21st Century Classical Greek -- not ergative

Now you may remember other examples of hupo plus the -on case and wonder whether they are ergative structures. One was section 2.1:

ἕκαστοι τὴν ἑαυτῶν ἀπολείποντες βιαζόμενοι ὑπό τινων αἰεὶ πλειόνων.

This is not ergative. Thucydides has gone straight for the base voice personal gerundive describing the action, “constrained”. It’s a decrease in definiteness, not transitivity.

Section 2.4:

καὶ ἅμα ὑπὸ ἀλλοφύλων μᾶλλον ἐπεβουλεύοντο.

This is an idiom. LSJ states that base voice is used only when the context means “to be the object of plots”, epebouleuonto. The conjugated verb is progressive eventive, thus a habit of forming plots, but since the idiom is de-transitized, Thucydides puts the agent into the instrumental.

As far as I can tell, there are only about five examples of ergative structure in Peloponnesian War. Before I’m done with you, I may find more of them, and I may also figure out why Thucydides uses them. In other words, why would Thucydides use this structure at all, instead of using full intransitivity (“passive”)?

I’ll have another post on this subject but possible ramifications are

1)         The ergative is strictly for the imperfective. Keep reading to find out if I’m wrong, or post a comment if you already know that I am. Make sure to cite to the evidence.

2)         The ergative never uses a -mai verb, which doesn’t have executive voice. This would mean that having only base voice means -mai verbs can never be deliberately transitive.

3)         Thucydides is the last Greek writer to use the ergative, and maybe the only one. If you are a Greek geek who favors Xenophon or Herodotus, you owe it to yourself to reread him to see if this is true.