Infinitives and Indirect Statement

An infinitive names an action without saying who does it. English marks it with "to": to loosen, to speak, to be. Greek marks it with an ending, and the ending carries tense (really aspect) and voice, which English "to" cannot. You have met a few already. βούλομαι λύειν [BOO-lo-mai LÜ-ēn], "I want to loosen," came up in lesson 9. This lesson fills in every infinitive of λύω, shows the infinitive working as a noun, and then uses it for one of the biggest jobs in Greek prose: reporting what somebody said.

The infinitives of λύω

Every principal part you know from lessons 12 to 15 has its own infinitive. Learn the table across the rows. The endings repeat from verb to verb, so this one table covers most regular verbs in the language.

Check these against Smyth, section 383 and the middle and passive tables that follow it. A few things to notice before you memorize:

• No augment. The augment (lesson 12) marks past time in the indicative only. The aorist infinitive is λῦσαι, never ἐλῦσαι. Lesson 13 said the augment lives in the indicative; here is the payoff.
• -ειν is active, -σθαι is middle or passive. The only active infinitives that do not end in -ειν are the aorist (-σαι) and the perfect (-έναι). The passive aorist ends in -ῆναι.
• The aorist active infinitive is always accented on the next-to-last syllable. In λῦσαι that syllable is long and the final -αι counts as short for accent, so it takes a circumflex. In πέμψαι [PEMP-sai], "to send," the next-to-last syllable is short, so it takes an acute. Lesson 18 shows why this matters: λύσαι with an acute is a different form.

εἰμί and the second aorists

The present infinitive of εἰμί is εἶναι [Ē-nai], "to be." Its future is ἔσεσθαι [E-ses-thai], "to be going to be," a middle form like the rest of the future of εἰμί. There is no aorist of εἰμί; Greek borrows γενέσθαι, "to become, come to be," when it needs one.

Second aorists (lesson 13) take the present endings on the aorist stem, with one twist: the active infinitive ends in -εῖν with a circumflex on the ending itself.

Two of these look nothing like their indicatives. εἶπον has the infinitive εἰπεῖν, so the εἰ- of the indicative is part of the stem, not an augment. εἶδον has ἰδεῖν: here the εἰ- was an augment, and it falls away. If a dictionary search for an aorist infinitive fails, try stripping or restoring an augment. Lesson 20 drills this.

Aspect, not time

Outside indirect statement, a present infinitive and an aorist infinitive do not differ in time. They differ in aspect, the same distinction lesson 13 drew between the imperfect (ongoing, a film) and the aorist (a single event, a snapshot). Smyth (section 1865) puts it plainly: the present infinitive shows action as going on or repeated, the aorist shows it as simply happening.

• βούλομαι τὸν ἵππον λύειν. "I want to (keep) untying the horse," perhaps every morning.
• βούλομαι τὸν ἵππον λῦσαι. "I want to untie the horse," once, now.

Both are "I want to untie." English rarely bothers to show the difference, so often you will translate them the same way. When you write Greek, use the aorist for a single act and the present for a habit or a process.

The complementary infinitive

Some verbs feel unfinished on their own. "I want." Want what? "I am able." Able to do what? The infinitive that completes them is called a complementary infinitive. The ones you will meet most:

μέλλω usually takes a future infinitive, which makes sense: "I am about to" points ahead. δεῖ and ἔξεστι are impersonal ("it is necessary," "it is allowed"). The person who must act goes in the accusative with δεῖ (δεῖ ἡμᾶς, "it is necessary for us") and in the dative with ἔξεστι (ἔξεστί σοι, "it is allowed to you"). The negative with a complementary infinitive is normally μή when it negates the infinitive itself: βούλομαι μὴ λέγειν, "I want not to speak," as against οὐ βούλομαι λέγειν, "I do not want to speak."

The articular infinitive: a verb wearing the article

Put the neuter article in front of an infinitive and it becomes a noun. English does the same with "-ing": "speaking is easy," "the art of speaking." Greek can decline the result, because the article shows the case even though the infinitive never changes.

The articular infinitive can have its own subject (accusative), object and adverbs, all tucked between the article and the infinitive. That is the source of some long, tidy Greek phrases:

• διὰ τὸ τὸν στρατηγὸν ἐλθεῖν. "Because of the general's having come," which you should turn into "because the general came."
• μετὰ τὸ τὴν ἐπιστολὴν γράψαι. "After writing the letter."
• ἀντὶ τοῦ μάχεσθαι. "Instead of fighting."

The negative of an articular infinitive is μή (Smyth, section 2028): τὸ μὴ λέγειν, "not speaking." Sophocles gives a famous example, which you will read at the end of this lesson: ἐν τῷ φρονεῖν γὰρ μηδὲν ἥδιστος βίος (Ajax 554). Find the article τῷ, find the infinitive φρονεῖν, and everything between or around them belongs to that phrase.

The subject of an infinitive

If an infinitive has a subject of its own, that subject goes in the accusative. A predicate word describing it goes in the accusative too.

• δεῖ τὸν παῖδα ἀγαθὸν εἶναι. "The child must be good." Literally "it is necessary the child (acc.) to be good (acc.)."

