Appendix I. (28/30)
英語原文
In final constructions and in indirect discourse the optative appears as a subjunctive or indicative (as it were) transferred to the past, and it here has many points in common with the Latin imperfect and pluperfect subjunctive. In Homer, moreover, the present optative is regularly used in present unreal conditions and conclusions, and both present and aorist optative with κέ occasionally refer to the past like the imperfect and aorist indicative wi κέ or ἄν. These uses, taken in connexion with the secondary terminations of the optative, might lead us to think that the optative was originally a past expression, so that καί νύ κεν ἀπόλοιτο, and now he would have perished there, Il. v. 311, would represent the regular use of the primitive optative, instead of being (as is commonly thought) a rare exception. Against this view, however, there are many ecsiderations to be urged.
1. The optative is fully established in Homer in wishes and conditions as a future expression, and also in present unreal conditions, the imperfect indicative here being still confined (like the aorist) to the past. In past unreal condition the optative never appears in protasis, and only rarely in apodosis, the aorist indicative being already established here before Homer. Thus while οὐκ ἂν γνοίης in Il. v. 85 means you would not have discerned, it would commonly mean, even in Homer, you would not discern (as future), and the common Homeric expression in Il. v. 85 would be οὐκ ἂν ἔγνως. The evidence of the Homeric language, therefore, shows that the present optative is the original form in present unreal conditions and conclusions and in present unattained wishes, but is opposed to the view that optative was ever regularly past.
2. It is hardly possible that the past unreal conditional preceded in development the ordinary future supposition. Every primitive lagugare must have needed expressions like if he should go he would see this before it ventured upon if he had gone he would have seen this. If now we suppose that οὐκ ἂν γνοίης had originally the sense you would not have discerned, we must assume that the Greek expressed this idea before it could express you would not discern (future), for the language never had nay other form to express the latter. We cannot hesitate, therefore, to find in the common future meaning of οὐκ ἂν γνοίης the original force of the expression, and to look opon the occasional reference to the past as a relic of an early attempt to express you would not have discerned by a form already appropriated to another use.
3. The Homeric optative in conditional sentences agrees remarkably with the Sanskrit in both the future and the present use, the Sanskrit optative being used both in future and in unreal present condirions and conclusions, but not in past conditions or conclusions. This seems to show that the Greek ingerited the two principal Homeric uses of the optative, (1) in fure conditions and wishes, and (2) in present unreal conditions and unattained wishes, while, so as our evidence goes, the occasional use of the optative in past potential expressions is an extension of its use beyond its hereditary limits made by the early Greek itself.
4. The argument drawn from the past tenses of the Latin subjunctive will not apply to Greek conditional sentences, for here the present and perfect subjunctive in Latin (not the imperfect and pluperfect) correspond to the Greek optative in its most frequent use, an in the older Latin these primary tenses sometimes express present unreal conditions.
日本語解釈