John W. wrote:pster wrote:The pluperfect would refer to my eagerness to buy my first car: pster EAGER-PLUPERF to buy a car. I became eager in the more distant past and remained eager for a period after that, ie until I bought the car.
So in your Thucydides passage, the eagerness came to an end at some point in the past before Thucydides put his account down. So the perfect wouldn't be correct.
But at the time to which he refers - i.e. the period leading up to the dispatch of the Sicilian expedition - the Athenians were still eager.
First off, I repeat my caveat that I am not the best person for this job. You have me a bit confused myself. But let me try. The pluperfect is different from the perfect in that it refers to a state that has a beginning and an end. The perfect only refers to a state that has a beginning. And when we use the pluperfect, we are always referring to the time when the state obtains, so of course the Athenians were eager--that's what we're talking about! The substance is really the state coming into existence and existing. The ending is somewhat secondary.
Except when it comes to distinguishing it from the perfect, when it is the main distinguishing feature.
John W. wrote:
I'm not sure that the pluperfect derives from the fact that the eagerness had ended before Thucydides wrote, since that is true of nearly all the events he describes, and the great majority aren't in the pluperfect.
Yes, but this isn't an event we are talking about. It is a state with a beginning and an end. Mental states, especially desires and intentions, are paradigmatic. It can be used for other things in the world that have a switched on/switched off aspect, but it doesn't fit those other things as well. Can you think of another thing that we think of as being in a state in ancient Greece? A frozen lake. Maybe unrest in a city.
John W. wrote:
I had in mind those verbs (see e.g. Smyth 1952 a; rather more detailed is Goodwin, Moods and Tenses, sect. 49) whose perfect is effectively a present, and whose pluperfect therefore equates to an imperfect. Unfortunately I can't see any suggestion that ὁρμάω falls into this category.
I am pretty sure it is not in that category. In those cases, you usually don't even have a present tense to talk about.
I may be wrong. I sometimes wonder why we don't see it more often. I'm on the other computer at the moment but if you go to the Belgian site and do a reverse word look up, you can search for pluperfect endings and see just how often he does use it.