Soph. OT 1247-50 Optatives in indirect discourse

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C. S. Bartholomew
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Soph. OT 1247-50 Optatives in indirect discourse

Post by C. S. Bartholomew »

Soph. OT 1247-50
κάλει τὸν ἤδη Λάϊον πάλαι νεκρόν,
μνήμην παλαιῶν σπερμάτων ἔχουσ', ὑφ' ὧν
θάνοι μὲν αὐτός, τὴν δὲ τίκτουσαν λίποι
τοῖς οἷσιν αὐτοῦ δύστεκνον παιδουργίαν·
γοᾶτο δ' εὐνάς, ἔνθα δύστηνος διπλοῦς
ἐξ ἀνδρὸς ἄνδρα καὶ τέκν' ἐκ τέκνων τέκοι.

... calling on Laius, now long a corpse, remembering their love-making long ago, which had brought him death, leaving her to bring forth a progeny accursed by one that was his own; and she wept over the bed where in double misery she had brought forth a husband by her husband and children by her child.
— Lloyd-Jones LCL Harvard UP 1994
Having read Cooper[1], Smyth §2599-2606, and Geoffrey Steadman's note on θάνοι I sort of half understand what is going on here. We have three aorist optatives representing things that have already happened. In narrative these would be aorist indicatives for events in the past. It isn't perfectly obvious why this is considered indirect discourse. Does it have something to do with μνήμην ... ἔχουσ' representing thoughts of Jocasta's? How could that carry forward as far as τέκοι? Perhaps γοᾶτο δ' εὐνάς, ἔνθα ... represents another mental state which includes the memory of what happened there.

[1] Guy Cooper, Greek Syntax, vol 3, p2382, 2:53.6.6.b
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Re: Soph. OT 1247-50 Optatives in indirect discourse

Post by mwh »

You’ve more than half understood I think. The leading verbs are in past or effectively past tenses (καλεῖ historic present [or should it be κάλει impf.?],* γοᾶτο impf.). So we’re in secondary sequence. What’s more, the subordinate clauses (ὑφ’ων θανοι μεν … την δε … λιποι and ενθα … τέκοι) clearly represent Jocasta’s own thoughts or words. That’s evident from the context and from the optatives themselves. So we’re effectively in indirect statement. Hence the optatives, by the regular sequence rules governing subordinate clauses in indirect discourse. You don’t need an actual discourse word to throw you into indirect discourse. If indicative were used instead of optative the clauses would be merely factual information about the marriage and the bed supplied by the messenger, parenthetical background info, leaving Jocasta out of it.

* I now see that κάλει is what the manuscripts actually give. I'm not sure why editors prefer καλεῖ. κάλει impf. matches γοᾶτο. The augment is sometimes dropped in tragic messenger speeches, not otherwise.
EDIT. — And I see your text (which is not Lloyd-Jones’) in fact has κάλει not καλεῖ. I was using the OCT, which has καλεῖ. But this makes no difference to your question.

PS Incidentally, out of curiosity I just took a look at Steadman here and my eye caught his note on 1255 φοιτᾷ: “φοιτάει 3rd sg. impf. no augment.” No, impf wd be (ε)φοίτα < (ε)φοίταε. φοιτᾷ is (historic) present. I haven’t looked at any of Steadman’s things before, but if this is anything to go by, he should be used with great caution. But hopefully such mistakes will eventually be put right—the advantage of this form of publication, which I think wholly admirable.

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Re: Soph. OT 1247-50 Optatives in indirect discourse

Post by C. S. Bartholomew »

mwh wrote:
* I now see that κάλει is what the manuscripts actually give. I'm not sure why editors prefer καλεῖ. κάλει impf. matches γοᾶτο. The augment is sometimes dropped in tragic messenger speeches, not otherwise.
EDIT. — And I see your text (which is not Lloyd-Jones’) in fact has κάλει not καλεῖ. I was using the OCT, which has καλεῖ. But this makes no difference to your question.

PS Incidentally, out of curiosity I just took a look at Steadman here and my eye caught his note on 1255 φοιτᾷ: “φοιτάει 3rd sg. impf. no augment.” No, impf wd be (ε)φοίτα < (ε)φοίταε. φοιτᾷ is (historic) present. I haven’t looked at any of Steadman’s things before, but if this is anything to go by, he should be used with great caution. But hopefully such mistakes will eventually be put right—the advantage of this form of publication, which I think wholly admirable.
Thanks for the help on Optatives in indirect discourse. This is a rare idiom in NT Greek, found a few times in Luke's writings.

