24 PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON THE 
chiefly the cases of nouns, the tenses and moods of verbs and prepositions and 
conjunctions. Every change, indeed, made on a verb by diminution or increase, 
does not mark a change in the law of the dependence of words on each other, 
or of sentences on sentences ; but for the sake of a complete view (in addition 
to what was said above), it will be convenient to note the principal 
changes made on the verb in this place. Now, every one who bears in 
mind the prodigal luxuriance of form in the Greek verb, will be prepared 
to find that the change here falls almost exclusively under the category 
of loss. Thus the common third person plural of the present indicative in ov, 
sometimes ovve, is a manifest curtailment of the old Doric ov, Latin wnt. 
This ovv of the indicative is then transferred to the subjunctive, and 
we have zpd€ouv for wpad€wou, and similar forms. The next thing that strikes us 
is the total disappearance of that double form of the aorist, which gives so 
much annoyance to young students of the classical tongue. The first aorist 
with the a as its final syllable has gained a decided victory over the o form in 
the active voice; and in the passive the aspirated form which appears in 
€aTadOnv, is preferred to the Attic éoradyv. Thus, even when the second aorist 
is retained, because no first aorist existed, it assumes the a, which is the char- 
acteristic of the first aorist. So édaBav for édaBov, a peculiarity already pro- 
minent in the septuagint. But the two most striking amputations which the 
verb has suffered, and which most prominently affect the syntax, are those 
of the optative and the infinitive mood, both changes for which the way was 
fully prepared in ancient times, as the student of the New Testament must be 
aware. The loss of the optative as the natural and symmetric form, of the 
conjunctive after a past tense in the leading clause, is no doubt in an esthetical 
point of view to be lamented ; its effect in modern Greek is the same as if in 
English we should say, “ J GAVE you this property, that you MAY enjoy yourself 
on it; practically, however, it occasions no ambiguity, and accordingly we find 
that in the language of the New Testament the place of the optative in such 
dependent clauses is almost always taken by the subjunctive; and not in the 
New Testament only, but frequently in Plutarch, and not seldom even in 
Thucydides. It may be said, therefore, with perfect truth that the dropping 
of the optative is in the end an improvement, rather than a corruption of the 
language ; as it is better that a person should be dead altogether, than that 
being alive, his occasional presence should serve only to remind us with the 
more acute pain of his habitual absence. But the loss of the ijinitive mood 
is something to which the thorough-bred classical scholar will feel it much 
more difficult to reconcile his ear. If there is one thing more than another 
that distinguishes the flexible grace of Greek syntax from the somewhat formal 
dignity of the Roman, it is the frequent use of the infinitive mood. And one 
cannot but express a wonder at first blush, that a form of expression so con- 
