Addison Hogue’s The Irregular Verbs of Attic Prose: their forms, prominent meanings, and important compounds; together with lists of related words and English derivatives.
In Part I Hogue leads the reader through the principal parts of regular verbs patiently and skilfully, explaining how to form them, what use to make of them, and offering novel insights along the way such as reminding you that ēporēsa must be the aorist of an epsilon contract, and not an alpha contract (remember the eri rule!).
In 15 pages Hogue reinforces everything you’ve ever learned about regular verbs, teaches you to think about them more clearly, and prepares you to dive into the real meat of the book: the irregular verbs.
He has limited himself to the most common verbs encountered in Attic prose and reassures that we don’t need anything more extensive, and I think he’s right. The rarer verbs are frankly too rare to memorize and the variants of dialect forms, as Hogue notes, will not prove troublesome once the Attic forms are mastered.
Part II begins with a brief set of preliminary remarks on the logic of the entries to follow which is packed with more good sense about how to think about verbs. Hogue then dives right in to the verbs, and each entry gives the headword, a brief definition, the principal parts and any other forms of interest. This is followed by a series of notes which include points on inflection, usage, and derivative words.
One of the most impressive features is the treatment of compounds. How many times have you been stumped by compounds of histēmi? Here they’re all laid out with clear explanations of all uses and shades of meaning.
