[B-Greek] Tense of participles

Bert de Haan b_dehaan at sympatico.ca
Wed May 30 21:16:53 EDT 2007


I have come to the understanding that the Greek verb tenses do not indicate 
time outside of the indicative.
Years ago there was a discussion on B-Greek about the error on thinking that 
an aorist subjunctive could indicate an inceptive aorist.
For review I was going through a book about Homeric Greek by Clyde Pharr (I 
know there is quite a difference between Homeric and Koine but I think that 
this is still relevant.)
There I found a comment about two participles in Iliad 1:331.  I will quote 
lines 331 and 332;
TW MEN TARBHSANTE KAI AIDOMENW BASILHA
STHTHN, OUDE TI MIN PROSEQWNEON OUD' EREONTO
Pharr added a footnote about the aorist participle TARBHSANTE and the 
present participle AIDOMENW.  He wrote; "Observe the difference in tense of 
the two participles; the first denotes the confusion into which they were 
thrown (1081) at the sight of Achilles; the other indicates their customary 
feeling of reverence toward him."
The (1081) refers to a paragraph in this book about the ingressive aorist.  
Is this a valid observation (or was it valid for Greed of that era?)

When I first went through this I translated this as follows;
"Those two became frightened and they revered the chief and stood still (or, 
and stood in reverence to the chief)
They neither spoke a  thing nor questioned him."

Without this footnote, now I would probably take it to mean something like; 
"Those two, being frightened/having become frightened , and revering the 
chief, stood still...." (maybe better; "and in reverence to the chief they 
stood still...)

There is little difference in the meaning of the two "versions" but I am 
wondering about the validity of Pharr's reasoning.
Thank you.
Bert de Haan.





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