A grammar of the Homeric dialect - Wilbourhall.org

60 TENSES. [67.
With these are usually reckoned the Verbs in which the Pres.
is of a different formation, as 6p.oGfi.cu Treaeoi>T), j3^(rojxat (/3au>co), icap-emu (Kajutrco
ireiaojjiat (7rao-)(co) :
also the Futures to which no Pres. corresponds,
as eurojuicu (oi6"a), Setcrojxai (6"ei'6ta), ovj/ojiai (OTT-).
It may help to explain these cases if we consider that the Fut.
Act. is apt to have a Transitive sense, as in OTTJO-CO, /3?jo-co, ^wo-co,
Hence there was a tendency to have recourse to the Middle
whenever a distinctly intransitive sense was wanted.
Historical Tenses the Augment.
67.] The Augment takes two forms, the Syllabic and the
Temporal.
The Syllabic Augment
is the prefix I-, and is used for Stems
beginning with a consonant. The Temporal Augment is a
simple lengthening of the initial vowel of a Stem, the vowels a
and becoming r/ ;
as fyo-v (ayo-), r/Aa-o-a-z; (eAa-), ue-ro (t/ce-),
o)p-ro (op-), ^ATyAa-ro (Pf. eArjAa-rai), fjveov (atz/eco), wxtro (O'LXOjxat).
So the Impf. rja
/ went (Sanscr. dyam} y
from the stem
t (6t-/xt)
: as to the form rfia see 12.
Many seeming exceptions are due to the loss of the original
initial consonants, F, ((repw-).
In
these cases the a passed into the rough breathing, which was
then thrown back on the Augment but : etxor has the smooth
breathing owing to the following \. Also eta (eaco
for
t
(or y) perhaps in Ka
77 (for e-ir]Ka) and, with contraction,
(e-e-jue^), and irap-eidr] (-e-e^r;).
But see 16.
Several Homeric forms have been supposed to point to a Syllabic Augment
TJ- (instead of -).
One of these
i^i'a I went has been already explained (
1 2).
As to the others we have to note as follows :
(i) i]eipev (II. 10. 499) is not from ei'pco to join together (Lat. sero\ but from
oei'pw : for, as Cobet has shown (Misc. Crit. p. 326), deipcu is a technical word in
the sense required (cp. II. 15. 680 ffwacipfrai 'iirnovs, also the words vvcapis, for
vv-aop-is, and nap-rjopos).