I am puzzled by the imperfect ἐνεδύετο in a series of actions, each following immediately on the preceding. Xenophon could have used an aorist here but didn’t.
I don’t expect ancient Greek aspect to behave like Russian, but it is interesting to compare. I have a translation of the Anabasis (Maksimova M. I., 2003) Vekhi and there it is:
Кир, сойдя с колесницы, надел панцырь, сел на коня, взял в руки копья
Russian demands perfective aspect in a series like this. If the imperfective were to be used meaning “while he was still putting on” there would need to be a conjunction.
I don’t want to think this is just arbitrary. What’s going on?
It’s a bit strange, I agree. Perhaps the idea is that ἐνεδύετο represents an action that’s not still not quite over before ἀναβὰς ἐπὶ τὸν ἵππον τὰ παλτὰ εἰς τὰς χεῖρας ἔλαβε takes over – that Cyrus is in such a hurry that he hasn’t quite finished putting on his breastplate before he leaps on his horse and takes his spear? I imagine him leaping from his chariot, starting to put on his breastplate, leaping on his horse, taking his spear and then finishing tying up the straps of his breastplate on horseback.
As you say, he could have used an aorist but didn’t. This way better captures the nature of the various actions, and is accordingly more expressive. The use of ἐνεδύετο is comparable to the use of παρήγγελλεν later in the sentence, and indeed to the following ἐξοπλίζεσθαι καὶ καθίστασθαι. All these are actions presented as taking time—perhaps not much, but some. They were put in train; we’re free to assume they were carried through to completion, but that’s not stated (unlike with the aorists).
“He leapt from his chariot and proceeded to put on his breastplate” might do as a translation, or “Jumping down from the chariot he set about putting on his breastplate.” Such translations rather overdo the force of the imperfect (better would be simply “he put on”), but if you want to render the force of it, that’s how you can do it. Fastening on a breastplate, like buttoning up a shirt, is a complex process, not accomplished in a single action..
Likewise with παρήγγελλεν and ἐξοπλίζεσθαι καὶ καθίστασθαi …, e.g. “he proceeded to tell them to set about arming themselves and each man to set about taking up his own proper place.”
So the tenses in the Greek are meaningful, and not arbitrary. Imperfective tenses (impf. and pres.) are always semantically different from aorist (a perfective tense). Naturally there are occasions, as here, when impf. and aor. would each make sense, but each a different sense.
EDIT: As you well know, I see (as of course does Paul).
Thanks to you both for your comments. I am just beginning to grasp how ancient Greek works and you have helped me a step along the way. I’m still reluctant to follow, however, if you are saying that the use of aorist versus imperfect depends on the nature of the action, on whether it can be accomplished in one go. Surely it’s about how the action is presented in context, how it’s put in perspective. That’s the reason for the name “aspect” as I understand it.
Telling point about the rest of the verb forms in Xenophon’s sentence: παρήγγελλεν, ἐξοπλίζεσθαι, καθίστασθαι. All Greek “imperfectives” (imperfect tense and present infinitives), all translated into Russian as perfectives. [For reference, Russian distinguishes imperfective and perfective in conditionals, imperatives, infinitives, and two of its three tenses (past and future). Present tense can only be imperfective. No finite verb form or infinitive is unmarked for aspect in Russian.]
Obviously, there are places in ancient Greek where the choice of aspect will make a semantic or stylistic difference. There are probably also places, as in Russian, where there is really no difference, or one so slight that native speakers struggle to explain what it is, and then don’t agree in their explanations. I wonder if there would be places where the use of one or the other aspect would be outright wrong. Where a barbarian could not plead that he was trying to present the action in a different light but would be told flatly that he had used the wrong aspect. “What you said isn’t Greek.”
We’re on the same page I think. As we’ve both said, it’s a matter of how a given action is presented—or how it’s envisioned, how it’s looked at or thought of (first by the writer or speaker, then by a competent reader or hearer). In context, necessarily.
Greek grammars in English were slow to latch on to “aspect” (I think of it rightly or wrongly as being German first) and had difficulty explaining what it was, just as they were slow to come to terms with linguistics as a whole. But of course it’s an essential concept, and the term is now indispensable.
One and the same action—getting dressed, for instance—can be viewed from different aspects, or from either of the aspects reflected in the language, and the tense used indicates which. In Greek I’d say the difference between imperfect and aorist, however slight, is always operative and always a semantic one. I suspect the same is true of Russian, regardless of the grammatical differences between the two languages. (Latin is much more impoverished, a language devoid of such subtlety.) If native speakers can struggle to explain the difference in meaning between one tense and another, that doesn’t mean there isn’t any. That’s what we have linguists for.