[B-Greek] Jussive Dative?

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Wed Mar 19 19:20:01 EDT 2008


On Mar 19, 2008, at 6:28 PM, Edgar Foster wrote:

> Dear B-Greekers,
>
> I've been translating certain books of the Iliad with
> some colleagues of mine and we use Leaf's commentary
> to help us understand what transpiring in certain
> parts of the Iliad. While translating book 9 of the
> Iliad, we ran across some terminology in Leaf that had
> us befuddled. Leaf talks about a "jussive dative," if
> I am not mistaken. While his explanation of what a
> jussive dative is supposed to be, I would like to ask
> if anyone else on the list has run across this
> terminology before. I'm sorry that I do not have the
> exact quote, but I can supply it later. I tried to
> access Leaf's commentary through Perseus, but the site
> gave me problems. I guess my questions are what is a
> jussive dative and is this standard terminology in
> Greek studies? I've tried finding this nomenclature in
> other grammars and might have just overlooked it.

For what it's worth, I've never seen or heard the term before. In  
Smyth §1464 I note a category of verbs that take the dative as a  
direct complement: "To obey, serve, pardon, trust, advise, command,  
etc. §1465 notes alternative verbs of this sort more likely to take an  
accusative, others more likely to take a genitive. In the GNT we  
commonly enough find a dative with LEGW, EPITASSW, KTL. with an  
infinitive, but it wouldn't occur to me to describe this usage as a  
"jussive dative." Not even Wallace has such a category (I can't even  
find an "aporetic" dative in Wallace).

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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