21st Century Classical Greek -- contracted verbs

We’re moving to section 3! The next review is lesson 53. By then we will cut several pages out of the old grammars, find that third modality, and get two more sections under our belts.

I’m doing two subsections at once because they start with high-frequency verbs.

δηλοῖ δέ μοι καὶ τόδε τῶν παλαιῶν ἀσθένειαν οὐχ ἥκιστα: πρὸ γὰρ τῶν Τρωικῶν οὐδὲν φαίνεται πρότερον κοινῇ ἐργασαμένη ἡ Ἑλλάς:

δοκεῖ δέ μοι, οὐδὲ τοὔνομα τοῦτο ξύμπασά πω εἶχεν, ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν πρὸ Ἕλληνος τοῦ Δευκαλίωνος καὶ πάνυ οὐδὲ εἶναι ἡ ἐπίκλησις αὕτη, κατὰ ἔθνη δὲ ἄλλα τε καὶ τὸ Πελασγικὸν ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτῶν τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν παρέχεσθαι, Ἕλληνος δὲ καὶ τῶν παίδων αὐτοῦ ἐν τῇ Φθιώτιδι ἰσχυσάντων, καὶ ἐπαγομένων αὐτοὺς ἐπ᾽ ὠφελίᾳ ἐς τὰς ἄλλας πόλεις, καθ᾽ ἑκάστους μὲν ἤδη τῇ ὁμιλίᾳ μᾶλλον καλεῖσθαι Ἕλληνας, οὐ μέντοι πολλοῦ γε χρόνου [ἐδύνατο] καὶ ἅπασιν ἐκνικῆσαι.

Click on each of diloi and dokei and get the Wiktionary conjugation. Learn them.

Dilou means make apparent and Thucydides is saying “it seems to me”. Jowett, if you’re using his translation, often ignores this.

Dokei means think; Thucydides is saying “I think, I suppose.”

Dilou is part of an important class of non-mai verbs. You saw in faino and poieo that they dropped vowels in the first syllable of the root. Dilou and others drop a vowel in the second syllable of the root.

This class includes oikeo, inhabit, occupy, colonize.  In White, see page 248, section 781 for timao, honor. Notice that the vowel doesn’t always drop out; sometimes it converts into something else. Also notice the forms in parentheses which are conjectural original forms that have themselves contracted. Where there is a iota in this conjectural form, notice how often there’s a little hook under the remaining vowel; this represents the iota and you will also see it in  the singular of the -ois case.

Notice in Wiktionary that some of these verbs can have uncontracted forms. This is why you have to learn the verb, not what the grammar book says. You never know when you will come across a variant form.

And of course you have to recognize that the base meaning is not the only meaning of the verb, especially with Thucydides, whose meaning is often at the end of the lexicon entry.