Indirect statement and indirect question using the optative
You have already worked in module 4 with indirect statements using finite verbs in the optative mood. Here we review important aspects of that type of subordinate clause in comparison with indirect question, which has many similarities.
Recall that the term indirect in indirect statement and indirect question indicates that the statement or question is being reported as having been said or asked (or thought, or any other way in which speech is used by human beings). So instead of a direct statement (“She left the house.”) or a direct question (“Why did she leave the house?”) or a direct quotation (He asked, “Why did she leave the house?”), indirect statement reports that the statement was made: “She said that she left the house,” and indirect question reports that a question was asked: “He asked why she left the house.” Indirect questions can also follow verbs of speech that are not directly expressing the asking, such as “He knew why she left the house.”
In those examples, we can see that in English indirect statement and indirect question are also structured as subordinate clauses governed by a verb related to speech (say, tell, ask, think, believe, etc.) and introduced by a conjunction like “that” or an interrogative word like “why.”
Indirect Statement as a subordinate clause
As we saw in module 4, one way that ancient Greek expresses indirect statement has the following structure:
- a subordinate clause beginning with the conjunction ὅτι or ὡς. (Note that these conjunctions have several uses.)
- the clause uses a finite verb that retains the tense and voice of the direct statement. If the verb governing the subordinate clause of indirect statement is in a secondary (past) tense, then the mood of the finite verb in the subordinate clause may be changed to the optative of the same tense and voice.
We can see an example of direct quotation in this example from Lysias 1.16: Euphiletos, our speaker, quotes directly the speech of his informant:
ὁ γὰρ ἀνὴρ ὁ ὑβρίζων εἰς σὲ καὶ τὴν σὴν γυναῖκα ἐχθρὸς ὢν ἡμῖν τυγχάνει.
If he were to use indirect speech instead, he could do so like this, maintaining the verb form in the finite clause, and changing the pronoun references:
ἡ ἄνθρωπος εἶπεν ὅτι ὁ ἀνὴρ ὁ ὑβρίζων εἰς ἐμὲ καὶ τὴν ἐμὴν γυναῖκα ἐχθρὸς ὢν αὐταῖς τυγχάνει.
Or the finite verb in the subordinate clause after the aorist verb εἶπε may be changed to the optative of the same tense and voice:
ἡ ἄνθρωπος εἶπεν ὅτι ὁ ἀνὴρ ὁ ὑβρίζων εἰς ἐμὲ καὶ τὴν ἐμὴν γυναῖκα ἐχθρὸς ὢν αὐταῖς τυγχάνοι.
Notice that the subordinate clause structure allows the statement to maintain the structure of the direct statement.
Indirect Question as a subordinate clause
The structure of indirect question in ancient Greek is similar: a subordinate clause using a finite verb.
- for indirect question, the subordinate clause is introduced by an interrogative pronoun (such as τίς, τί) or adverb (like the English equivalents where, when, how)
- the finite verb in the subordinate clause always retains the tense and voice of the direct question.
- if the verb governing the subordinate clause of indirect question is in a primary (present or future) tense, then the finite verb in the subordinate clause retains its original mood and tense.
- if the verb governing the subordinate clause of indirect question is in a secondary (past) tense, then the mood of the finite verb in the subordinate clause may be changed to the optative of the same tense and voice.
Example (modified from Lysias 1.14): εἴρετο τί αἱ θύραι νύκτωρ ψοφοῖεν. “He asked why the doors were making a noise in the night.”
In this example the question is reported indirectly and the verb has changed to the optative. From the context, we can reconstruct that his original question, asked the following morning, was τί αἱ θύραι νύκτωρ ἐψόφουν; Since there is no imperfect optative, when the optative is used to replace an imperfect indicative, the present is used. The present optative has the same aspect as the imperfect indicative.