Introduction to Ancient Greek First Aorist Middle Indicative Verbs
Ancient Greek first aorist tense, middle voice, indicative mood verbs describe (or indicate!) actions that were performed in the past by the subject of the sentence. The action that occurred must have been a discrete event and not an ongoing process.
The middle voice of this verb form differs from the active voice in that sometimes the subject of the sentence is also the object (eg: "I stopped myself"). Or, sometimes the middle voice denotes reciprocal action: "The soldier fought the enemy" (and the enemy fought back). The middle voice is also used for autonomic actions, such as digesting food or hearing noise. (For a more in-depth discussion, see Carl W. Conrad's page covering Ancient Greek middle voice verbs on the Washington University At St. Louis' website).
(The first aorist tense is sometimes also referred to as the weak aorist.)
Typically, 1st aorist middle indicative verbs in Ancient Greek are composed of a verb stem beginning with an ε- augment and ending with the following: -σαμην, -σω, -σατο, -σαμεθα, -σασθε or -σαντο. Of course, the augments and verb-endings will be modified according to the Ancient Greek contraction rules; click the yellow grammar review table button for further details.
This test includes α-, ε-, and o- contract verbs.
For each question, click on the best answer. Some answers may appear incomplete because a direct or indirect object is not provided.
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