What do you say, Don, about the augment on an imperfect indicative
verb--both protasis and apodosis--in a present counter-factual condition as
a time indicator?
For my own part, inasmuch as I have spoken pretty enthusiastically about
those aorists and McKay's interpretation of them (nor do I feel otherwise
now), I feel myself more somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between
the hard line you have laid down in favor of the so-called traditional
view of the "tenses" and the "brave new world" espoused by the adherents of
the aorist as a non-tense. I do not think that the "tradition" is nearly so
solid as has been claimed regarding the augmented aorist indicative as
having clear and unvarying reference to past time. I think it may well be
some time before the dust really settles on the questions of the
Hellenistic aorist and I am certainly eager to see the results of computer
searches of the inscriptions, as you suggest. On the other hand, I would
sort of expect inscriptions of any official sort to be dealing with actual
events, apart from what is in verse form, and verse form is subject to
numerous factors.
As for the argument that Homer is the last refuge of a scoundrel trying to
prove strange theories about the aorist, that, it seems to me is a
double-edged blade. The Homeric texts may be centuries earlier than even
classical Attic and still earlier than the Koine of the NT, but there was
no time in antiquity that Homer was not read and recited aloud and listened
to by Greek-speaking peoples. Consequently the echoes of Homer in Greek of
all periods are like the echoes of Shakespeare and the King James Bible in
the English of all periods since the 16th century. Without pre-judging the
matter, I'd be curious about the use of aorists in Greek choral lyric,
including the choruses of Greek tragedy and Greek comedy, and also in the
whole epigrammatic tradition from Archilochus up to the end of antiquity.
And yes, I know that there are significant generic differences between
poetry and prose, but nevertheless poetry and prose impact upon each other
considerably, and as Edgar Krentz nicely called attention this morning,
there's a dactylic hexameter not normally recognized as such in James 1:17.
If you would, Don, I'd very much like the data on that book on the grammar
of Greek inscriptions; it does sound interesting. I'm also looking forward
to the latest version of Prometheus. Whatever we may disagree on, you make
me proud to be a Mac-user in these days of Apple's low tide.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/