The aorist indicative

The form of a finite verb in ancient Greek expresses the subject as well as the verb: it is a complete verbal expression by itself. Example: the form ἐκέλευσε means “he or she ordered”; the form ἐκέλευσαν means “they ordered.” These are already complete sentences that do not need a separate word for “he,” “she” or “they.”

The indicative mood and narrating events in the past

As already described above, finite verbs have five properties: tense, voice, moode, person, and number.

The indicative is one of the four moods of the ancient Greek verb. It is the mode of verb used for narrating factual events, and for that reason is frequently seen in most texts.

Ancient Greek has more than one tense for narrating events in the past, but they differ in aspect — that is, how to think of or picture the action the verb is representing.

the aorist tense expresses an action as single and simple, without indication of its completion or continuation
the imperfect tense expresses an action as continuous, started, ongoing, habitual or in any way incomplete

The choice of verb tense, then, involves not only an indication that the events happened in the past, but other information about the event. Do you want to emphasize it as a single incident? Choose the aorist indicative if so. Or do you want to indicate that it happened over a length of time, was repeated or habitual, perhaps was started but not completed? The imperfect indicative will give you the means to add those shades of meaning.

Meaning of aorist indicative

The aorist indicate represents the action as “single,” “simple,” “distinct,” the equivalent of a snapshot of the action. The tense that is the closest to this idea in English is the “simple past,” the past tense formed in the active voice by adding -ed to the verb stem, or made by changes to the stem, with no other “helping” verbs. Examples of the “simple past” in the active voice: “He walked,” “she ran,” “they watched,” “She taught,” “they learned.”

To understand a verb form, you must take into account all five properties: tense, voice, mood, person and number. In the active voice, the subject performs the action. In the passive voice, the subject receives the action. The middle voice is, as the name indicates, in between active and passive, where the subject performs the action in some way for themselves.

The verb ἄρχω in the active voice, for example, means “to be first” and from that sense can mean “to rule”. In the passive voice, it means “to be ruled”. The middle voice means “to make yourself first” or “put yourself at the first position” of something, and therefore “to begin” something.

In the following examples, we’ll see how to form the aorist indicative of the verb δείκνυμι “to show” (an athematic verb) and κελεύω, “to command” (a thematic verb). In the third person plural of the aorist indicative, their meaning will be:

Active: “they showed,” “they commanded”
Middle: “they showed (for their own benefit),” “they commanded themselves”
Passive: “they were shown,” “they were commanded”

Forming the aorist indicative

To form any finite verb, you first choose the principal part corresponding to the tense and voice you want to use, then apply an ending that indicates the person, number and mood. To learn the aorist indicative, you will need to learn the endings for person and number in all three voices of the indicative: active, middle, and passive. In this module, we will begin with the third person (“he,” “she,” “it,” “they”).

The aorist tense forms the active and middle voices from the third principal part; it forms the passive voice from the sixth principal part. As you learn the principal parts of verbs, you will notice that not all verbs appear in all three voices. If a verb does not have a sixth prinicipal part, that implies that no passive forms are used. In this module, you will encounter the verb γίγνομαι “to become”: in the aorist tense, it always and only uses the middle voice.

As you look at the third principal part, there are two different patterns of endings. These are referred to as first and second aorists. The different endings do not have different meanings except for a small number of rare cases when both exist for the same verb. That is, both first and second aorists, both sets of endings, represent the single action in the past, and you will accordingly translate each with the English simple past. Compare the two systems of past-tense formation in English: adding “-ed” to the verb stem (which are called “regular” or “weak” verbs) or a change in the verb stem (“irregular” or “strong” verbs): “I walked” (weak) vs. “I went” (strong). “I consumed” (weak) vs. “I ate” (strong).

You can recognize a verb that has a first aorist by a third principal ending in -α or -άμην. Verbs that have a second aorist have a third principal part that ends in -ον or -όμην. We will return to the second aorist forms later in this module.

Aorist active and middle indicative of first aorist verbs

Once you have identified a verb as a first aorist verb, you form other persons and numbers by the following process:

(1) principal parts are always in a first person singular indicative: start by dropping the first singular ending from the third principal part, and remove any accent:

ἔδειξα -> ἐδειξ-

ἐκέλευσα -> ἐκελευσ-

(2) Add the appropriate ending for the person and number. In this module, you need to memorize the following endings for the third person, singular and plural.

