In particular, I am wondering about Epic Greek, but I am supposing that the rule is the same in Classical Greek. My question is about what verb tenses are allowed by the adverb αεί when it is qualifying the verb. Even more particularly, can a verb in the future tense be used with αεί/αἰέν?
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Is there a reason why it wouldn't apply to the future?
From Aristophanes' Clouds 1011-1012:
ἕξεις ἀεὶ στῆθος λιπαρόν
You will always have a smooth chest
Here's another, from Euripides' Bacchae 1688:
ἔσται σπονδαῖς ἔντιμος ἀεί
She will be honored with libations forever.
cmw
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Thank you. Truth be told, there seems no semantic rationale that should prohibit so doing. I asked this question , however, because I had thought that I remembered reading that these particular adverbs, “always” and “never”, require the present tense. I pored over my books, but could not find where I might have read that. As it stands, I have no idea where I got that idea from. Can you think of any additional examples using the future? – Mike Feb 10 '24 at 11:20
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I often wish there was such a wonderful online resource for Greek as “PHI texts” provides for Latin, allowing word searches of the entire corpus. I mean, you have Strong’s online, but that only deals with Koine Greek, and of course with Biblical literature. – Mike Feb 10 '24 at 11:32
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@Mike It's definitely not the case that it requires the present. It could be past or future as well. If you want to do a search, you could use Scaife. It's not as good as the TLG (which is far better than PHI) nor as complete, but it's still very useful for searching Greek texts. – cmw Feb 10 '24 at 14:17
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One potential reason why it wouldn’t apply to the future would be if Greek had different words for ‘always/never [in the past/present]’ and ‘always/never [in the future]’. That’s not unheard of; for example, Irish has multiple words meaning ‘always’ (or ‘never’ in negative contexts), and while some of them are time-indifferent, go deo is only used for the present and future, while (a)riamh is only used for the past. Ἀεί happens not to work like that, but there’s no inherent reason why it couldn’t have. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Feb 10 '24 at 19:26
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@JanusBahsJacquet True, but that kind of information would have been necessary to be included in the opening question, thus my clarifying question. I think what prompts a question can be even more useful than the question itself. – cmw Feb 10 '24 at 20:11
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Thank you all so much, especially to Cairnavon for all the examples that you provided. I don’t understand how I got this idea in my mind, but I did have the distinct idea that these adverbs introduced the continuous aspect, and that the continuous aspect required the verb in the present tense. Thank you for disabusing me of that misconception. – Mike Feb 11 '24 at 22:06
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@Mike No worries! Glad we can clear that up for you. – cmw Feb 11 '24 at 22:34
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@Mike Don't forget to mark one of the answer solved (probably Cairnarvon's in this since it answers your question more completely than mine). – cmw Feb 11 '24 at 23:43
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Since you asked about Epic Greek: in the Iliad and the Odyssey, ἀεί and its variants appear with a present stem 164 times, with an aorist 7 times, with a future 7 times, and with a perfect 19 times.
One example of each (translations from the Murray/Wyatt Loeb):
Present: Il. 1.52
[...] αἰεὶ δὲ πυραὶ νεκύων καίοντο θαμειαί.
and ever did the pyres of the dead burn thick.
Aorist: Il. 21.263
ὣς αἰεὶ Ἀχιλῆα κιχήσατο κῦμα ῥόοιο
just so did the flood of the river ever overtake Achilles
Future: Il. 10.217
αἰεὶ δ᾿ ἐν δαίτῃσι καὶ εἰλαπίνῃσι παρέσται
and always he will be with us at feasts and drinking bouts.
Perfect: Il. 8.408
αἰεὶ γάρ μοι ἔωθεν ἐνικλᾶν ὅττι κεν εἴπω
since she is always in the habit of thwarting me in whatever I have decreed
When it appears with a present stem, it's an imperfect in 50 of the cases; with a perfect stem, it's a pluperfect in 5 cases. (It's never a future perfect because there are no future perfects in the Iliad or the Odyssey.)
So it doesn't appear as if there are any restrictions regarding aspect or tense when it comes to the use of ἀεί.
(I used the Ancient Greek Dependency Treebank for this, through DendroSearch. The undergrads they have producing these trees aren't always great at what they do (I was one of them!), but for Homer it's been pretty solid in my experience.)
Cairnarvon
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I completely overlooked "epic" in the original question; my eyes jumped straight to Classical Greek. Good post. – cmw Feb 10 '24 at 16:37