Studies in Pindaric Syntax. 9781463221409

Citation preview

Studies in Pindaric Syntax.

A n a l e c t a Gorgiana

310 Series Editor George Kiraz

Analecta Gorgiana is a collection of long essays and

short

monographs which are consistently cited by modern scholars but previously difficult to find because of their original appearance in obscure publications. Carefully selected by a team of scholars based on their relevance to modern scholarship, these essays can now be fully utili2ed by scholars and proudly owned by libraries.

Studies in Pindaric Syntax.

Basil Gildersleeve

l gorgias press 2009

Gorgias Press LLC, 180 Centennial Ave., Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2009 by Gorgias Press LLC Originally published in All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2009

1

ISBN 978-1-60724-542-1

ISSN 1935-6854

Extract from The A-merican Journal of Philology, vols. 3 & 4 (1882;1883).

Printed in the LTnited States of America

IV.—STUDIES IN P I N D A R I C SYNTAX. I . — T H E CONDITIONAL S E N T E N C E IN P I N D A R .

In this study of the conditional sentence in Pindar, no attempt will be made to discuss at length the general subject of the hypothetical period. While there is much less tendency to cast-iron rule, and the genesis of the hypothesis has been sought with a large measure of success in the original parataxis, yet scholars still hold, and rightly hold, to certain leading types of conditional sentences. W e are still obliged to use formulae that are left over from earlier methods. Transparent form and evident etymology would relieve us of many syntactical problems, such, for instance, as torment us in the theory of the cases. And so a convincing resolution of d would be a great gain for the study of the hypothetical sentence. Curtius's parallelism with ' wenn' may please the Germans, the parallelism with ' so' would seem to commend itself to German and English alike; but no one is thoroughly satisfied with these. Lange, it is true, has given the particle a happy name \ « is an adhibitive as firj is a prohibitive. 'Adhibitive ' will serve, but only because it is so vague. "Av and have not yet come to rest. Every now and then some one arises who finds a vital distinction between them and promulgates a yard-long definition for these perplexing particles ; others are content to decline any definition and simply note how they behave in combination. But, while much remains unsettled, the lines of research are clearly marked; and it is not time wasted to ascertain the forms in which such a genius as Pindar has cast his suppositions. Those who deny or despise the literary result will at least appreciate the grammatical statistic or the historic growth. For convenience' sake the four leading forms of the conditional will be designated as ' logical,' ' anticipatory,' ' ideal,' and ' unreal.' ' Logical' is an old designation ; ' unreal' in the form irrealis for the condition ' contrary to fact' has become very popular among the Germans of late. The ' ideal' is sometimes called the ' potential.' The eav conditional lacks a distinctive name, and I have designated it as the ' anticipatory' conditional, for reasons to be assigned below.

STUDIES

IN

PINDARIC

SYNTAX.

435

T h e s e four forms are crystallizations from a m u c h larger number, just as the modern E n g l i s h hypothesis in its p o v e r t y exhibits a striking contrast to the floating wealth of the S h a k e s p e a r e a n condition. In Pindar w e find that the crystallization has been substantially effected, that his feeling of the conditional is essentially at one with that of the standard l a n g u a g e . O n l y at one remarkable point does he show the influence of the earlier stage. 1. i . T h e L o g i c a l Condition states the elements in question. It is used of that which can be b r o u g h t to the standard of f a c t ; but that standard m a y be for or against the truth of the postulate. All that the logical condition asserts is the inexorable connexion oi the two m e m b e r s of the sentence. It is the favorite condition in argument. It is the favorite condition w h e n one wishes to be or seem fair, the favorite condition w h e n one is sure of the premiss. S o it is often a pro forma condition, just as si quidem approaches quia ; but so l o n g as the negative continues to be ¡it), the conditional and the causal d o not coincide. It is little used in epic poetry, much in dramatic, m u c h in lyric. I h a v e elsewhere shown h o w clearly it is differentiated in one of its forms, w. fut. ind., from ¿dv w. the subj. 1 In prose it is l a r g e l y argumentative or semi-causal. 3 2. T h e L o g i c a l Condition, like e v e r y other form of the conditional sentence, is particular or generic according to the character of the apodosis. H e n c e , w h e n it has its apodosis in the present it has a double meaning, which adapts it admirably to personal argument, especially w h e n the form d ™ is used, w h i c h m a y point either to a definite or to an indefinite person. B u t as the e'dv conditional with a present indicative apodosis is regularly generic, it is not without reason that the ¿dv form should be preferred when distinctly generic action is to be expressed. Just as the conative element is not so distinct in the present as in the imperfect, s i m p l y because the present has the double function of a present of continuance (durative present) and a present of attainment (aoristic present), so the ¿dv conditional is more distinctly the generic conditional. A l l this is true of the crystallized l a n g u a g e of prose. W h e n w e turn to p o e t r y we find 1

