Mine wasn’t a slip, it was an un-Germanic confession of ignorance! (Even though I’m half German according to my dna.)
To sum up (again). Opt.+αν here is highly anomalous. I can find no parallel to it, or nothing closer than the quote I gave from Smyth 2406. It betrays an inadequate grasp of ancient Greek.
bedwere proposes to normalize it by changing the optative to the subjunctive. That’s what it ought to have been all along.
I’m shocked that a German educator could make a mistake! Seriously though, in his forward, he refers to eight other teachers that he submitted the book to for their opinion. None of them caught this. It was enough to make me spend some serious time in Smyth (not a bad thing, of course)!
Correct me if I’m wrong, but my impression is that Greek syntax (as well as other aspects of Greek grammar and lexicography and Latin grammar, too) was placed on a much sounder footing over the course of the 19th century by many specialized studies that took a minutely detailed, and laborious, look at usage and compiled large numbers of examples from ancient Greek literature. These studies were conducted largely by German scholars – the “scientific” approach of the German university system favored this kind of intensive work – and the results were compiled in the big German grammars such as those of Kühner and his successors.
The English-language grammars of Smyth and Goodwin and Gildersleeve are based on this work by 19th century German scholars, significantly shorn of the wealth of examples found in the 19th-20th century large-scale German grammars.
So while many scholars in preceding centuries had a very good command of Greek, it wasn’t until the 19th century that the rules could be formulated reliably and with precision, supported by a large body of examples. It’s not surprising, therefore, that earlier scholarship could go astray from time to time even in an area like this where rules can be formulated very precisely.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but my impression is that Greek syntax (as well as other aspects of Greek grammar and lexicography and Latin grammar, too) was placed on a much sounder footing over the course of the 19th century by many specialized studies that took a minutely detailed, and laborious, look at usage and compiled large numbers of examples from ancient Greek literature.
I hate to spoil mwh’s summation, and may do some thread surgery if someone can figure out a way that makes sense. But one of the enjoyable things to me about the ωστε article by Evans, in the other thread, was the picture that he drew of this increase in knowledge.
Hylander, mwh:
I just want to thank you for your participation in this thread. I always learn something every time you guys post and very much appreciate your time and patience.
Joel, I added my post after mwh’s summation because I thought it would be a good idea to alert readers of this thread to the possibility that 18th century textbooks may not be entirely reliable as to the fine points of Greek grammar. I think that’s what mwh was alluding to when he wrote that “it may not have been recognized as [a slip] in 1731,”
Yes. Case in point: it wasn’t till 1802 that Porson’s law was discovered! Before that scholars had been happily perpetrating multitudes of verses a single one of which would have had an ancient Greek audience on its feet hissing and yelling and hurling things.
Hylander, your capsule history of classical philology is as I understand it too. Another example: In browsing my grammars as part of participating in this thread, I was reading the entry for the potential optative in Kühner-Gerth. Kühner-Gerth is a good example, in some ways the culmination, of the 19th century German philology you’re talking about. Their discussion (see “Bei den Attikern wird der potentiale Optativ ohne ἄν mit Recht beanstandet. In den Handschriften findet er sich z. B.” and the examples that follow) tells me two things: (1) With respect to the role of ἄν with the optative et similiter, the manuscripts are not always reliable - it’s easy to imagine why this would be; and (2) By the nineteenth century, the German editors were confident enough in their accumulated knowledge to emend accordingly.
It’s a sad chapter in German history that prior to this, poor benighted Professor Schneider misled an entire generation of German youth who went around talking about brushing their clothes in incorrect Greek. But it’s a happy chapter in the era of Textkit Enlightenment that Bedwere caught this and as a result we will not make the same mistake. Go Bedwere!
EDIT: Bedwere, I’m looking at other new posts on Textkit. I didn’t realize you’ve now made it your mission to go about correcting German professors! Bravo!
Yes, Bedwere’s emendation is palmary.
Thank you all, although you are much too generous in praise!