Prepositions

A preposition is a little word that sits in front of a noun and says how it relates to the rest of the sentence: in the house, out of the house, through the house, because of the house. Greek prepositions do the same job, with one extra rule. Each one demands a particular case for its noun, and some change meaning depending on which case follows. Learn the preposition and its case together, as one unit, the way you learned a noun with its article.

The noun after a preposition is called its object. In ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ, "in the house," τῇ οἰκίᾳ is the object of ἐν, and it is dative because ἐν takes the dative.

The logic of the cases

The cases after prepositions are not random. Prepositions began as adverbs of place (Smyth 1636), and the cases kept some of their old meanings. That gives a rule of thumb that works most of the time:

Look at παρά across that table. With the accusative it means "to a person," with the genitive "from a person," with the dative "beside a person, at someone's house." Same word, three directions, and the case tells you which.

The rule breaks down in places. διά "through" takes the genitive without meaning "away from," and ὑπό with the genitive marks the agent. So learn the meanings, and use the rule as a memory aid, not a law.

The common prepositions

Smyth section 1675 sorts the prepositions of Attic prose by the cases they take. Here are the ones you will meet on almost every page, grouped the same way. Each comes with a short example to say aloud.

One case only

The difference between ἐκ and ἀπό is the difference between "out of" and "away from." ἐκ means from inside: out of the house, out of the city. ἀπό means from the edge or surface: away from the sea, down from a horse. In practice they overlap a lot.

Smyth notes (1696) that in ordinary Attic prose σύν has been nearly pushed out by μετά with the genitive. Xenophon likes σύν; Plato and the orators mostly use μετά. Attic writers usually say εἰς; older Attic, Thucydides and Ionic say ἐς, so you will see both.

Two cases

Xenophon gives a handy pair at the start of the Anabasis (1.1.7): Cyrus besieged Miletus καὶ κατὰ γῆν καὶ κατὰ θάλατταν, "both by land and by sea." That is κατά with the accusative in the sense of "throughout, over."

Three cases

Smyth's examples for πρός include πρὸς ἐμὲ λέγετε, "speak to me," from Xenophon's Cyropaedia (Smyth 1695). For περί, he notes that verbs of saying and thinking take περί with the genitive, "about," while περί with the accusative is mostly "around" a place or "about" a number or time (1693). That is why you get λέγειν περὶ τῆς εἰρήνης, "to speak about peace," from Thucydides.

A picture of where things are

Prepositions and the article

A prepositional phrase can sit in attributive position, between an article and its noun, like an adjective (lesson 10): ἡ ἐν τῇ νήσῳ οἰκία, "the house on the island." It can also stand with an article and no noun at all, and then it becomes a noun itself (Smyth 1153c). The gender of the article tells you what to supply:

• οἱ ἐν τῇ νήσῳ [hoi en TĒI NĒ-sōi] "the people on the island," "the islanders"
• οἱ ἐκ τῆς ἀγορᾶς "the people from the market." Xenophon uses this phrase for the market traders who run off leaving their goods (Anabasis 1.2.18, cited by Smyth 1660).
• τὰ περὶ τὸν πόλεμον "the things concerning the war," "military matters"
• οἱ μετὰ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ "the men with the general"

One more use of the same idea. Lesson 10 showed that position can change meaning: αὐτός is "self" in predicate position and "same" in attributive. μέσος "middle" is the classic adjective of this kind: ὁ μέσος ποταμός is "the middle river," but μέσος ὁ ποταμός is "the middle of the river." Smyth (1172) cites διὰ μέσου τοῦ παραδείσου, "through the middle of the park," from the very passage of Xenophon you will read below.

Short forms: ἐξ, elision and aspiration

ἐκ and ἐξ

ἐκ becomes ἐξ before a vowel, whether it has a smooth or rough breathing (Smyth 136). Smyth's own pair: ἐξ ἀγορᾶς but ἐκ τῆς ἀγορᾶς. It works like the movable nu: a sound adjustment with no change of meaning.

Elision

Elision means dropping a short final vowel before a word that begins with a vowel. An apostrophe marks the gap. Most two-syllable prepositions ending in a vowel do it: ἀπό, ἐπί, κατά, μετά, παρά, ὑπό, διά. So:

• ἀπʼ αὐτοῦ (for ἀπὸ αὐτοῦ) "from him"
• διʼ ἀρετήν (for διὰ ἀρετήν) "because of excellence"
• μετʼ αὐτῶν "with them"
• παρʼ ἐμοί "at my house"

The elided preposition loses its accent entirely (Smyth 174): παρʼ ἐμοῦ has no accent on παρʼ. You have seen elision with other words too: δʼ for δέ in Xenophon's οἱ δʼ εἵποντο (lesson 7) and ἀλλʼ for ἀλλά in Plato (lessons 9 and 10).

Some words never elide. Smyth lists them in section 72. The ones that matter now: περί and πρό never elide in Attic prose (περί only before ι), and one-syllable words like ἐν, εἰς, πρός cannot elide because they end in a consonant anyway. So you write περὶ αὐτοῦ, not περʼ αὐτοῦ.

Aspiration before a rough breathing

When the next word starts with a rough breathing, the h-sound spreads backward. An elided π, τ or κ becomes its aspirated partner: φ, θ or χ.

One oddity: anastrophe

Two-syllable prepositions normally come before their noun. When περί comes after its noun, as it occasionally does in prose, its accent jumps back: τούτων πέρι "about these things" (Smyth 175). Poetry does this with other prepositions too. You will see plenty of it in Homer.

Prepositions inside verbs

Greek fuses prepositions onto the front of verbs to make compound verbs, much as English has "take in," "throw out," "go through." The meaning is often just the sum of the parts.

Notice ἐμβάλλω. The ν of ἐν changes to μ before β, just as English "in" + "possible" becomes "impossible." And ἐξέρχομαι shows ἐκ becoming ἐξ before a vowel inside a word. Lesson 12 will show what happens when a past-tense augment has to squeeze in between the preposition and the verb.

Compounds often repeat their preposition: εἰσέρχεται εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν, "he goes into the house." This is normal Greek, not clumsy.

New words for this lesson