Person and Number	Active ending	Middle ending
third singular	-ε or -εν	-ατο
third plural	-ᾰν	-αντο

The third singular ending -ε is used when the following word begins with a consonant. At the end of a clause or sentence (marked by a punctuation mark such as a comma or period), or when followed by a word beginning with a vowel, the ending -εν. (The ancient grammarians called this “the suffixed nu,” νῦ ἐφελκυστικόν.)

(3) Apply recessive accent.

Aorist Passive Indicative

In the the same way, the sixth principal parts can be used to form aorist passive forms.

(1) Drop the first singular ending -ην from the sixth principal part and remove the accent:

ἐδείχθην -> ἐδειχθ-

ἐκελεύσθην -> ἐκελευσθ-

(2) Add the appropriate ending for the person and number:

Person and Number	Passive Ending
third singular	-η
third plural	-ησαν

(3) Apply recessive accent.

Examples

	Active	Middle	Passive
third singular	ἔδειξε or ἔδειξεν	ἐδείξατο	ἐδείχθη
third plural	ἔδειξαν	ἐδείξαντο	ἐδείχθησαν

	Active	Middle	Passive
third singular	ἐκέλευσε or ἐκέλευσεν	ἐκελεύσατο	ἐκελεύσθη
third plural	ἐκέλευσαν	ἐκελεύσαντο	ἐκελεύσθησαν

Vocabulary to memorize

Learn these paradigm verbs: be able to produce the first, third and sixth principal parts (emphasized like this in the list) from memory.

δείκνυμι, δείξω, ἔδειξα, δέδειχα, δέδειγμαι, ἐδείχθην, “to show”
κελεύω, κελεύσω, ἐκέλευσα, κεκέλευκα, κεκέλευμαι, ἐκελεύσθην, “to order“

An important irregular verb

The verb δίδωμι “to give” is very common. Memorize its first, third and sixth principal parts.

δίδωμι, δώσω, ἔδωκα, δέδωκα, δέδομαι, ἐδόθην, “to give”

In the aorist passive, its forms are exactly what you would expect, but it has some some irregular forms in the aorist active and middle. You must memorize the unpredictably irregular forms (highlighted with the “little star,” or ἀστερίσκος).

	Active	Middle	Passive
third singular	ἔδωκε	※ ἔδοτο	ἐδόθη
third plural	※ ἔδοσαν	※ ἔδοντο	ἐδόθησαν

Compound verbs

English readily creates new vocabulary with “phrasal verbs.” These add a specific sense to a common verb by using the verb together with an additional word. Compare the change of meanings if you change “take” to the phrasal verb “take on,” “take in,” “take down,” or “take out.” Notice that the forms of the basic verb remain the same when you use them in phrasal verbs: since the past tense of “take” is “took,” you can say “she took on,” “they took in,” etc.

Greek has a similar capacity for building new vocabulary by creating compound verbs. Compound verbs add a prefixed word to each of the basic verb’s principal parts. As with English phrasal verbs, the new verb has a specific meaning, but follows the forms of the basic form. For example, the verb ἐπιδείκνυμι adds the prefix ἐπι- to the verb δείκνυμι “to show”, and gives it the sense “to demonstrate” or “prove.” (This is the verb Euphiletos will use to talk about proving his case in court.) In the third and sixth principal parts of δείκνυμι where the form starts with a vowel (ἔδειξα and ἐδείχθην), the ending vowel of ἐπι is elided. Memorize the following two compound verbs: if you’ve already memorized the principal parts of the basic verbs, you’ve got two new vocabulary item for almost no additional effort!

ἐπιδείκνυμι, ἐπιδείξω, ἐπέδειξα, ἐπιδέδειχα, ἐπιδέδειγμα, ἐπεδείχθην, “to demonstrate, prove”
παραδίδωμι, παραδώσω, παρέδωκα, παραδέδωκα, παραδέδομαι, παρεδόθην, “to hand over, transmit, entrust (a thing to a person)”