Learn Ancient Greek: 39_Unit 7 Independent Uses of the Optative
Channel: The Center for Hellenic Studies
Date: 2016-04-19

Leonard Muellner (Professor Emeritus of Classical Studies at Brandeis University) and Belisi Gillespie present all the content covered in two semesters of a college-level Introduction to Ancient Greek course.

As promised back in Video #33, this video explains how verbs in the optative mood can be used (and translated) without depending on another main verb in the sentence. There are two circumstances under which this may occur: the "potential optative" which expresses expectation or possibility, and the "wish optative" which expresses a wish that could come true (there's a different way of expressing wishes that cannot possibly come true). Pages 174-175 in the Hansen & Quinn textbook provide a parallel explanation of these specialized usages.