Introduction to Ancient Greek Imperfect Middle Indicative Verbs
Ancient Greek imperfect 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 an ongoing process and not a discrete event.
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 was ceasing (ie: stopping myself)"). Or, sometimes the middle voice denotes reciprocal action: "The soldier began/continued/tried/used to fight the enemy" (and the enemy began/continued/tried/used to fight 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).
Typically, imperfect middle indicative verbs in Ancient Greek are composed of a verb stem beginning with an ε- augment and ending with the following: -ομην, -ου, -ετο, -ομεθα, -εσθε or -οντο. 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. However, it does not include diacritical accentation.
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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