is ἀξιώσει a verb or a noun in the following sentence?:
What is the syntax here? It looks to me like a 3rd person aorist subjunctive but the Thucydides lexicon says it is a noun.
I think it is future indicative active of ἀξιόω. If it were aorist subjunctive, it would be
ἀξιώσῃ. It’s the verb of the protasis introduced by εἰ.
Yes it’s future indic. of the verb (aor.subj. -σῃ would be ungrammatical, and the noun wouldn’t make sense). He said it was outrageous (δεινὸν εἶναι) if he were even now to expect (εἰ … καὶ νῦν ἀξιώσει) to control all the land …. It could have been optative, since we’re in past sequence (ἔφη), but the indicative is more vivid.
(There’s no implied ὅτι. κρατεῖν is governed by ἀξιώσει, and the previous infinitives by ἕφη.)