Any help on this would be appreciated.
Regarding διαβαίνω.
1). I can not find any reference to use of this in the middle voice. If LSJ does not mention anything about the middle does that mean it does not have one?
2) The active second aorist is διέβην. In the sentence, They crossed the river by means of the bridge, we have διέβησαν τὸν ποτομὸν τῆ γεφύρα. This looks like a middle 3rd p. pl ending. Why the difference? Now, I have learned there is some mysterious phenomenon with ἑάλων ( aorist of ἁλίσκομαι )having 1st aorist plural endings and second aorist singular endings.?! Is this in some way a pattern to be learned? I translated as διέβοντο in error. Can someone clarify this please?
I would surmise crossing a river would/could be a middle activity.
The verb has a middle future.
διέβησαν is certainly active. The aorist is a root aorist (cf. CGCG §§13.39-41; Smyth §§ 551, 682). The action of crossing a bridge is likewise ‘active’ (cf. passages cited in LSJ s.v. διαβαίνω II).
[Sigmatic aorist forms do exist for βαίνω. I’m not sure if this applies for its compounds. The simplest explanation for the difference in meaning can be found in DJ Mastronarde’s commentary on Eur. Medea, ad v. 209: “ἔβησα (i.e. not ἔβην = transitive weak aor. of βαίνω with a causative meaning, an inheritance from epic, absent from Attic prose”.]
Βαίνω has an aorist middle ἐβήσετο that is used 5 times in the Iliad, so I would expect that it would be grammatical to construct an analogous middle for διαβαίνω.
Iliad 3.262
πὰρ δέ οἱ Ἀντήνωρ περικαλλέα βήσετο δίφρον·
And beside him Antenor mounted his beautiful chariot.
It’s common to use the middle for verbs of motion, which can be explained because the subject changes their own position. However, Cunliffe lists several active examples of βαίνω in Homer that have similar meanings to the example above. The middle can also suggest that someone does something for their own benefit. Think of “I left” versus “I got myself out of there.”
Middle βαινειν has an acc object there (or equivalently παραβαινειν has two objects, dat and acc). I think that the middle has to do with his settling himself into that seat.
That would make sense. Or maybe Homer is evoking the physical effort of mounting, like “he hauled himself up there”…? I don’t know enough about chariots to know what it would be like physically to get in/up. Should probably watch one of those 1950’s beefcake and sandals movies.
Thank you for your reply.
I do not understand the root aorist and will work on this.
διέβησαν. It is an active or middle 3rd person plural? Lexicon says active. ( I only found it in a Koine lexicon )But it has middle ending. Hit me in the head with a 2x4. If the middle was used I could see how we get there. Sigmatic aorist. But is is active, with a middle ending. Is this a case of having 2 middle endings but only one “active” sense?
After reading about the root aorist this has been greatly cleared up in my mind.
Thank you. ( I need to learn how to paste other interlocutor’s comments as to better refer back specifically )
Reading through this discussion, I’ve become concerned about the generality of a rule that I learned when I studied Unit 24 of Mastronarde quite a while ago.
What I took from Unit 24 was this rule in Attic regarding the second aorists like ἔστην - that they were generally intransitive or passive in sense (section 4, page 200). First aorists were for the transitive and causative meaning of the verb.
Maybe the rule holds in Attic, but not in later NT Greek?
In Thucycides, I see ἐξ Ίταλίας διέβησαν ἐς Σικελίαν.
In the NT, I see διέβησαν τὴν Έρυθρὰν Θάλασσαν.
In Modern Greek, same as NT.
Could there have been a shift in the second aorist away from the use of prepositions to the use of the direct object?
Or does the general rule that the second aorist is for the intransitive meaning of the verb not apply in all cases in Attic?
Some confusion here perhaps? Remember διέβησαν is the plural of διέβη (intransitive, as in the Thucydides) as well as of διέβησεν (transitive). Cf. ἔστησαν, plural of both ἔστη (intrans.) and ἔστησεν (trans.).
Yes, but I thought that these verbs were causative if transitive in Attic. Top of page 201 of Mastronarde, caused to step, caused to realize, for ἔβησα and ἀνέγνωσα.
In the NT examples, they don’t seem to be causative when transitive.