If the infinitive's subject is the same as the main verb's subject, Greek usually leaves it out, and any predicate word stays nominative to agree with the main subject (Smyth, section 1973):

• ὁ ῥήτωρ φησὶ σοφὸς εἶναι. "The speaker says he (himself) is wise." σοφός is nominative because it describes the speaker, who is the subject of φησί.
• ὁ ῥήτωρ φησὶ τὸν στρατηγὸν σοφὸν εἶναι. "The speaker says the general is wise." A new subject, so it is accusative.

That one ending, σοφός against σοφόν, tells you whether the speaker is praising himself or someone else. Watch for it.

Indirect statement

"The road is long." That is a direct statement. "He says that the road is long" reports it. The report is an indirect statement. Greek builds indirect statements in two main ways, and which one you get depends mostly on the verb of saying.

φημί with accusative and infinitive

φημί [phē-MI], "I say, I assert," is the commonest verb of saying in Attic, and in classical Greek it is followed almost always by an infinitive (Smyth, section 2017 a). Here is the verb itself. It is irregular, but short.

All the present forms except φῄς are enclitic (Smyth, sections 181 and 424): they lean on the word before them and usually give up their accent. So you will read ἐγώ φημι, ὥς φασι, and in dialogue the little parenthetical ἔφη, "he said," dropped into the middle of a quoted sentence. Some editions print φής without the iota subscript; both spellings are in use.

One idiom worth learning now: οὔ φημι means "I say that ... not," "I deny." Greek puts the negative on φημί where English puts it on the reported verb. οὔ φησι τὸν δοῦλον λῦσαι τὸν ἵππον: "He denies that the slave untied the horse."

The rule of tense: keep the original

Here is the heart of the lesson. English shifts tenses when it reports: "I am tired" becomes "she said she was tired." Greek does not. The infinitive keeps the tense the speaker actually used (Smyth, section 1866). The present infinitive stands for an original present (or imperfect), the aorist infinitive for an original aorist, the future for a future, the perfect for a perfect.

Read down the middle column and the Greek infinitive changes with the original tense. Read across a row and the Greek infinitive does not change at all when the main verb moves into the past. Only the English shifts. So in indirect statement the infinitive's tense is time relative to the verb of saying: present means "at the same time," aorist means "before," future means "after."

Two more details from the table. The subject of the reported verb, ὁ δοῦλος, became τὸν δοῦλον: subjects of infinitives are accusative. And the negative of the original stays: a direct οὐ remains οὐ in the report (Smyth, section 2722). ὁ δοῦλος οὐκ ἔλυσε becomes φησὶ τὸν δοῦλον οὐ λῦσαι.

Verbs of thinking and believing behave like φημί: νομίζω [no-MIZ-dō], "I think, I believe," and οἴομαι (often contracted οἶμαι [OI-mai]), "I suppose," both take accusative and infinitive. νομίζω τὸν ποταμὸν βαθὺν εἶναι: "I think the river is deep." So do passive forms of saying: λέγεται [LE-ge-tai], "it is said," and personal λέγεται ὁ Κῦρος ... εἶναι, "Cyrus is said to be ..."

λέγω and εἶπον with ὅτι or ὡς

λέγω, "I say, I tell," and its aorist εἶπον usually report with a clause introduced by ὅτι [HO-ti] or ὡς [HŌS], "that." This looks like English: the verb inside stays finite, with a normal nominative subject.

• λέγει ὅτι ὁ δοῦλος τὸν ἵππον ἔλυσεν. "He says that the slave untied the horse."
• εἶπεν ὅτι ὁ δοῦλος τὸν ἵππον λύει. "He said that the slave was untying the horse." Note the Greek present λύει: once again Greek keeps the speaker's tense, and English shifts it.

After a past verb of saying (εἶπεν, ἔλεγε), Greek may also change the verb of the ὅτι clause into the optative, a mood you meet in lesson 18, without changing its tense (Smyth, sections 2599 and 2615). For now: if you see an unfamiliar verb form with -οι- or -αι- in it after εἶπεν ὅτι, translate it as if it were the indicative of the same tense. You will see one in the Reading below.

What about ὡς? It means "that" as well, but writers choose it when they want to mark a statement as a claim, an opinion or a pretext, often one they think is false (Smyth, section 2579). English "on the grounds that" or "claiming that" catches the tone. Compare: εἶπεν ὅτι ὁ ἵππος ἐκλέλυται, "he said that the horse had got loose," against εἶπεν ὡς ὁ ἵππος ἐκλέλυται, "he claimed the horse had got loose." The second invites a raised eyebrow.

One last wrinkle from Smyth (section 2017): λέγω and εἶπον with ὅτι mean "say that," but with an infinitive they often mean "tell someone to do something." εἶπεν αὐτοῖς ἀπιέναι is "he told them to go away," a command, not a report. φημί does not have this double life, which is one reason learners find it easier.

A method for reading indirect statement

1. Find the verb of saying or thinking: φημί, νομίζω, οἴομαι, λέγεται, or λέγω with ὅτι.
2. If it is the infinitive kind, find the infinitive. Then find its accusative subject. If there is none, the subject is the same person as the main verb's subject.
3. Translate the infinitive as a finite verb after "that": "he says that X ..." Use the infinitive's tense as time relative to the main verb.
4. If the main verb is past, shift your English: present infinitive to "was," aorist to "had," future to "would."