O n tl w i t h t h e f u t . i n d . a n d iav w i t h t h e s u b j . in t h e T r a g i c P o e t s ( T r a n s a c -

t i o n s o f t h e A m e r i c a n P h i l o l o g i c a l A s s o c i a t i o n , 1876), f r o m w h i c h p a p e r s u c h p h r a s e s as m a y s u i t the p r e s e n t p u r p o s e w i l l b e b o r r o w e d . 3

I n a r e c e n t e d i t i o n of X e n o p h o n ' s A n a b a s i s , b y M r . P r e t o r , t h e e d i t o r , c o m -

m e n t i n g on 4 , 1 , e x c l u d e s the logical condition from the c h i e f forms of the cond i t i o n a l p r o p o s i t i o n , w h i c h the b e g i n n e r is r e m i n d e d ' to m a s t e r o n c e f o r a l l . ' A n e d i t o r o f P i n d a r c o u l d n o t a f f o r d to t r e a t the l o g i c a l c o n d i t i o n so c a v a l i e r l y .

436

AMERICAN

JOURNAL

OF

PHILOLOGY.

that Homer prefers the subjunctive for generic relations, and in this respect Pindar follows him. This brings us to II. The Anticipatory Condition, which is the name I have given to what is also called the Idv condition. For this form of the condition we want a word that will harmonize present and future. Anticipation is not expectation, though it is loosely used for expectation. Anticipation treats the future as if it were a present, and so we find an analogue for the protasis of this form in the imperative, which gives us a convenient paratactic representative, although it really represents historically and adequately only el with the subj., not (dv with the subj. The division of the anticipatory sentence into particular and generic was first made by Baumlein (1846). 1 The anticipatory condition is particular or generic according to the character of the apodosis (see my Latin Gr. §596 note), just as any other conditional sentence. Only in Greek the present indicative is regularly generic when associated with ¿dv in the protasis, as thepraesenspropheticum is so rare as not to count. If we look at the anticipatory sentence historically we shall see that it is a fusion of at least two Homeric sets, el with the subjunctive, which seems to have been the original generic, and the e'L «¡, ijv set, which seems to have been an original particular. In Attic poetry el with the subjunctive is occasionally found with a different tone from the older e! with the subjunctive, and with a decided leaning to the effect of the future indicative or, in the aorist, to the Lat. si with fut. perf. of the older period. In Pindar the generic el with the subjunctive alone is used. Pindar does not object to os av or orav, but there is no el av, nor et KH. III. The Ideal Condition seetns to have been developed out of the wish, just as the anticipatory was developed out of the demand. Perhaps ' ideal' is not a very good word, but it may serve to reconcile the two notions of desire and thought. In the ideal condition there is still discernible the old optative notion. There is often a 1 See Gr. Modi, s. 208, and School Grammar (first ed. 1856) dearly enough § § 606, 615, 619. I owed my first acquaintance with Baumlein's Griech. Modi to my teacher, Prof. Franz, of Berlin, who gave us, in his Schola Graeca (1850), the leading principles of Baumlein's book in Greek, and, while the world has doubtless moved beyond Baumlein, still I consider myself to owe a debt to an author who first gave an impulse to my grammatical studies. The distinction, the importance of which Baumlein himself did not recognize fully, has passed into the school grammars such as Koch's (§ 114), and is familiar to all English-speaking Hellenists through the grammatical works of Professor Goodwin, who came to his results independently.

STUDIES

IN PINDARIC

SYNTAX.

