What Andrew was reading was a 2002 revision of an 1997 original formulation. I've since come to understand a lot more about verbs like πάσχειν than I did back then (I still find it a bit uncanny).Andrew Chapman wrote:Just the other day, I came across Carl Conrad's comments on πάσχω, in his 'New observations on voice in the ancient Greek verb', p.3:Stirling Bartholomew wrote: Perhaps the late R. Decker ThD. was thinking about semantic roles agent/patient or experiencer rather than a grammatical direct object. ὑμᾶς with παθόντας would experience. The subject is affected placing it in a semantic role similar but not identical to the direct object of a transitive verb.Andrew.. some verbs with "active" morphoparadigms may even bear an authentic passive sense; for example, ... the usage of πάσχω is almost uncanny in that it can take a direct object and an agent construction and bear passive sense so that δεινὰ ὑπὸ τῶν ἐχθρῶν μου ἔπαθον = "I was made to suffer terrible things by my enemies;”
The root appears in the three grades (E-, O- and zero-): πενθ/πονθ/παθ. The present tense πάσχειν (παθ-σκ-ειν) is built on the zero-grade stem παθ with the -σκ- "inceptive" formative element that ordinarily indicates the inception of a process, e.g. γινώσκειν "become acquainted with', γηράσκειν "grow old", διδάσκειν "give instruction". The future tense πενθ-σ-ε-σθαι is built upon the E-grade πενθ, while the perfect πεπονθέναι is built upon the O-grade πονθ.
The verb πάσχειν works like several other Greek verbs of experience (e.g. βλέπειν, ἀκούειν, αἰσθάνεσθαι, θεᾶσθαι) the subject of which has the semantic role of experiencer while the complement, whether accusative or genitive, has the semantic role of source or stimulus. What's curious about this construction is that it's similar to the construction of a transitive verb with a subject that is an agent and an object that is a patient. Here the subject is not ordinarily an agent (although he or she may be aware and submissive to what's being done) but an experiencer -- or even, with this verb more than any other, a patient -- or an undergoer.
In essence this verb is a subject-affected verb, although only its future form πείσεσθαι displays middle-marking. It is thus like βλέπειν, ἀκούειν, and ὁρᾶν a verb found in everyday regular use in the "default" voice-form that we call "active" voice (probably for the reason that most verbs found in the "active" voice do function transitively to indicate an action performed by a subject-agent upon an object-patient producing some affect upon that object-patient. The curious thing about it is that it behaves like a transitive verb and at the same time takes an agent construction, indicating that the subject is being acted upon by an external agent.