A

GREEK GRAMMAR

FOR THE

USE OF LEARNERS.

BY E. A. SOPHOCLES, A. M.

TOR LIBRARY

NEW-YORK

HARTFORD:

H. HUNTINGTON, JUNR.

NEW YORK:

F. J. HUNTINGTON & Co.

174 Pearl Street.

Entered according to an Act of Congress, in the year 1838, by

H. HUNTINGTON, Junr.,

in the Clerk's office, of the District Court of Connecticut.

New Haven, printed by B. L. Hamlen.

P R E F A СЕ.

THE materials, of which this compendious grammar is composed have been drawn from the best sources. The best Greek grammars have been consulted. A few expressions have been taken without any alteration from Andrews and Stoddard's Latin grammar.

The principal tenses, viz. the aorist and perfect active and passive, and future active, are derived immediately from the present, real or imaginary. I have adopted this method of forming them, because, in my opinion, it is natural, reasonable, simple and elegant; because it distinguishes the root (the most essential part of any verbal form) from the termination, and points out the characteristic of each tense, mood, number and person: considerations of no small importance in these days of roots and Sanscrit. The method of deriving one tense from another is a relic of past ages. In those days the Greek verb had thirteen conjugations (viz. §§ tõv βαρυτόνων ῥημάτων, τρεῖς τῶν περισπωμένων, καὶ τέσσαρες τῶν sis, as the old grammars have it), and the noun was endowed with ten declensions (which have been compared with the ten plagues of Egypt). This arbitrary method, among other inconveniences, very often obliges the learner to go through a series of painful barbarisms in order to arrive at the desired form: thus, in order to determine the 1 aorist passive of dúvauai, he must enrich the language with 4YΝΑΩ, δυνήσω, δεδύνηκα, forms, which no Greek, ancient or modern, ever dreamed of.