RE:φοιτᾷ is (historic) present, yeah I caught that one but it slowed me down because I assume that Steadman is most probably correct because I am fuzzy on morphology. I found a note on it in Dawe's commentary which said φοίτα is conjectured and found in some mss, which would be a flat contradiction in NT textual criticism, where a conjectural reading is one found in no witnesses. Dawe also mentions the issue κάλει 1245.


I come across stuff in Steadman once in a while that makes me wonder but that's true of Cooper as well. After reading Cooper's treatment of Optatives in indirect discourse half a dozen times on two separate days it started to make sense. There are many extremely subtle issues in Cooper's analysis which would require a professional expert to evaluate.


offtopic
Cooper's work is all about the index to the primary literature, so it is disappointing how many errors there are in the index. I have resolved about one in three errors and marked the correction in the index. But out of ten visits to the index you will never fail to find one or more errors. This also goes for cross references within the body text which are somewhat easier to correct. Obviously nobody checked these before publishing which is not what you would expect for a reference work of this sort.
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Re: Soph. OT 1247-50 Optatives in indirect discourse

Post by mwh »

Thanks for the help on Optatives in indirect discourse. This is a rare idiom in NT Greek, found a few times in Luke's writings.
Yes, here’s an extract from a post of mine in http://www.textkit.com/greek-latin-foru ... 23&t=63810 (Aug.5):
Luke and only Luke uses the optative in the classical way, in historic sequence. (I am bracketing Acts with the so-called gospel of Luke.) This accounts for all instances of ειη and εχοι, εχοιεν, and for the instances of ποιησαιεν, δυναιμην, -ντο, ευροιεν, ευξαιμην, and one of γένοιτο. He also uses opt.+αν, the "potential" optative (τί αν θελοι twice), uniquely(?) among NT authors. It’s well known that Luke’s Greek is more educated than all other gospel-writers’ (canonical and non-canonical alike). It’s striking that such use is totally alien to Paul (unless we count idiomatic ει τuχοι twice in 1 Cor.) and all the other NT letter-writers.
I don’t vouch for its accuracy (it was the result of a very quick search and sorting), and I’d appreciate correction of this or the rest of that post.
I found a note on it in Dawe's commentary which said φοίτα is conjectured and found in some mss, which would be a flat contradiction in NT textual criticism, where a conjectural reading is one found in no witnesses.
Yes but it’s not necessarily a contradiction. Humanists in the Palaeologan era made conjectures found in contemporary manuscripts. Of course you have to be sure it’s a conjecture rather than an inherited reading. Dawe made an exhaustive study of such manuscripts, and I expect he knows what he’s talking about when he calls it a conjecture. The scholars concerned can often be identified. There are many examples in the Plato tradition too.
—In most ancient manuscripts φοίτα and φοιτᾷ would both be written φοιτα, so it’s really more a matter of interpretation than of “reading” anyway. Same goes for καλει of course.
—Alternatively, it could have been conjectured by a modern scholar and subsequently found to have manuscript attestation. (Editorial etiquette is then to cite the manuscript but not the scholar, which never seems quite fair to me.) That quite often happens with classical texts—not with the NT?—, but that won’t be the case here.

I haven’t made much use of Cooper (though I previously made much use of Kühner) but I too have encountered false references. They’re practically inevitable in a work with so many thousands of references, but maybe not in the numbers you indicate!

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Re: Soph. OT 1247-50 Optatives in indirect discourse

Post by jeidsath »

Soph. OT 1247-50
κάλει τὸν ἤδη Λάϊον πάλαι νεκρόν,
μνήμην παλαιῶν σπερμάτων ἔχουσ', ὑφ' ὧν
θάνοι μὲν αὐτός, τὴν δὲ τίκτουσαν λίποι
τοῖς οἷσιν αὐτοῦ δύστεκνον παιδουργίαν·
γοᾶτο δ' εὐνάς, ἔνθα δύστηνος διπλοῦς
ἐξ ἀνδρὸς ἄνδρα καὶ τέκν' ἐκ τέκνων τέκοι.
I thought that the messenger was casting himself back to the standpoint of the μνήμην. Is there an optative of historical inevitability? "From which event would flow..."
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

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Re: Soph. OT 1247-50 Optatives in indirect discourse

Post by mwh »

OK so we now have a new category of optative.:D Actually, all that is contained in ὑφ’ὧν, which is actually stronger than “from which event would flow,” in that it assigns agency to the σπερματα. It was that sperm that killed Laius and …. In “calling” Laius she voiced her μνημη of those long-ago seeds. The optatives are controlled by καλει (actually or effectively past tense), just as τεκοι in the next sentence is controlled by γοᾶτο. There's no "would," no "inevitability"; they did, that's all.

