21st Century Classical Greek -- Summary 5, imperatives

Classical Greek has three types of order-giving.

1.         Indirect, using an auxiliary verb like keleuo.

2.         Indirect using an impersonal gerundive to indicate an action that is due and owing.

3.         Imperatives which are rare and may have a nuance that relates them to Biblical Hebrew.

In Biblical Hebrew, true imperatives indicate whether the person who uses them has authority to do so or not, but it does so in the context of a narrative. Read the story of Avraham buying Machpelah: Efron uses multiple imperatives, but none of them work out. He is not authorized to issue imperatives to Avraham.

Thucydides seems to use imperatives more to emphasize how wrong-headed somebody is. The best examples are the ultimata issued by the Korinthians, supposedly in support of the treaty that existed during the events of Book I, but contradicted by the fact that treaty members get to vote on actions as explained in the same book. I hope that you Greek geeks can offer up examples and citations from your favorite author with evidence that the imperatives were carried out. This would be a demonstration that the person issuing the ultimatum had authority over the people he issued it to.

Or, you could tell us about examples where the imperative was carried out. It’s entirely possible that keleuo in particular is used in all of these contexts. I am in Book III of Thucydides and haven’t seen examples of this yet.

Imperatives are all indicative and show aspect:

1.                  Imperfective: perform an action.

2.                  Progressive: get into a situation or habit.

3.                  Perfective: produce a result. Periphrastic and very rare.

The fact that imperatives refer to an action that has not yet been carried out creates a cognitive dissonance in the old tense system, particularly for aorist, perfect and pluperfect. In our aspectual system, with imperfective being the default verb form, the cognitive dissonance disappears.

In Thucydides II 81.1 we have keleuontes with an impersonal gerundive, “ordering him to X”. Use of an impersonal gerundive gets us two things: one is that the action is due and owing upon receipt of the order; the other is that possibly it can’t be carried out immediately or the person issuing the order has no authority, thus it is indefinite. LSJ does not say that keleuo must take an impersonal gerundive, but all its examples work out that way.