I have just across this expression in a passage of Herodotus in Reading Greek (2nd ed.) It is given in the vocabulary notes as " to make a reasonable guess." I had no trouble finding it in the LSJ where it is glossed as “as far as one can guess.” I am curious to know what part of speach εἰκάσαι is, as there are a number of possibilities. Is it the aorist active infinitive?
a number of possibilities
It’s not augmented, and the accent reduces a few of the options. It’s not εἴκασαι, imperative or participle. So that leaves aorist infinitive or optative. ὡς could be followed by an optative, making it mean something like “oh, that it could be likened so!” But following usages like “ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν”, we can expect infinitive in “ὡς εἰκάσαι”.
The only other possibility I can come up with is a participle (feminine plural nominative). If LSJ lists it as εἰκάσαι, I would think it has to be the infinitive – I can’t see why they’d use that particular participle as a lemma.
Does the accent have to be recessive on a participle?
If I’m understanding correctly how this works, there was originally ἔοικα, from which the present forms ἐΐσκω and εἰκάζω were later invented. (There is also εἴκω, which actually seems to be two separate verbs. I think it’s only Homeric.)
A participle is accented like a noun, not a verb, so I don’t think it would be called recessive. However, the accents are regular, depending on the type of aorist. The second aorist participle is oxytone, and would accent the penultimate in the feminine. Like m. ἱστάς f. ἱστᾶσα f. pl. ἱστᾶσαι etc., though that’s not a second aorist. But a first aorist, like this, is accented like m. λύσας f. λύσασα, f. pl. λύσασαι.
When you have a long vowel in the middle, you can even tell the optative apart from the aorist. ποιήσαι ποιῆσαι.
Thank you both. I feel quite sure now that it is the aorist infinitive of εἰκάζω.