OF THE TENSES OP THE GREEK VERB. 485 



The foregoing paper was written about thirty years ago, be- 

 fore either Villoison's or Heyne"s editions of the Iliad were 

 published. It may not be improper, however, to subjoin some 

 facts contained in these two celebrated,, editions, together with 

 a few observations, suggested by these facts, and tending to 

 confirm the opinion which 1 had been previously led to form, 

 of those anomalous flexions of the Greek Verb. 



From the ancient Scholia, quoted by Heyne' in his obser- 

 vations on the various readings of the Iliad, and from the large 

 volume of Scholia published by Villoison, (as well as from 

 those contained in Barnes's edition of the Poems of Homer, 

 published in 1711), it seems to be clearly established, that, in 

 the days of the Ptolemys, this form of the 2d Aorist, follow- 

 ing the analogy of the 1st Future, was more frequent in the 

 writings of Homer, than that of the 1st Aorist, formed upon 

 the analogy of the same Future ; and that it was the reading 

 received and approved by the most eminent of the Alexan- 

 drian grammarians, by Zenodotus, the keeper of the Alexan- 

 drian Library, and by Aristarchus himself. 



While, however, the Greek scholiasts have recorded these 

 as the ancient and genuine forms used by Homer, they have, 

 I suspect, greatly erred in their manner of accounting for 

 them. After the lapse of so many centuries, these Homeric 

 forms had, in a great measure, become obsolete *, and the 

 other form, that of the 1st Aorist, had come into general use ; 

 and those grammarians could devise no other method of ac- 

 counting 



* One instance, however, of this ancient Homeric 2d Aorist occurs in Theo- 

 critus, and another in Callimachus ; and, perhaps, by an attentive observer) 



more might be found. 