437

wish for or against. A s you may use an imperative in irony, so you may use an optative of what you dread. It is the general condition of illustration. It is the condition of fancy, 1 and the word ' fancy ' itself in its shifting significance may enable us to understand the Greek optative. The great riddle of the optative remains to be solved—the relation which it bears to the subjunctive, a relation so intimate that it is said to stand for the subjunctive after historical tenses. The oratio obliqua optative for the indicative is a comparatively late growth. It came in through the interrogative sentence, thanks to a weakening of the feeling for the moods. But the ' optative for the subjunctive ' after historical tenses is familiar enough in the earliest period. Are we to accept Kühner's view and call the optative the subjunctive of the historical tenses in superficial conformity with the peculiar condition of the moods in Latin? Few would accept that now. Or are we to recognize a peculiar propriety in this shifting of demand for the future to dream for the past ?a A s in the anticipatory, so in the ideal condition, we may have the classification into particular and generic. The generic optative after past tenses corresponds to the generic subjunctive after principal tenses. It was a mistake to call this optative a ' frequentative ' optative, as if it were fundamentally different from the generic subjunctive. In both instances the frequentative idea lay in the notion of rule contained in the leading verb. IV. The Unreal Condition, 'the hypothesis contrary to fact,' seems to be related to the hopeless wish, as the ideal condition to the wish pure and simple. Even Lange in his admirable treatise on el with the optative has given himself the trouble of discriminating between the possibilities and impossibilities of the action of the optative. The only impossibility that language recognizes here is futurelessness. A wish may be madly impossible, but if it belongs to the domain of the future it is optative. Now the hopeless wish is hopeless because it is futureless ; and while it may seem strange to turn the familiar statement round and derive the unreal condition from the hopeless wish rather than the hopeless wish from an incomplete unreal condition, be it remembered that the shifting of the point of view, the dramatic change of persons, is of the essence of 1 ' M o o d of the i m a g i n a t i o n ' is what L a n g e prefers, and ' i m a g i n a t i o n ' covers a great d e a l ; but the imagination is made to work by hope and fear. 2 D e l b r ü c k calls this ' Modusverschiebung,' ' eine Errungenschaft des G r i e c h ischen.' ( C o n j . u. Opt. s. 83.)

438

AMERICAN

JOURNAL

OF

PHILOLOGY.

the situation. In the logical condition, in the anticipatory, opposing propositions are made in rapid succession. There is no reason why the wish should have been the wish of the speaker. T h e universe is full of wishes and wishers. These four chief forms of the conditional sentence are all represented in Pindar, the logical, the anticipatory, the ideal, and unreal. In Pindar the Logical Conditions far outnumber, indeed almost double, all the others put together. It is largely a mere pro forma condition. Occasionally generic, it almost always has in view a particular illustration of the principle involved. The ns of the ¿1 ne is the victor, the victor's enemy, the victor's encomiast, and doubtless, sometimes, when it seems to us indefinite, it had a special point. This is part of the plastic character of the Pindaric style. His prepositions put before us, as the prepositions of no other Greek poet, the actual place, and so his suppositions are taken largely from concrete instances. Sometimes the reality which he has before him is so fair that it seems for a moment a dream, and he passes over into the optative (I 4 (5), 15; cf. O 6, 4), but his delight is in the sharp, clear-cut indicative. The logical condition may be generic, but it must be remembered that the generic rose out of the individual. So the generic article presents us with the model individual. So the gnomic aorist brings up a typical act of the past, which, being typical, is good for all time. Pindar goes back to the original conception. Under his generic indicative we feel the individual. The purely generic with him takes the subjunctive, but he does not use it much. True, there is moralizing enough, else Pindar were not Greek, but it is moralizing with sharp, personal application. There is a smile, a frown, a flout, under almost every tW of the logical condition. But it would be a mistake to narrow this form to the particular. The very delight of it is the double edge, the transparent riddle. T o specify. Of 48 logical conditions in Pindar, 19 refer to the victor either in terms, O 6,77 ; P 1,87. 90; 3,80; N 2 , 6 ; 3,19; 4,79; or with more reserve under cover of a rW or the like, O 2, 62; 5, 23 ; 11 (10), 5 ; 14, 7 ; P 3 . 8 ° - 103; n , 5 5 ; 12,28; N 11, 13; I 3(4), 1 ; 4 (5), 22 ; 5-(6), 10: 8 refer to the poet or his Muse expressly, O 1, 3. 19; 8, 55; 9, 26; P 11, 4 1 ; N 7, 69. 75; 9, 28; to an enemy three, P 2, 58 ; 8, 73; I 1, 66. Adjuration takes the logical form as a matter of course, O 1, 77 ; I 5 (6), 42 ; and akin is «' = ] nur bei der Voraussetzung der Verwirklichung einzelner Fälle, nicht aber bei allgemeinen Annahmen zu gebrauchen scheint, accepts the generic for ore icev, Z 225, 1? 242, \ 21 8, v 180, ömrdre kev A 40, 7 237, or' äv B 397, I 101, A 18, ¿iQ ot' ät> K 5, A 269, M 41 [?], 0 80, I 70, P 520, e 394, k 410 [? comp. M 41], X 468, 1p 233, ottttot'' civ 0 209, A 17. But at this point Bäumlein gives up the analysis into particular and generic as unessential and as not always practicable. Of the other examples which he gives sir' av p 320, 323 would be considered by most persons generic, and so iirsi. ice B475, # 554 and inrjv 553, /c 41 r, a 192. Under the relative he gives for bg ne A 139, 218, B 231, 346, 367, 391, T 354, A 306, Z 228, ß i:S, • KaL • • • IV

