Passive Voice Problems

Surprisingly, I started over in Greek: An Intensive Course with my new friend, Wesley (also from the B-Greek forum).

We’re doing a mixed study, using the textbook as our grammar review, doing the translation exercises on our own, meeting on Skype or Hangouts to do the exercises a second time orally (without reference to our work from the week) and to read Greek texts together. Right now we’re in chapter 5 of the book of Galatians. Afterward, we’re going to read through Philo’s On Cherubim (Περὶ τῶν Χερουβίμ) before we choose something from the classical period.

At this point, we’ve gotten back to unit 6 – certainly the easiest unit so far. We’ll be meeting on Saturday to finish up this unit, and then we’re moving on. I still find myself struggling with passive forms. I can easily recognize them, but forming them isn’t so easy. For example, look at this exercise from the book:

(Unit 5) II.3. If you had been sent by the citizens to the island sacred to the goddess in order that the men in the country might be guarded, you would not have been stationed in the market place.

When I look at this, I see that it’s what we would have called a “third conditional” when I was teaching English – what is termed the past counterfactual or past contrafactual in Greek grammar. That is, it is talking about the past and saying what might have been different in a different situation. For example, I didn’t have money when I was in high school. But, if I had had money, I would have bought myself some nice shoes. In this case, “you” weren’t sent by the citizens to the island, so you weren’t stationed in the market place. The form of the past counterfactual is as follows:

εἰ + aorist indicative → aorist indicative + ἄν

This sentence has two passive aorists in its main structure (“you were sent” [from πέμπω] and “you were stationed” [from τάττω]). Additionally, the purpose clause (“in order that”) also has a passive verb in the optative, either present or aorist (“it _ be guarded” [from φυλάττω]). Everything will be connected from these verbs. Here’s the basic form:

εἰ ἐπέμφης [ἵνα φυλαχθεῖεν/φυλάττοιντο], ἐτάχθης ἄν.

Of course, the “you” could be plural here, but I’m going to go with the singular. All we have to do then is fill in the blanks.

εἰ τοῖς πολίταις ἐπέμφθης εἰς τὴν νῆσον τὴν τῆς θεοῦ ἱερὰν ἵνα οἱ ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ φυλαχθεῖεν/φυλάττοιντο, ἐν τῇ ἀγορᾷ οὐκ ἂν ἐτάχθης.

I can understand the parts of the sentence well enough and construct them into what seems to me to be meaningful Greek. However, getting to the passive forms takes me a bit of thinking. I know that ἐπέμφθην, for example, is one of the principle parts of πέμπω, but it’s not easy to get to the sixth principle form of each verb as they come. I just need to get used to placing all of the principle parts in memory. This will be harder as we get to the verbs that have so-called “deponents” (as much as this term is despised) in tenses other than the present.

In my studies through Ἀθήναζε and Greek to GCSE, I have found that I have a real aversion to the passive and middle voices. As soon as I’ve gotten to that place in both textbooks, I have stopped moving forward. I’ve now finished the main presentation of the passive voice in Greek: An Intensive Course, and I’ve decided to push past it even if I can’t produce all of the passive forms with ease. I know that it’s going to get even messier, and the contract forms are coming up, but I really need to make it through this textbook.

Has anyone else noticed this about the passive forms? That you just stop when it comes to them? Do you have a way to get around it?

Thanks!
Ἰάσων τοῦ Ἰωάννου