The Aorist

The aorist is the workhorse past tense of Greek. Most of the action in a story, the "and then he did this, and then she said that," comes in the aorist. The name comes from ἀόριστος [a-O-ris-tos], "unbounded" or "undefined," because the ancient grammarians saw it as the tense that says nothing extra about the action. It does not say the action was going on, or that its result lasts. It just says it happened.

Snapshot or film: aspect again

Lesson 12 introduced aspect, the way a verb presents an action. The imperfect is a film: you watch the action unroll from the inside. The aorist is a snapshot: you see the whole event at once, beginning and end together, with no interest in how long it took.

The aorist has two different ways of being formed, called first and second. They mean exactly the same thing. Which one a verb uses is a fact about that verb, the way English "walked" and "ran" are both past tenses formed in different ways.

The first aorist: ἔλυσα

The first aorist (also called sigmatic, because of its σ) is built like this: augment + stem + σα + ending. You already know the augment from Lesson 12, and the σ behaves just like the σ of the future.

Compare these with the imperfect middle from Lesson 12 (ἐλυόμην, ἐλύου, ἐλύετο). The aorist simply swaps the vowel ο/ε for α. The one odd form is ἐλύσω, "you ransomed," which comes from an older ἐλύσα-σο: the σ between vowels dropped out and α + ο contracted to ω. Do not confuse it with λύσω, "I will loose," which has no augment.

The third singular ἔλυσε(ν) takes a movable ν, exactly like ἔλυε(ν). The passive aorist is a separate formation (ἐλύθην, "I was loosed") that you will meet later.

Consonant stems: the same collisions as the future

Everything you learned about the future σ in Lesson 12 applies here. Find the future, swap the ending for the aorist pattern, and add the augment.

Look at the last line. ἀκούω has a middle future, ἀκούσομαι, but an ordinary active aorist, ἤκουσα. The future and aorist are separate principal parts, so a verb can be deponent in one and not the other. This is why you memorize principal parts.

Liquid aorists: the σ disappears and the vowel grows

Verbs whose stem ends in λ, μ, ν or ρ lose the σ in the aorist too. To make up for it, the stem vowel lengthens: ε becomes ει, α becomes η (or long α after ε, ι, ρ). The endings are the normal -α, -ας, -ε endings.

The second aorist: ἔλαβον, εἶπον, ἦλθον

Many of the most common verbs in Greek do not use -σα at all. They have a second aorist: a different, usually shorter stem, with the augment in front and exactly the same endings as the imperfect. Here is λαμβάνω, "I take," whose aorist stem is λαβ-.

The second aorist middle uses the imperfect middle endings in the same way. The commonest example is γίγνομαι [GIG-no-mai], "I become, I happen," a deponent whose aorist is ἐγενόμην [e-ge-NO-mēn], "I became," with ἐγένου, ἐγένετο, ἐγενόμεθα, ἐγένεσθε, ἐγένοντο. ἐγένετο, "it happened," turns up on almost every page of Greek narrative.

The three in the course title: εἶπον, ἦλθον, ἔλαβον

Two of the most important verbs in Greek borrow their aorist from a completely different root, the way English "go" borrows "went."

• λέγω [LE-gō], I say, has the aorist εἶπον [Ē-pon], I said. The augment is fossilized: the ει is there in every form of the indicative (εἶπον, εἶπες, εἶπε, εἴπομεν, εἴπετε, εἶπον), and the stem outside the indicative is εἰπ- as well (infinitive εἰπεῖν). Attic also uses some first aorist endings on this stem, such as εἶπας "you said" and εἴπατε "you all said," so do not be surprised by them.
• ἔρχομαι [ER-kho-mai], I come, I go, has the aorist ἦλθον [ĒL-thon], I came, I went. Notice that the present is deponent but the aorist is active in form. The stem is ἐλθ-, and ἦλθ- is that stem with the temporal augment.
• λαμβάνω, I take, has ἔλαβον, as above.

Common second aorists to learn now

εὑρίσκω is the verb behind "Eureka": εὕρηκα [HEU-rē-ka] is its perfect, "I have found it," which you will meet in Lesson 15. ἤγαγον is a rare reduplicated aorist: the stem ἀγ- is doubled (Smyth 448).

A third kind you will see: root aorists

A small group of verbs has an aorist with no σ and no thematic vowel, just the stem with a long vowel and the endings -ν, -ς, -, -μεν, -τε, -σαν. The one you will see first is βαίνω [BAI-nō], "I go, step," aorist ἔβην [E-bēn], "I went," third person ἔβη. In compounds: ἀναβαίνω "I go up," aorist ἀνέβην. You will meet it in the reading. Another is γιγνώσκω, aorist ἔγνων [EG-nōn], "I recognized."

The augment only lives in the indicative

The augment means past time, and only the indicative mood tells time in Greek. So the aorist participle, infinitive, subjunctive and imperative have no augment. They keep the aorist stem, which is how you spot them.

Outside the indicative, the aorist does not mean "past" at all. It only gives aspect. λαβεῖν means "to take" as a single act, while the present infinitive λαμβάνειν means "to be taking" or "to take regularly." Lesson 17 covers infinitives in detail, and Lesson 16 covers participles. For now, recognize them by the stem.

Choosing between aorist and imperfect

When you translate, the aorist indicative is usually an English simple past: "he loosed," "they came." The imperfect usually wants "was -ing," "used to," "kept," "tried to" or "began to." When you write Greek, ask yourself whether you are showing a process or reporting an event.

Some common patterns:

• Words like πολλάκις [pol-LA-kis] "often" and ἀεί [a-Ē] "always" pull toward the imperfect.
• Words like ἅπαξ [HA-paks] "once" and ἐξαίφνης [ek-SAIPH-nēs] "suddenly" pull toward the aorist.
• A main event in a story is aorist. Scene setting and description are imperfect.
• With verbs that name a state, the aorist often means entering it. This is the ingressive aorist: βασιλεύω "I am king," ἐβασίλευσα "I became king"; νοσέω "I am sick," ἐνόσησα "I fell sick."

The three past forms of λύω side by side