Thanks y’all, I agree that there is probably no difference. My question was in fact based on the fact that a Dutch commentator (Van Groningen) hints at a difference in likelihood of the two options. However I only have his commentary, not the text he is using, so maybe his comments reflect the same reasoning Aetos put forth when writing:
I was a little sloppy in that first post, and corrected this mistake a couple posts later:
“In any event, when Randy mentioned that Abicht had the first clause in the indicative (μεταμελήσεται… λάμψονται), I dug a little deeper and saw that in Hude’s Critical Apparatus (I’m using the OCT) μεταμελήσεται was an alternative reading for μεταμελήσῃ.”
μεταμελήσεται should be μεταμελήσει, still indicative, just not middle/passive.
The Wilson OCT reads:
εἰ μὲν μεταμελήσῃ τῷ Καμβύσῃ καὶ ἐπιζητῇ τὸν Κροῖσον, οἱ δὲ ἐκφήναντες αὐτὸν δῶρα λάμψονται ζωάγρια Κροίσου, ἢν δὲ μὴ μεταμέληται μηδὲ ποθῇ μιν, τότε καταχρᾶσθαι.
Actually there is apparently a difference here with the old OCT in that ἐπιζητέῃ and ποθέῃ are contracted (assuming that the text pasted at the beginning of this thread is the old OCT). But otherwise they are the same. I only checked quickly that the tense and mood are the same, and didn’t notice the contraction or lack thereof!
Hi Paul,
That’s the exact same text as in Hude, i.e. μεταμελήσῃ ,ἐπιζητῇ and ποθῇ are the same forms in Hude’s edition(old version of the OCT). I think Bart got his quote from Perseus, which comes from the Loeb (Godley) edition.
That’s correct.
For the record this is what the Cambridge Grammar says as a note under “habitual conditions”
“In poetry and Herodotus, ἄν is sometimes omitted ( εἰ + subj. is used)”.
But it also says what it calls “habitual conditions” is variously named by others. “Note 1: This type of condition is variously called ‘indefinite’, ‘generic’ or ‘general’. ” it seems difficult to fit the present case into that grouping.