But 1st person singular in both the NT and the Thuc. examples would not be διέβησα but διέβην. I reckoned the trouble lay in the coincidence of first and second aorist forms in the 3rd person plural, έβησαν. That was the point of my post. Causative έβησα doesn’t come into it.
To add a small wrinkle, διέβην can be transitive (crossed a river e.g.) as well as intransitive or “absolute.” Just as in English.
I was assuming that first singular was διέβην in both examples. I wasn’t confusing the coincidence of the third plural forms.
So by my logic (having studied unit 24 of Mastronarde) that would mean that they both should be the aorist of the intransitive, non-causative “to cross over”. This was what I got out of Mastronarde.
So my question was essentially why in the NT case did the verb seem to be used transitively but non-causatively.
Now the small wrinkle that διέβην can be transitive (and non-causative) that you point out is exactly what I was looking for by way of explanation.
This small wrinkle seems to violate the general (but apparently not absolute) rule that the transitive of these kinds of verbs is used only for the causative meaning (make someone cross over). Maybe this rule is more applicable to Attic than to NT?
I. Causative transitive aorist of (-)βαίνω:
(-)εβησα
(-)εβησας
(-)εβησε
(-)εβησαμεν
(-)εβησατε
(-)εβησαν
II. Non-causative, but either transitive or non-transitive aorist of (-)βαίνω:
(-)εβην
(-)εβης
(-)εβη
(-)εβημεν
(-)εβητε
(-)εβησαν
(Hopefully I got those right). Your NT and Thucydides examples, as mwh says, are from II., not I. The one is non-causative transitive, and the other non-causative intransitive.
The causative form still occurs in later Greek. Here is Josephus:
προσελάσας δὲ Οὐαλεριανὸς ἐπεὶ πλησίον ἦν τοῦ τείχους, αὐτός τε καταβαίνει καὶ τοὺς σὺν αὐτῷ τῶν ἱππέων ἀπέβησεν, ὡς μὴ δοκοῖεν ἀκροβολιζόμενοι παρεῖναι. (…and he made those with him belonging to the cavalry dismount…). Notice that it’s the 3rd sing. from group I.
rule that the transitive of these kinds of verbs is used only for the causative meaning
Smyth’s version of the rule is that when a verb has a 1st and 2nd aorist, the 1st is generally transitive, and the 2nd intransitive. But “generally.”
I’m afraid I don’t have Mastronarde to hand (I saw it in draft, but don’t have the book), so I’m not sure I can sort this out for you. But I doubt you’ll find significant difference between Attic and NT usage with these verbs.
Thanks, Michael and Joel, I think you’ve cleared things up for me.
The root of my concern was page 200, section 4 of Mastronarde, in which four verbs having athematic second aorists are presented, of which one is βαίνω (another of which is γιγνώσκω). Looking at the principal parts for βαίνω and derivatives, I see that in fact the second aorist does not really exist for βαίνω itself, only for the derivatives (aorist given with a leading hyphen -έβην). So I assumed that διαβαίνω would inherit the properties of βαίνω regarding the transitive/intransitive category.
Mastronarde does in fact state that these verbs (referring to the list of four) are “generally” intransitive in sense. He even points out that one exception to this “rule” is the verb γιγνώσκω which has transitive second aorist ἔγνων.
In addition, Mastronarde states on page 201 that in poetry and outside Attic βαίνω “also has, in addition to the athematic intransitive aorist,” a transitive first aorist.
So given this discussion on pages 200 and 201, in my mind I took that the second aorist (athematic aorist) of any verb derived from βαίνω would be intransitive. That appears not to be the case and Mastronarde is somewhat misleading I think.
Thanks for going through this.
One last thing. I did check H & Q for any clarification, and interestingly ἀναβαίνω is discussed and does support my initial assumption regarding the intransitiveness of the athematic second aorist. (Unfortunately, διαβαίνω is not discussed!)
Page 474: “What one boards or mounts is indicated by a prepositional phrase: ἐπὶ (εἰς) τὴν ναῦν, ἐφ’ ἵππον.”
So I made the reasonable assumption that the prepositional phrase (not the direct object) was also the way to go with διαβαίνω, at least in Attic.
Thanks for explaining. Yes, given (-)ἔγνων (very common) and διέβην (also common) it does seem that M. could be a bit misleading. But rules are never without exceptions, as we know all too well.
(Causative aorists—sigmatic—are of course something else again, and more common in Herodotus and later Greek than in Attic.)