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Re: Soph. OT 1247-50 Optatives in indirect discourse

Post by C. S. Bartholomew »

jeidsath wrote:
Soph. OT 1247-50
κάλει τὸν ἤδη Λάϊον πάλαι νεκρόν,
μνήμην παλαιῶν σπερμάτων ἔχουσ', ὑφ' ὧν
θάνοι μὲν αὐτός, τὴν δὲ τίκτουσαν λίποι
τοῖς οἷσιν αὐτοῦ δύστεκνον παιδουργίαν·
γοᾶτο δ' εὐνάς, ἔνθα δύστηνος διπλοῦς
ἐξ ἀνδρὸς ἄνδρα καὶ τέκν' ἐκ τέκνων τέκοι.
I thought that the messenger was casting himself back to the standpoint of the μνήμην. Is there an optative of historical inevitability? "From which event would flow..."
You probably will have a hard believing this but I was entertaining similar thoughts, however I hadn't come up with a way to express it. I tried to frame it in english but kept coming up with a different idiom, not the idiom found in our text.
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Re: Soph. OT 1247-50 Optatives in indirect discourse

Post by mwh »

Have you (pl.) been misled by the optatives? As I indicated above, they are purely a function of the narrative’s being in past sequence.
In primary sequence, or in direct speech, they’d be aor.indic. What she's to be imagined as exclaiming is something like
“O Laius, my erstwhile husband, with what bitterness I call to mind the long-ago spermata which caused your death [not “would cause”] and my childbearing … O marriage bed, where in my two-fold wretchedness I gave birth [not “would give birth”] to husband from husband and to children from child.”
It’s a perfectly dreadful outcome of her love-making, to be sure (witness her two δυσ- compounds), but there’s no suggestion here of the historical inevitability of it. Fated or not, it happened. That is the stark reality she is confronted with.

One of the best things ever written on the OT, btw, in my view, is E.R. Dodds’ On misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex. Googling it will turn up a pdf, and it’s reprinted in Harold Bloom’s collection of essays on the play. (Not that I want in any way to promote Bloom.)

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Re: Soph. OT 1247-50 Optatives in indirect discourse

Post by C. S. Bartholomew »

mwh wrote:Have you (pl.) been misled by the optatives? As I indicated above, they are purely a function of the narrative’s being in past sequence.
In primary sequence, or in direct speech, they’d be aor.indic. What she's to be imagined as exclaiming is something like
“O Laius, my erstwhile husband, with what bitterness I call to mind the long-ago spermata which caused your death [not “would cause”] and my childbearing … O marriage bed, where in my two-fold wretchedness I gave birth [not “would give birth”] to husband from husband and to children from child.”
It’s a perfectly dreadful outcome of her love-making, to be sure (witness her two δυσ- compounds), but there’s no suggestion here of the historical inevitability of it. Fated or not, it happened. That is the stark reality she is confronted with.

One of the best things ever written on the OT, btw, in my view, is E.R. Dodds’ On misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex. Googling it will turn up a pdf, and it’s reprinted in Harold Bloom’s collection of essays on the play. (Not that I want in any way to promote Bloom.)
Some of the terminology in Cooper and Steadman is never explained, for example secondary sequence[1] which has to do with a relationship between two clauses where the first clause has an indicative historical (secondary) tense/aspect and the second clause is an optative or whatever. The problem word is sequence. This metalanguage isn't used very much outside of classical philology. I found in the index of a hundred year old NT Grammar, AT Robertson where the readier is redirected to see "indirect discourse."

Wikipedia:
The optative mood is used in a subordinate clause that is governed by a past tense verb (secondary sequence).
Soph. OT 1271 where the optative is FUTURE.

Ἀποσπάσας γὰρ εἱμάτων χρυσηλάτους
περόνας ἀπ' αὐτῆς, αἷσιν ἐξεστέλλετο,
1270
ἄρας ἔπαισεν ἄρθρα τῶν αὑτοῦ κύκλων,
αὐδῶν τοιαῦθ', ὁθούνεκ' οὐκ ὄψοιντό νιν
οὔθ' οἷ' ἔπασχεν οὔθ' ὁποῖ' ἔδρα κακά,
ἀλλ' ἐν σκότῳ τὸ λοιπὸν οὓς μὲν οὐκ ἔδει
ὀψοίαθ', οὓς δ' ἔχρῃζεν οὐ γνωσοίατο.

