21st Century Classical Greek -- hopos

Book I section 19. This is short but has a couple of new grammar points in it.

καὶ οἱ μὲν Λακεδαιμόνιοι οὐχ ὑποτελεῖς ἔχοντες φόρου τοὺς ξυμμάχους ἡγοῦντο, κατ᾽ ὀλιγαρχίαν δὲ σφίσιν αὐτοῖς μόνον ἐπιτηδείως ὅπως πολιτεύσουσι θεραπεύοντες, Ἀθηναῖοι δὲ ναῦς τε τῶν πόλεων τῷ χρόνῳ παραλαβόντες πλὴν Χίων καὶ Λεσβίων, καὶ χρήματα τοῖς πᾶσι τάξαντες φέρειν. καὶ ἐγένετο αὐτοῖς ἐς τόνδε τὸν πόλεμον ἡ ἰδία παρασκευὴ μείζων ἢ ὡς τὰ κράτιστά ποτε μετὰ ἀκραιφνοῦς τῆς ξυμμαχίας ἤνθησαν.

Hupoteleis ekhontes forou are polises paying tribute. This is what Mr. T negates, instead of the verb higounto, the progressive eventive for something they would have repeated for each ally, creating a habit that they would have continued after the Persian war.

Learn sfisin as a real reflexive:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CF%83%CF%86%CE%B5%E1%BF%96%CF%82

Sfeis always emphasizes its antecedent, while himeis is a 1^st person plural and humeis is 2^nd person plural, in a non-emphatic sense. The phrase sfisin autois monon shows that the Lakedaimonians were not about to let any of their allies degenerate into this freedom nonsense, and that is one of the causes of the Peloponnesian war.

Look up politeusousi in the word tool; it has four options. Let’s see if we can straighten them out, and the word hopos is going to help us. When you look it up in Wiktionary, you see that it can be either an adverb or a conjunction. LSJ and Middle Liddell tend to treat it as a conjugation in one entry and use a separate one for the adverb. I think we’re pretty safe with a conjunction here, because it helps us figure out what politeusousi is.

The options are personal gerundive, imperfective conceptual indicative, and imperfective conceptual oblique. I already said that I had moved this oblique over into the conceptual column to regularize the conjunction paradigms. The personal gerundives are also in imperfective conceptual. The point is that this is what the Spartans wanted from their oligarchs, whether they got it or not. It can hardly be indicative, therefore. It’s more likely to be oblique.

Goodwin has a Greek index, and you would think he would include hopos there with hos, but he doesn’t, so once again he lets us down. We have to guess what the function might be. Let’s start with the morphology, and Goodwin does have an index entry for future with hopos, in an object clause. See 292, section 1372.

So he says an object clause has to do with a projected result, and that suits imperfective conceptual. He says the verb should either be indicative or epistemic. He says the epistemic should have a prior eventive verb, and then he refers us to a prior section, 1392.

And 1392 discusses the “original purpose” of a person. Look at section 1395; it says an oblique should come after conceptuals, and epistemics after eventives. BUT farther back, 1366 says the indicative follows hopos mostly in poetry. Goodwin does not refer to this in his index under “future with hopos”.

Now go to section 1370 where Goodwin admits that Thucydides and his contemporary Herodotus use oblique in this situation far more then examples like Homer and Xenophon.

Why?

“Why” is a very dangerous question to ask in discussing grammar, but let’s go back to our definitions. Oblique is something more likely to happen; epistemic is something nobody believes will happen. Let’s see if we can find Xenophon using hopos with an epistemic.

So I got out my search engine with the keywords Perseus Xenophon ὅπως.  I got Cyropaedia 1.6.2.:

…ὅπως μὴ δι᾽ ἄλλων ἑρμηνέων τὰς τῶν θεῶν συμβουλίας συνιείης,…

As you know by the iota in sunieis, this is indeed an epistemic. What is he saying? Kuros’ father says “I had you taught to be your own soothsayer so that you wouldn’t have to rely on others for your omens.” This is a father talking to his son, and we know kids don’t always take advantage of what their parents do for them, even if the parent explains the reason.

Homer has it in Odyssey, 11.480,

ὅπως Ἰθάκην ἐς παιπαλόεσσαν ἱκοίμην.

Odysseos has sacrificed to the dead using Circe’s instructions. The ghosts are coming to drink the blood and Odysseos wants to save it for Teiresias the soothsayer to find out, “how to get to rocky Ithakos.” The crew has already suffered a number of catastrophes; it’s not at all certain they’ll ever get back. If Homer had intended to give a spoiler, he failed; but as a good dramatist, he doesn’t want to ruin his narrative tension.

Now back to oblique, in Herodotus 3.40.4 with Ionian hokos instead of hopos:

…τοῦτο ἀπόβαλε οὕτω ὅκως μηκέτι ἥξει ἐς ἀνθρώπους:…

This is advice from Amasis to Polycrates to “throw away” whatever gives him most pleasure “so that no man [ever] sees it.” There’s always a chance somebody will come upon it, but Amasis is saying do your best to prevent that, so that the gods don’t get jealous of you.

So Thucydides uses an oblique, not just because he’s Mr. T, but because he knows how much the Spartans wanted to succeed – and he knows more of the events after this point than the Spartans did at the time.

Once again, on page 291, in section 1370, Goodwin misattributes usage – to authorship instead of context -- because he doesn’t know what we know now about how the classical authors used Greek.

And this is your chance to find hopos with the other non-indicative in the author that Goodwin thinks doesn’t use it that way, to prove that I’m wrong and it is a matter of authorship not context. Good luck.