended, we should have had πεμφθείην. See xviii. 45, προὔλεγον καὶ διεμαρτυρόμην καὶ παρ᾽ ὑμῖν ἀεὶ καὶ ὅποι πεμφθείην; and the following in 244, ἐν οἷς κρατηθεῖεν οἱ πρέσβεις αὐτοῦ τῷ λόγῳ, ταῦτα τοῖς ὅπλοις ἐπιὼν κατεστρέφετο. Notice the imperfects in the two affirmative examples, and the aorist in the preceding negative example.
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.