ON THE RELATIONS OF THE GREEK OPTATIVE TO THE SUBJUNCTIVE AND THE INDICATIVE.

From the time of the Alexandrian grammarians a special mood, called the Optative (ἔγκλισις εὐκτική), has been recognized in Greek as distinct from the Subjunctive (ἔγκλισις ὑποτακτική). The ancient classification has been called in question in later times, and many grammarians of high authority have adopted or favored a union of the Subjunctive and Optative in one mood, to be called the Subjunctive or Conjunctive, in which the Subjunctive (commonly so called) is to supply the primary tenses, and the forms commonly assigned to the Optative the secondary tense. Thus the Present Optative would be called an Imperfect Subjunctive; ποιῶ and ποιοῖμι, for example, being supposed to bear the same relation to each other as faciam and facerem in Latin.

This was first reduced to a systematic form by Kühner, who, indeed discards the common names Subjunctive and Optative (except as explanatory terms), and adopts the cumbrous expressions “Conjunctive of the primary tenses” and “Conjunctive of the secondary tenses.” Rost, in his Griechische Grammatik, § 118, says: “The socalled Optative is nothing but a peculiar form of the Subjunctive, and stands to the Greek Subjunctive in the same relation as in other languages the Imperfect and Pluperfect Subjunctive to the Present and Perfect.