Athematic Aorist Indicative Active

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Some asigmatic verbs are also athematic in formation. In turns out that the past time personal markers we use for things like the asigmatic aorist actually include the theme vowels ε and ο. Athematic aorists use the similar past time personal markers but without the theme vowels:

thematic past time personal markers

athematic past time personal markers

	Singular	Plural		Singular	Plural
1st	/ον	/ομεν	1st	/ν	/μεν
2nd	/ες	/ετε	2nd	/ς	/τε
3rd	/ε	/ον	3rd	/ø	/v or /σαν*

*when one versus the other?

add: these are called root aorists….

When these combine with athematic aorist bases, we find forms like these:

question: do we jump straight into paradigms, or should we begin with specific words being built then paradigms later (if at all)?

βα/ “go”

	Singular	Plural
1st Person	ἐ/βα/ν > ἔβην	ἐ/βα/μεν > ἔβημεν
2nd Person	ἐ/βα/ς > ἔβης	ἐ/βα/τε > ἔβητε
3rd Person	ἐ/βα/ø > ἔβη	ἐ/βα/ν > ἔβην or ἐ/βα/σαν > ἔβησαν

You’ll see that throughout the paradigm the short vowel of the base lengthens when a marker is added to it. In the case of ἔβη, the 3rd singular personal marker used to be /τ, but since τ can’t end a Greek word it dropped.

Here are some common Greek verbs that are athematic in the aorist:

ἁλο/* “get caught”

βα/ “go”

δυ/ “enter” (cognate with English “dive”)

γνο/ “recognize”

στα/** “stand”

φυ/ “produce”

* ἁλο/ was originally σαλο/, so it takes an ἐ/ past time marker (ἐάλω, ἐάλως, ἐάλω, and so on).

**When athematic (ἔστην, ἔστης, ἔστη, and so on), the base στα/ is intransitive (for instance, “I stood on the table”).

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Exercise

Following the pattern of βα/ above, try conjugating these athematic verbs in the aorist indicative active. When you are done, check your work against the answer key.

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Vocabulary for this lesson (see here for the full lexicon)