OF THE TENSES OF THE GREEK VERB. 487 



Present-Futures, or future-Presents, in — <w and — a-opcu, ever 

 existed. They are not to be found in the Poems of Homer 

 or Hesiod. They are not to be found in the Greek authors 

 posterior to Homer and Hesiod ; and of Greek authors prior 

 to the age of Homer and Hesiod we know absolutely no- 

 thing. 



From these considerations it seems to be evident, that the 

 existence of these Future-Presents is merely a gratuitous as- 

 sumption of grammarians, to account for the Homeric forms 

 /3?j<rsro, forero, &c. which they could in no other way reduce 

 to any known analogy of formation. 



This, however, the learned Dr Clarke had too much acute- 

 ness and good sense to admit ; and, accordingly, we find him 

 regarding these Presents as altogether fictitious. His words on 



the passage 'Clg ago, <puvri<rug, aw sfiritr ot.ro Iliad, II. 35. are 



these : " Editi plurimi habent u*B@ticrsro, a verbo^cfo urofB^o- 

 " ^cu." And, to obviate the difficulty, he changes uKsfiyo-sro 

 here into uffs@7i<ru,ro ; and, when (3q<rsro, or any of its com- 

 pounds, occurs, his general practice is to substitute the form 

 of the 1st Aorist, fiq<raro. But, even if it would remove the 

 difficulty, this change is unauthorised. The other form in 

 — sro is attested as genuine by the Alexandrian grammarians, 

 is supported by the Greek scholiasts, by the ancient MSS. of 

 the highest authority, and by the early editions. In Villoi- 

 son's edition of the Iliad, which bears to be an exact tran- 

 script of a MS. of the tenth century, in the Library of St 

 Mark at Venice, the form is uniformly — sro, except in a 

 single instance, and in that one instance, I suspect — ccto to be 

 an error of the press. 



Dr Clarke, however, soon finds that this change of — sro 

 into — uro, violent and unauthorised as it is, will not remove 



vol. ix. p. ii. 3 q the 