T'IV

K

paprvprjijal k(v TroXir. 31. I 5 ( 6 ) , 7 2 : (¡>a'Lrls vlv . . . iippev Nai-tav . . . aKovav. 32. I 7 ( 8 ) , 4 5 • TPO-FOV \voi KCV %akivbv V(j) fjpaii irapdevias* 3 3 . F r . I X , 3, 2 : fV /mI'CO Kfv eirj . . . yXvKcpov Kivrpov. A s to M o o d and T e n s e : Indie. Imperf. 9 A o r . 6, 1 0 , i i , 1 2 , 1 4 , 20, 24,427 O p t . Pres. 1, 4, 22, 2 3 , 26, 29, 32, 3 3 Aor." 3, 5, 7, 8, 1 6 , 18, 2 1 , 25, 28, 30, 3 1 Subj. Aor. 15, 1 9 (schol.) Inf. Pres. 1 7 Aor. 1 3

1 8 8 11 2 1 1

Fut. 2

1

33 A s to C h a r a c t e r : T h e classincation o f these e x a m p l e s is not easy. M o s t o f them occur in conditional c o m p l e x e s . S o 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 1 1 , 1 2 , 1 3 , 1 4 , 16, 1 8 , 20, 2 1 , 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29. F e w o f them are regularly formulated ; for t h o u g h Pindar is familiar with the formula, h e still retains the sense o f the origin. Clearly formulated are 2, 3, 6, 1 3 , 24, 25, 26, 29, but s o m e are loose-jointed—a wish followed at a distance b y a thought, 7, 10, 1 1 , 1 2 , 1 4 , 2 0 — o n e , 16, involves a wish, t h e rest have t h e protasis involved in a participle, 5, 1 8 , 2 1 , 22, 2 7 , 28, or a demonstrative 1 7 , or a modifier as oiv rlv 8. T h e r e is one H o m e r i c ol « v with the subj. as an exact future 1 5 , one g e n e r i c relative if we trust the scholia 1 9 . T h e rest o f the thirty-three a r e potentials and there is nothing gained b y forcing them into t h e conditional formula. S o 1, 4, 9, 23, 30, 3 1 , 3 2 , 3 3 . I t may be worth 1

It may be well to add that 4TAL/IEV (N 7, 87), (P 10, 61, comp. X 4, 72), are counted as aorists.

¡PAIN

(I 5 (6), 72), and

BX^OL

STUDIES

IN PINDARIC

SYNTAX.

451

noticing that there is no negative expressed except 25 (N 7, 25), but a negative is implied I ( O I , 84), 3 (O 6, 6). Formulated conditionals Half formulated Involved R e l a t i v e conditional (generic) W i t h subj. as exact future Potential

8 6 9 1 1 8

33 "Av occurs : 1 . O 2, 18 : ¿TroLTjTov ovff av %povos . . . Suvairo 0épev . . . rikos. 2. O 2, 20 : \à6a 8è 77 Ótfilli IT in ci ili11 filli'l yet!) ir l'i v. 3. O 2, I IO : ris àv ibpuiriu ivvairo. 4. O 6, 67 : eur av . . . 'HpaKXtrjs . . . Krlcrr]. 5. O *J, 42 : its àv OLII KTUTIUCL'. 6. O 8, 62 : KelVa 8é KeiVOS CIV etTTOt j epya TtepaiTepOV «XX(OV. 7. O 9, 30 : Trcòf av . . . 'HpaxXerjs OKUTIAQP rivale. 8. O 13> 46 • àv elSeirjv Xéyeiv. 9. O 1 3 , IO3 : TOT av 106 : CUT àv . . . em/Spta-i? (Mommsen after the schol.), eVi.SptVai? «rijrai ( B e r g k ) . 1 2 . P 4 , 7 6 : eur av . . . po\T). 1 3 . P 5, 65 : 8ISaarl re Moìaav ois àv e'diAr/. 1 4 . P 9. 1 1 9 : C177C i) ev /iin ODI^ iiiriiyiaOal, os àv irpatros Sopàtv | apepi POL \^(ii(Tcii_ TTtTrXoit. 1 5 . P IO, 23 vpvrjros ovros avrjp yh:iTill oocpots, off av . . . rà fiiyil'T1 atd\ 68 : paQiiv 8é TIS àv c'pci. 1 9 . N 7, 8q : ei avrò /cai dtòs av cx