150 
THE INFINITIVE WITH ADJECTIVES. 
Syntax of Classical Greek , I, § 143, “ Infinitive Active Apparently as Passive,” 
Professor Gildersleeve tells us: “ The infinitive being a verbal noun is not so 
strictly bound by the voices as the finite form. The infinitive as a complement 
to adjectives and the so-called epexegetic infinitive often coincide with the 
English idiom in which ‘ good to eat ’ is ‘ good for food/ ‘ fair to see ’ is ‘ fair 
to the sight/ and in Greek the active form is more common and, if anything, 
more natural than the passive. KaAos ISelv, ‘fair to see/ xaXerra evpe2v, Plato, 
Rpb. 412 B, ‘hard to find/ but xaXe-n-ol . . . Antiphon, 2 a I, ‘hard 
to recognize .” f 
The infinitive usually follows its adjective, at times immediately, as in And. 
73 (ic beo sona gearu to dreoganne baet bu . . . deman wille); at times with 
several words intervening, as in Chron. 139 b , 1009 E c (eall folc gearu wses heom 
on to fonne). Occasionally the infinitive precedes the adjective, as in Hept.: 
Gen. 2.9 (treow ... to brucenne wynsum = lignum ... ad vescendum suave). 
Not infrequently the adjective immediately precedes the noun that it modifies 
(apparently attributively but really appositively, as a rule), and sometimes 
it is not easy to tell whether the infinitive modifies the adjective or the inter¬ 
vening noun, as in Bede 60.29: heo haefdon geara mod . . . deab sylfne to 
Srowianne = 47.6: paratum ad .. , moriendum . . . animum habendo; Beow. 
2416: naes bait ytSe ceap to gegangenne gumena senigum. 
As stated in Chapter I, some of the infinitives there classed as subjective 
may possibly belong here; and this difficulty, if not impossibilitjq of precise 
demarcation 1 accounts for the chief divergences of my statistics from those 
of my predecessors. The differences occur chiefly in pronominal clauses of 
the sort discussed in Chapter I, pp. 9 ff. Aside from this, Dr. Wiilfing 2 
puts here Bede 468.30 = 643.7 (Sende him crseftige wyrhtan stsenene cyricean 
to timbrianne = 333.12: misit architectos), which I consider final; and Bede 
202.28 = 543.27, which he 3 rightly puts here, has no infinitive in the text used 
by me. Once more: as stated below, in the discussion of the inflected infinitive 
with adjectives, I have put a few infinitives with adjectives in the chapter on 
“ Other Adverbial Uses of the Infinitive,” in the section treating of the con¬ 
secutive use. 
I. THE INFINITIVE UNINFLECTED. 
Of the six examples of the uninflected infinitive modifying an adjective, 
three occur with gearu(-o), ‘ ready/ ‘ prepared for;' two with fus, 1 ready/ 
‘ prepared; , and one with wier&e (- u -, - y -), ‘ worthy/ I give the examples in 
full: — 
fus, ready , prepared: 
Gu. 1051, 1053: ic eom sibes fus upeard niman edleanan georn in bam ecan 
gefean, sergewyrhtum geseon sigora frean, min bset swaese beam! [See Dr. 
Riggert’s comment on this passage, above, p. 149.] 
gearu, ready: 
Bede 56.21: forbon he gearo wsere in bam ylcan gewinne mid him beon 
- 43.21: quia labor are scilicet uolo. 
JElf. Horn. I. 534 b 3 : ic eom gearo to gecyrrenne to munuclicere drohtnunge, 
1 On this topic see, too, Einenkel, 1 l. c., pp. 243-244. 
* Wiilfing,* * l. c., II, p. 199 . The number after the equal sign is that of the text used by Wiilfing, namely. 
Smith’s. 3 Wiilfing, 2 l. c., II, p. 203. 
