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The Future Optative in Greek Documentary and Grammatical Papyri

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The Future Optative in Greek Documentary and Grammatical Papyri Journal of Hellenic Studies 133 (2013) 93–111 doi:10.1017/S0075426913000062 THE FUTURE OPTATIVE IN GREEK DOCUMENTARY AND GRAMMATICAL PAPYRI NEIL O’SULLIVAN University of Western Australia* Abstract: The neglected area of later Greek syntax is explored here with reference to the future optative. This form of the verb first appeared early in the classical age but virtually disappeared during the Hellenistic era. Under the influence of Atticism it reappeared in later literary texts, and this paper is concerned largely with its revival in late legal and epistolary texts on papyrus from Egypt. It is used mainly in set legal phrases of remote future conditions, but we also see it in letters to express wishes (again, largely formulaic) for the future, both of which uses are foreign to Attic Greek. Finally, the future optative’s appearance in conjugations on grammatical papyri from Egypt is used to demon- strate the form’s presence in education even at the end of the classical world there, with the archive of Dioscorus of Aphrodito uniquely showing both this theoretical knowledge of it and examples of its application in legal documents. Keywords: optative, Greek, papyri, grammar, Dioscorus Our ignorance of the grammar – and especially the syntax – of the Greek language continues to hinder our understanding of the ancient world. The standard grammars1 have focused largely on the period of Greek literature up until the Hellenistic age, and again on the New Testament. Separate grammars have been published of Ptolemaic papyri,2 and of the phonology and morphology of later papyri;3 the grammar of inscriptions has also been studied, but again the syntax has been largely neglected.4 The following paper seeks to elucidate a largely ignored feature of later Greek – the demonstrated knowledge and expanded use of the future optative – as documented in papyri from the fourth to the seventh century AD. The phenomenon is not restricted to papyri, but is well attested (if also largely neglected by modern grammatical studies) in late literary texts as well.5 Documentary papyri, of course, have special advantages that no normally transmitted literary text can offer us in the study of the language: they allow us to see unchanged the language of the author, free of the ‘corrections’ and blunders of later scribes.6 This general fact is especially relevant to this study, for the presence of ‘unclassical’ future optatives in the transmission of Attic texts, for instance, has been remarked before, but they are usually * [email protected]. I would like to express 5 For example Dickinson (1926) 35, 64, 120–21, my thanks to James Cowey, Marie-Eve Ritz and Graeme 123, 170; Hoey (1930) 86–87, 99–100, 122 (although Miles for their advice and help on papyrology, phonology Gregory of Nyssa presents very few instances); Fives and Sanskrit respectively. My thanks are also due to the (1937) 105 s.v. Future opt.; Henry (1943) 29, 54. Some helpful comments of the journal’s referees. later examples are mentioned in passing by Bǎnescu 1 Goodwin (1889); Kühner (1890–1892); (1915) 27–31 and Stone (2009) 133–35. On the other (1898–1904); Schwyzer (1950–1971); BDF. hand, Fassbänder’s study (1884) seems definitive for 2 Mayser (1906–1970). the classical language. 3 Gignac (1976–1981); the third volume, dealing 6 This is not to deny, of course, that scribes were with syntax, is still awaited. Of limited focus, but still involved in the production and correction of papyri, but unhelpful for the present study, is Mandilaras’ work the stages and processes involved cannot be compared (1973) on the verb in papyri. with those involving a text transmitted through 4 The inscriptions of Attica, because of their medieval copies: ‘in principle, a distinction must be number and importance, have naturally been the focus drawn between penmanship and composition ... of study. Threatte’s work (1980–1996) is superseding however, a dictated text which is read and approved by Meisterhans’ (1900), but so far only volumes on its author is comparable with an autograph copy’ phonology and morphology have appeared. (Luiselli (2010) 73). 