Counterfactual, Optative, and Indirect Question in a Forensic Passage
A candidate is parsing a three-line forensic passage and has made two confident but conflicting claims. The Greek is: εἰ μὲν εἶχεν ὁ πατὴρ χρήματα, ἐξέπεμψεν ἂν τὸν παῖδα εἰς Σπάρτην· ἐπεὶ δὲ οὐκ εἶχεν, ἔμεινεν οἴκοι. ὁ δὲ παῖς ἤρετο αὐτόν, εἰ μὴ αἰσχρὸν εἴη πένεσθαι. The draft translation runs: ‘If the father had money, he would send his son to Sparta; but since he did not have it, he stayed at home. The son asked him if it was not shameful to be poor.’ The candidate says that ἄν with εἶχεν makes a future condition, and that εἴη must be a mistake for ἐστί because the father is being asked about a present fact. You have to identify the constructions and decide whether the draft can stand.
1. Identify the conditional sentence type and explain the tenses and moods of εἶχεν and ἐξέπεμψεν ἄν. Give a better English translation.
Read the worked answer
The protasis is εἰ + imperfect indicative (εἶχεν); the apodosis is ἄν + aorist indicative (ἐξέπεμψεν). This is a past counterfactual: ‘If the father had had money, he would have sent his son to Sparta.’ It is not future. A future condition would use ἐάν + subjunctive with a future indicative, or in past sequence ἄν + optative. The imperfect εἶχεν presents a past state contrary to fact; the aorist ἐξέπεμψεν ἄν presents the unreal result. English ‘if the father had money’ is too open and suggests a real possibility. Use ‘had had’ or ‘had possessed’ to mark the counterfactual.
2. Parse εἴη and explain why the optative appears in the indirect question after ἤρετο. Translate the clause precisely.
Read the worked answer
εἴη is the present optative of εἰμί, third person singular. After the historic ἤρετο, an indirect question may take the optative by assimilation to the past or oblique context; it is not a mistake. The original direct question would be something like μὴ αἰσχρόν ἐστι πένεσθαι; The optative represents that question after a secondary tense, a regular Attic construction. Translate: ‘The son asked him whether it was shameful to be poor.’ Do not change εἴη to ἐστί unless you are converting the sentence back into direct speech.
3. Rewrite the son’s question as a direct question in Greek, and state one change that would turn the first sentence into a present counterfactual.
Read the worked answer
Direct question: ἆρα μὴ αἰσχρόν ἐστι πένεσθαι; or more simply μὴ αἰσχρόν ἐστι πένεσθαι; The indicative ἐστί is expected because the question is no longer reported after a historic verb. For a present counterfactual, keep the imperfect εἶχεν in the protasis but change the apodosis from aorist ἐξέπεμψεν ἄν to imperfect ἐξέπεμπεν ἄν: εἰ μὲν εἶχεν ὁ πατὴρ χρήματα, ἐξέπεμπεν ἂν τὸν παῖδα εἰς Σπάρτην. That gives ‘If the father had money now, he would be sending his son’, with both clauses presenting the unreal present.