Appendix I. (21/30)

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英語原文

In other cases, the optative without κέ has a more decided potential force ; as in Il. xxiii. 151, νῦν δ᾿ ἐπεὶ οὐ νέομαί γε φίλην ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν, Πατρόκλῳ ἥρωι κόμην ὀπάσαιμι φέρεσθαι, I would fain send. So in Il. xv. 45, αὐτάρ τοι καὶ κείνῳ ἐγὼ παραμυθησαίμην, I should advise him. In Il. xxi. 274, ἔπειτα δὲ καί τι πάθοιμιmay be either then let me suffer anything (i.e. let me perish), or then would I suffer anything : that the latter is the true meaning is made more probable by xix. 321, οὐ μὲν γάρ τι κακώτερον ἄλλο πάθοιμι, for nothing else that is worse could I suffer, where οὐ shows that the optative is potential. On the other hand, in Il. xxiv. 148, μηδέ τις ἄλλος ἅμα Τρώων ἴτω ἀνήρ· κῆρύξ τίς οἱ ῞ποιτο γεραίτερος, i.e. let no other of the Trojans go with him ; only let on elder herald accompany him (or a herald may accompany him), the general sense and the preceding imperative seem to show that ἕποτο is hortatory. Compare Il. iii. 407, μηδ᾿ ἔτι σοῖσι πόδεσσιν ὑποστρέψειας Ὄλυμπον, between two pairs of imperatives, where μηδέ shows the nature of the expression. Again, in Il. vi. 164, τεθναίης, ὦ Προῖτ᾿, ἢ κάκτανε Βελλεροφόντην, we may doubt whether τεθαίης means you must die or may you die (i.e. die), although the connexion with κάκτανε leads us to the latter interpretation : here also compare Il. iii. 407. The tendency is not very strong in either direction in these passages, as is plain from the difficulty which we sometimes feel in deciding which the direction actually is in a given case.1 But as the potential and the wishing forms are generally clearly distinguished in Homer, we must look upon the few neutral expressions that we find as relics of an earlier stage of the language, in which the optative without κέ or ἄν was freely used in the sense of οἰκέοιτο and ἄγοιτο in Il. iv. 18, 19. Such expressions could not be used in negative sentences, at least after οὐ and μή were established in their regular force, as the use of either negative would at once decide the character of the sentence. In the earlier language ἔλθοιμι and ἴδοιμι, I may go and I may see, probably corresponded to the subjunctives ἔλθω and ἴδω, I shall go and I shall see, as weaker forms for expressing future time. But both moods had inherited another use, by which ἔλθω and ἴδω meant let me go and let me see, while ἔλθοιμι and ἴδοιμι meant may I go and may I see. The reasons given above, for thinking a derivation of thehortatory subjunctive from the simple future expression more probable than the reverse, apply equally to the corresponding uses of the optative.

1. To show the uncertainty that exists concerning some of these optatives in the minds of modern scholars, I give some of the most recent translations of four of them.

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