21st Century Classical Greek -- dependent clauses

So I'm going back to fill in gaps in what I wrote about how bad the old Greek grammars are and I think I have objective data for why their discussions of dependent clauses are so bad. Now that you know how geeky this post will be, you can stop reading.

The old description of dependent clauses required them to start with particles like ὡς  or ὅτι (there are three others). But that is Grenglish. In English, we require dependent clauses to start with words identifying either its function in the sentence, or relative pronouns or subordinating conjunctions. Part of the reason is our lack of case markers which, in Greek, identify the antecedents of the subjects of dependent clauses.

In Classical Greek, you get personal gerundives in the same gender, case and number as their subject, which is elsewhere in the sentence, that introduce dependent clauses. You find them in Peloponnesian War I 1.1. with the personal gerundives agreeing with Thoukidides, that add information. They have none of the particles.

Where you get the particles, other things are happening in the sentence.

a) The dependent clause has a subject which immediately precedes it in a different case. That's the clause right after "Peloponnesians and Athenians". It reinforces that the subject of the dependent clause is the same as the last topic mentioned.

b) The dependent clause has a different subject from the clause it depends on, or which is not the last topic mentioned. So tekmairomenos refers to Thucydides, but the dependent clause has "the Peloponnesians and Athenians" understood to be the subject.

The dependent clause may itself be subordinate to a dependent clause; you have this in the text I refer to in (b).

This description of subordinate clauses shows that one use of an is a case of (b), making it a subordinating article IN SOME CONTEXTS. In these contexts there are only two possible subjects for the dependent clause, and in a vague way this relates to using an to introduce the "then" of a conditional which, of course, has only an "if" statement and a "then" statement (although one of them may be suppressed). 

(a) and (b) describe where you NEED the particles. You CAN have a dependent clause without a particle, which all the old grammarians ignore because first, their sources ignored it and, second, they were thinking in Grenglish. Third, they regarded personal gerundives as "absolutes", usually expressing time -- except for the -oi case. They denied that "nominative absolutes" existed, although you will find the term in English grammar. 

I'm going to keep studying this. In particular, I want to see if you can only use ὡς immediately after the antecedent of the subject of the dependent clause, while other particles have some other relationship to their antecedent the way an does. If I find other uses for the particles or I find examples of these usages that don't have a particle, I'll tell you. I'll also tell you if I find examples where ὡς after a topic, introduces a dependent clause which does not have that topic as its subject.

So once again, the point is that Classical Greek is not some poor cousin of Latin or some close relative of English. It is DIFFERENT and deserves to be treated on its own merits.