Hello, I’ve been learning the Perfect Middle and had a question regarding the verb θάπτω. I noticed the 3rd person plural is τεθάπαται. I can’t seem to find an explanation as to why this formation occurs–my textbook only discusses the changes consonants undergo which yield another consonant and I don’t understand why the alpha appears in the ending here.
Can someone please help me understand what I’m missing?
THANKS
Smyth might give the answer (Greek grammar : Smyth, Herbert Weir, 1857-1937 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive)
§465 f:
Stem ending in a Consonant + νται > Stem Ending in Consonant + αται.
If you want to know more about this, you could have a look at these grammars (in German!)
Schwyzer, I 671 § 3
Kühner-Blass. II 74ff.
Or you could read Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, where the messenger recounts Oedipus’ self-blinding after Jocasta’s suicide:
ὁ δ᾽ ὡς ὁρᾷ νιν, δεινὰ βρυχηθεὶς τάλας
χαλᾷ κρεμαστὴν ἀρτάνην. ἐπεὶ δὲ γῇ
ἔκειτο τλήμων, δεινὰ δ᾽ ἦν τἀνθένδ᾽ ὁρᾶν.
ἀποσπάσας γὰρ εἱμάτων χρυσηλάτους
περόνας ἀπ᾽ αὐτῆς, αἷσιν ἐξεστέλλετο,
ἄρας ἔπαισεν ἄρθρα τῶν αὑτοῦ κύκλων,
αὐδῶν τοιαῦθ᾽, ὁθούνεκ᾽ οὐκ ὄψοιντό νιν
οὔθ᾽ οἷ᾽ ἔπασχεν οὔθ᾽ ὁποῖ᾽ ἔδρα κακά,
ἀλλ᾽ ἐν σκότῳ τὸ λοιπὸν οὓς μὲν οὐκ ἔδει
ὀψοίαθ᾽, οὓς δ᾽ ἔχρῃζεν οὐ γνωσοίατο. (1265-1274)
Here we have three future optatives in reported speech. The two -ατο endings in 1274, ὀψοίατο (elided) and γνωσοίατο, are grammatical equivalents of the -ντο ending of ὄψοιντο in 1271, differing both metrically and stylistically.
I have a query concerning the Sophoclean passage I quoted above. The accepted text at 1271 is αὐδῶν τοιαῦθ’, ὁθούνεκ᾽ οὐκ ὄψοιντό νιν, but it’s quite unclear what νιν refers to (Oedipus himself, presumably), and it seems to me to be worse than unwanted, given the pair of οὔτε clauses that follows. I suspect that οψοιατο (the -ατο 3 pl. form used below at 1274) was here misread as οψοιντο, the more familiar form. There’s only a single letter’s difference, and Ν and Α can be easily confused. Then νιν will have been added for the sake of the meter.
Thoughts?
I stumbled a bit over νιν, too, and your suggestion makes sense to me. The only variant reported in the OCT is ὄψοιτο, which is clearly wrong. But can νιν be defended as the “I know thee who thou art” idiom? And copyists must have been aware of the -ατο form that appears twice three lines later. It does seem strange, however, that the -ατο and -ντο forms would coexist in such close proximity.
Yes it can be defended as prolepsis, and that could well be right. At this date the two forms will probably have been readily interchangeable (and Attic speakers might normally have been scarcely aware of the difference). So I think I’d best withdraw the suggestion.