Or we may get the apodosis taking the form of a past subjunctive, as expressive of a wish, or a possibility; or a present subjunctive, as expressive of a possibility, or as deliberative; or of the past Indefinite Indicative as used to denote a general fact; or as the case may be. 32. So far as we have at present gone, the only mode of expressing in Greek the English ideas, "If he had placed himself, this would have happened"; "If he had been placing, this would have been happening"; "If he had placed, this would have-happened," is by a resort to the forms under (B) a ii. above. The peculiar nuance of the apodosis in that set of or as the case may be should If he or denoting contingencies, on their way from possibilities to actual facts. ἑστηκὼς ἂν εἴη οἱ ἐὰν ἱσταίη ἂν would στήσειεν ἄν place I have-placed single acts expressions has already been pointed out; see paras. 12, 26; And in point of fact the Greeks did manufacture for 33. To the expression of actual facts contained in a sentence built up in protasis and apodosis of past Indicatives, e.g. εἰ ἴστη, τοῦτο ἐγίγνετο, If he was placing, this was happening, the Greeks, in order to express the idea of conditional facts, e.g. If he had been placing, this would have been happening, simply appended the particle av to the primal sentence,39 turning it into {εἰ ἴστη, τοῦτο ἐγίγνετο} ἄν. (C) Past tenses of the Indicative Mood, adapted to denote (C) ei with the past indicative adapted to denote conditional facts, followed by the past indicative (a) Past with av. If had -ed, (placed himself: the effects remaining time been placing placed: single act -would have -ed. 35. It follows from what has been said, and it should be remarked, that the Greek protases represent in English, according as they form parts of sentences expressive of And this has especially to be remembered when, as occasionally happens, the apodosis which would determine to which category the protasis belongs is itself omitted. Thus, not to spend time in searching for examples of By the omission of the brackets, which of course had no place in actual life, this became εἰ ἵστη, τοῦτο ἐγίγνετο ἄν, and herein the av is to be looked upon as used, not as the appendage of the verb èyíyvero alone, but as, what it really is, the appendage of the whole sentence.40 34. In this way we get, in addition to the forms of conditional sentences already noted, the following: the first category, we have examples of the second in such passages as Eur. Ion 961 εἰ παῖδά γ ̓ εἶδες χεῖρας ἐκτείνοντά μοι = “ yes (you would have certainly so said), if you had seen the child stretching out its hands to me." Dem. de Fals. Leg. p. 379. 9 εἰ γὰρ ἐν ἡμέρᾳ πόλιν ᾕρει, δύο καὶ εἴκοσίν εἰσιν ἀριθμῷ = “for if he had been taking a city a day (what would that have meant)? They are two and twenty in number." 41a 36. It should also be remarked that in Greek, not only do we find occasionally-as, for example, in the passage from Hippocrates (?) de Prisca Medicina, i. p. 8, ed. Foësi. p. 23, ed. Kühn, cited below in the Text 47 (a ii. y), and 76, ὅπερ, εἰ μὴ ἦν ἰητρικὴ ὅλως, μηδ' ἐν αὐτῇ ἔσκεπτο μηδ' εὕροιτο μηδέν, οὐκ ἂν ἦν—the older protasis with εἰ with the past Subjunctive indefinite-and the case is the same with the past Subjunctive perfect-retained side by side with the newer one with ei with the past Indicative; but the apodoses after such newer protases with e with the past Indicative not unfrequently-as will be seen among the examples cited below in the Text 57, 58 (B) and (y) extr.retain the past subjunctival forms with av: 37. The sentences under the head (C) a above underwent in Greek an occasional further modification in actual life by the retrenchment of the av, which was usually in juxtaposition with the apodosis. 38. This modification, which has its parallel in English in the change of (for example) into If he had been placing, this would have been happening, If he had been placing, this had been happening, 43 (C') Past tenses of the Indicative Mood, adapted to denote (a) Perfect followed by the (a) Past time (6) Imperfect corn (7) Indefinite (placed himself: the effects remaining ἑστήκει If he had been placing ἔστησε placed: single act 40. It is curious to note that we have here restored to the eye the sentences under (A) a above. The protasis, however, no longer now has the same meaning as it had in them, but its new meaning, as befitting the expression of a conditional, instead of an actual, fact. 41. Let us now illustrate the forms of expression at which we have arrived, and which are tabulated under the heads (A), (B), (A′), (B′), (C) and (C') above, by actual examples. If in any individual case here or hereafter any particular form is left unrepresented by an appropriate example, the fault is not necessarily other than that of the writer, who has failed in his reading to note one. |