For he broke off the golden pins from her raiment, with which she was adorned, and lifting up his eyes struck them, uttering such words as these: that they should not see his dread sufferings or his dread actions, but in the future they should see in darkness those they never should have seen, and fail to recognise those he wished to know.
— Lloyd-Jones LCL Harvard 1994
The optative is FUTURE. Cooper (2:53.7.8.A v3 P2395) who cites Soph. OT 1271, states:

"The future optative does not appear before Pindar, and is used primarily in O.O (indirect discourse) of the secondary (historical) sequence to represent a future of implied direct discourse (O.R.)"

[1]Steadman used it in reference to ὄψοιντό.
Last edited by C. S. Bartholomew on Wed Dec 02, 2015 10:58 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Soph. OT 1247-50 Optatives in indirect discourse

Post by Hylander »

ὀψοίαθ', οὓς δ' ἔχρῃζεν οὐ γνωσοίατο -- like ὄψοιντό, these are also future optatives used to represent future indicatives in the historic/past sequence of moods. The forms with -α- instead of -ν- are archaic/Homeric. In fact, the only function of the future optative in ancient Greek is to represent the future tense in the historic sequence.

After a historic/past main verb, verbs in subordinate clauses (e.g., in indirect discourse) that would be indicative or subjunctives in a main clause are sometimes in the corresponding tense of the optative mood, although sometimes they are indicative or subjunctive, as the case may be. This is a basic phenomenon of Greek grammar, and the term "sequence of moods" is traditionally used to refer to it. I think you'll find the term "sequence" in more modern books on ancient Greek grammar, too.
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Re: Soph. OT 1247-50 Optatives in indirect discourse

Post by C. S. Bartholomew »

Hylander wrote:[ This is a basic phenomenon of Greek grammar, and the term "sequence of moods" is traditionally used to refer to it. I think you'll find the term "sequence" in more modern books on ancient Greek grammar, too.

The "basic phenomenon" isn't the issue. The terminology is the issue.


The following reflects the meta language used in Koine grammars :
The optative mood is used in a subordinate clause that is governed by a past tense verb (secondary sequence).

http://www.digplanet.com/wiki/Optative_ ... t_Greek%29
You don't have to be Randall Buth (a generative functionalist, in his own words) to appreciate why the metalanguage highlighted in red above is more useful for the purpose of syntax analysis. The visual metaphor isn't linear. The optative is subordinate (under) the indicative.
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Re: Soph. OT 1247-50 Optatives in indirect discourse

Post by C. S. Bartholomew »

Just for laughs I scanned the archives of b-greek for a discussion of mood sequence (no hits) and secondary sequence. Roughly 20 years ago there was one or two short threads where Attic optative was discussed in contrast to Koine usage and sequence terminology was used.

More recently Barry Hofstetter PhD who is a classical philologist (teaches Latin & Greek) posted:
Classical Greek sometimes uses the optative in secondary sequence (i.e., if the main verb is a past tense) in indirect statements (if the indirect question is part of the reported speech), but even that is optional, and use of the indicative would not have been wrong.
http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/test/foru ... 577#p15851
I wasn't surprised to find Barry using this meta language. He is very much a part of the same framework as some of posters on this forum.

I did a similar search of H W Smyth using the Perseus search engine and came up with nothing. Only on hit on the word sequence which had nothing to do with our topic. My skill level with Perseus searches is marginal so I may not be doing it right.
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Re: Soph. OT 1247-50 Optatives in indirect discourse

Post by Victor »

C. S. Bartholomew wrote:The "basic phenomenon" isn't the issue. The terminology is the issue.
It's a little difficult to see why you object so strongly to such well established and, to many people, adequately descriptive grammatical terminology.
C. S. Bartholomew wrote:I wasn't surprised to find Barry using this meta language. He is very much a part of the same framework as some of posters on this forum.
What framework is that? How is your framework different?

