Types of clauses
Recall that every instance of a finite verb identifies a clause. When we have chunked together the words in a clause, the case of nouns will tell us how they function in the clause (subject, direct or indirect object, etc.). Looking at the verb of a clause together with the main nouns (if any), we can think about the verbal action in the clause in one of three categories: transitive, intransitive or linking.
Transitive verb clauses
A transitive verb is one that can take a direct object if the verb is in the active or middle voice. The most common case for the direct object is the accusative. The following sentence has a transitive verb:
οὗτος ὁ ἄνθρωπος τὴν ἐμὴν γυναῖκα εἶδε, “That man saw my wife.”
εἶδε is aorist active. The subject is “that man:” οὗτος ὁ ἄνθρωπος is nominative. The person he saw is the direct object: τὴν ἐμὴν γυναῖκα is accusative.
Transitive verbs can also have a passive form. As you have just seen, the agent of passive verbs can be expressed with ὑπό + genitive.
The following sentence expresses essentially the same idea:
ἡ ἐμὴ γυνὴ ὑπὸ τούτου τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ὤφθη, “My wife was seen by that man.”
Here, the verb is aorist passive. The grammatical subject is the nominative noun phrase ἡ ἐμὴ γυνὴ, “my wife.” The agent is expressed by the phrase ὑπὸ τούτου τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, “by that man.”
In Lysias 1, Euphiletos chooses the second, passive-voice example in addressing the jury. What difference do you think it makes to present the “equivalent” idea in the passive rather than active voice?
Intransitive verb clauses
An intransitive can not take a direct object; like any other clause, its subject will be in the nominative case.
ἧκε ἀπροσδοκήτως ἐξ ἀγροῦ, “He returned unexpectedlly from the field.”
Linking-verb clauses
The clause contains a linking verb (whether expressed or implied) referring to a state of being (such as εἰμί, “to be”, or γίγνομαι “to become”). Unlike transitive verbs, linking verbs join the nominative subject with a predicate that is also in the nominative case. As we have already seen, the predicate will be in the predicate position, as in the example
ἡ γυνὴ μεγάλη ἐστίν, “The woman is tall.”
Remember that in ancient Greek, when the linking verb is in the third person, “to be” can be omitted and understood from context. It would be equally idiomatic to say
ἡ γυνὴ μεγάλη.
This is a complete sentence meaning “The woman is tall,” or “The woman was tall,” depending on context.
You’ve seen that Greek does not need to include an explicit subject where English would use a pronoun like “she”. Consider this sequence of three linking clauses from Euphiletos’ description of the early days of his marriage:
πασῶν ἦν βελτίστη:
καὶ γὰρ οἰκονόμος δεινὴ
καὶ φειδωλὸς ἀγαθὴ
The first clause has an explicit imperfect tense form of the linking verb “to be,” ἦν, and we infer from the context that his wife is the subject (“she”). The nominative-case predicate is the adjective βελτίστη, “best”. It is feminine and singular in agreement with the understood subject “she.” πασῶν is a partitive genitive: the whole clause means “She was the best of all wives.”
Aside. It’s clear from the case endings that this is the only way we can put these three words together: the meaning does not depend on word order. Euphiletos strongly underscores πασῶν by making it the first word of this short sentence: “She was the best of all wives,” or “She was the best wife in the world!”
We see from the particle γὰρ that the second clause is going to explain the previous sentence, and the paired καί-s that join the second and third clauses set up a “both-and” explanation. We’re left with a very short clause: οἰκονόμος δεινὴ. This nominative-case expression is the predicate: the linking verb is omitted, and with it the understood subject! We have to understand “She was…”; οἰκονόμος δεινὴ means “a great housekeeper” (the adjective δεινός, δεινή, δεινόν has approximately the sense of colloquial New England “wicked good”). We have a complete sentence: “She was a great housekeeper.”
The third clause also has just a brief nominative-case predicate, φειδωλὸς ἀγαθὴ; here, too, we have to understand an implied linking verb with an implied subject.
Putting the three clauses together, we could translate, “She was the best wife in the world: she was a great housekeeper, and a good penny-pincher.”