94 O’SULLIVAN banished with no consequences for the standard view of the role this form of the verb played in the classical language.7 The appearance of these optatives even in late literary texts has also been blamed on corrupt transmission,8 but there is no possibility of this with the papyri under exami- nation here. My focus is almost entirely on papyri, less from a desire to preserve the conven- tional (and in this context hardly defensible) separation of the language of papyri from that of transmitted literature, than for reasons of time and space. Pleading convenience, then, and the need to make a start on at least one aspect of a larger issue, I move on to the subject of this paper. Greek inherited the optative mood as such from Proto-Indo-European but the future optative was a Hellenic innovation and first appears in Pindar and Aeschylus.9 As normally understood,10 it has just one function in the language of the classical era, which is to represent in secondary sequence an original future indicative. All examples are thus in indirect speech, real or virtual. It is never very widely used, even in the literature of the classical age,11 and is found perhaps once, if at all, in contemporary Attic inscriptions.12 Its subsequent neglect in the koine is shown by its absence from Ptolemaic papyri and the New Testament,13 although it is still occasionally found in Hellenistic literary texts (for example Polybius 4.15.4).14 However, its reappearance on papyri much later, in the twilight of the ancient world, is the focus of this investigation, for it is a reappearance which has hardly been noticed. Indeed, while the ‘decline of the optative’ generally is a truism of the study of later Greek, the mood is actually ‘by no means rare in the papyri of the Roman period, and becomes quite common in the Byzantine period’.15 Already by 1910 hundreds of examples had been unearthed, enough for K. Harsing to devote a whole disser- tation to the subject, and more recently B.G. Mandilaras devoted 17 pages to the mood, but without once mentioning the form to which this paper is dedicated. The most thorough studies of the optative in papyri have virtually nothing to say of its future. F.T. Gignac’s volume on morphology does mention its extreme rarity, citing just four examples,16 but, in the absence of his long-awaited third volume on syntax, our longest discussion of future optatives on papyri is unfortunately that of Harsing, who claims that the future optative occurs only once. The claim, however, is careless, and seems to have misled others into ignoring the future optative entirely. 7 So Fassbänder (1884) 2 and passim; Kühner deadness of the construction even in the Ptolemaic (1889–1904) 2.477; but cf. Keith (1912) 122–26. For period’. More than half a century later, in the syntax the standard view of the function of the future optative volume of this grammar (3.128), N. Turner quoted the in classical Greek, see below. same passage as ‘P.Tebt I’, admitting that ‘there is 8 For example Hoey (1930) 100; Fives (1937) 2, 25. nothing else before ii/A.D. fin.’. The papyrus is in fact 9 Chantraine (1961) §312. Vedic has no trace of a P.Tor. 1 (TM 3563), already before Turner republished future optative (Macdonell (1916) §122) and the (very as UPZ 2.162, where Wilcken at 2.32 read the alleged poorly attested) future optative possibly found in later future optative as χρηματισθῇ σοὶ τό. The reading Sanskrit epic (Oberlies (2003) 235–36) is presumably, matters for our understanding of the optative in the like its Greek equivalent, a later formation, not a relic. Ptolemaic era, as such ‘resuscitated elegance’ is not 10 For example Goodwin (1889) §§128–34; Stahl found until much later: ἵνα with a future optative seems (1907) 326; but see Keith (1912) (partly supported by to appear in literary texts first in the mid-third century Schwyzer (1950–1971) 2.337). Hulton (1957) 141, n.2 AD (see O’Sullivan (2008) 644). argues against Keith’s case for a (non-oblique) future 14 Polybius’ whole use of the optative is shown to optative with ἄν in Attic. be in accord with the classical language, if more 11 Fassbänder (1884) 58 has the statistics: he counts sparing, by Reik (1907). His two uses of the future 254 examples, 141 of which are from Xenophon. optative are entirely Attic (Reik (1907) 70, 87), in 12 Threatte (1980–1996) 2.469. indirect speech and not ‘future potential’ (thus Henry 13 Mayser (1906–1970) 2.1.295–96 (an analysis by (1943) 29, n.103). The chronological point is tense of optatives), BDF §65 (1) c. A ghost must here important: non-classical use of the future optative is an be laid to rest: J.H. Moulton in Moulton et al. Atticizing affectation and not found until long after (1908–1976) 1.197, in trying to show why the writers of Polybius. the New Testament did not attempt ‘to rival the littéra- 15 Gignac (1976–1981) 2.359. McKay (1993) 28 teurs in the use of this resuscitated elegance’ (i.e. the use argues that some uses of the optative in papyri of of the optative in purpose clauses) scornfully referred to Byzantine times show that the mood was still living and ‘TP 1 (ii/B.C.) ἠξίωσα ἵνα χρηματισθήσοιτο – future indeed ‘fully appreciated’ at the end of the sixth century.
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