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Re: Soph. OT 1247-50 Optatives in indirect discourse

Post by mwh »

(Written independently of Victor above)

Yes, those who know Greek and Latin use the term “sequence,” and distinguish “primary” from “secondary” (aka “past” or “historic”). If you don’t like the term, you don’t have to use it. Terms are just terms, after all. But unless you understand the syntactical phenomena the term so conveniently targets you’ll never understand ancient Greek syntax. As it is, I’m sorry to say, you’re just taking snide potshots at things you don’t understand.
Last edited by mwh on Thu Dec 03, 2015 5:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Soph. OT 1247-50 Optatives in indirect discourse

Post by Hylander »

If the optative in subordinate clauses is rare in NT Greek, as you say, then is it really surprising that the term "sequence" doesn't show up on the b-Greek site very often--or that textbooks dealing with "New Testament Greek" don't spend much time on this phenomenon? It isn't at all rare in classical Attic Greek, and it's important to understand the rules in order to make sense out of the texts. The messenger speech in OT is a rather simple example, and if they confused you at first glance, maybe you shouldn't be so captious of the superficialities of terminology that "classical philology" has used for a couple of centuries or more. "Sequence" is a convenient term to discuss these rules--the term is not itself a "framework" of analysis, whether or not it lends itself to spatial visualization.
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Re: Soph. OT 1247-50 Optatives in indirect discourse

Post by C. S. Bartholomew »

RE: frameworks

I have been relying on H.W Smyth for a long time up until the acquisition of Guy Cooper. H. W. Smyth doesn't use the term secondary sequence as far as I can detect with Perseus. I have read Smyth's material on the Optative in over and over again. I go back to review it whenever the subject comes up. I have no objection to Smyth's treatment. I have recommend him over and over again to NT Greek students. I consider Smyth indispensable for the study of Koine. Without Smyth you will not be able to read and understand the standard NT reference grammars: ATR, BDF, Zerwick, Winer, Moulton-Turner.

If you think I am being hard Guy Cooper's framework you should read what I have said about certain NT Grammars published in the late 1990s. I omit names since there are students who get very upset about this.
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Re: Soph. OT 1247-50 Optatives in indirect discourse

Post by C. S. Bartholomew »

Soph. OT 1271 where the optative is FUTURE.

Ἀποσπάσας γὰρ εἱμάτων χρυσηλάτους
περόνας ἀπ' αὐτῆς, αἷσιν ἐξεστέλλετο,
1270
ἄρας ἔπαισεν ἄρθρα τῶν αὑτοῦ κύκλων,
αὐδῶν τοιαῦθ', ὁθούνεκ' οὐκ ὄψοιντό νιν
οὔθ' οἷ' ἔπασχεν οὔθ' ὁποῖ' ἔδρα κακά,
ἀλλ' ἐν σκότῳ τὸ λοιπὸν οὓς μὲν οὐκ ἔδει
ὀψοίαθ', οὓς δ' ἔχρῃζεν οὐ γνωσοίατο.

For he broke off the golden pins from her raiment, with which she was adorned, and lifting up his eyes struck them, uttering such words as these: that they should not see his dread sufferings or his dread actions, but in the future they should see in darkness those they never should have seen, and fail to recognise those he wished to know.
— Lloyd-Jones LCL Harvard 1994
Here is what Smyth has to say about this:
1862. Optative (in indirect discourse).—When the optative in indirect discourse represents the indicative after a past tense of a verb of saying or thinking, each tense does denote time (as well as stage of action) relatively to that of the leading verb.

a. The present optative represents the imperfect as well as the present indicative.

b. The future optative (first in Pindar) occurs only in indirect discourse after verbs of saying and thinking, in object clauses after ὅπως, 2212, and in other indirect expressions of thought.
Compare that to Guy Cooper (2:53.7.8.A v3 P2395) who cites Soph. OT 1271, states:
"The future optative does not appear before Pindar, and is used primarily in O.O. of the secondary (historical) sequence to represent a future of implied direct discourse (O.R.)"
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Re: Soph. OT 1247-50 Optatives in indirect discourse

Post by mwh »

Stirling,
Just what is your point? Apparently you don’t like Cooper’s (or anyone’s) reference to secondary sequence. OK, you can get by without the term, as I said above. But you ought to be able to recognize its usefulness, as Cooper and I think all present-day students of ancient Greek do. It serves to unify a whole bunch of otherwise disparate data, and it might save you from having to go back to read Smyth on the optative "over and over again." It’s always seemed a bit perverse of Smyth to avoid the term "sequence." At least he recognizes the value of “primary” and “secondary.”
The optative is FUTURE.
Well, yes. Why do you put “FUTURE” in caps? Do you find something remarkable about it?

Michael

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