Introduction to Ancient Greek Present Middle Imperative Verbs
Imperatives in Ancient Greek (and other languages) are commands issued to someone else.
The "present tense" of Present Middle Imperatives refers not to time but to the aspect of the orders. In short, Present Middle Imperatives are commands that are expected to be followed not once, but as an ongoing process.
For example, a doctor might tell a patient, "Eat less fatty food!" In this exhortation, the doctor is issuing an order which should always be followed. (ie: it is not an order that is to be followed one time and then forgotten about.)
The middle voice imperative differs from the active voice in that sometimes the subject of the sentence will also be the object (eg: "You stop yourself!"). Or, sometimes the middle voice denotes reciprocal action: "Let them fight the enemy!" (and the enemy will 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).)
In Ancient Greek, imperatives exist only for 2nd and 3rd person singular and plurals (ie: You {singular}, He / She / It, You {plural} and They). They do not exist for 1st person singular or 1st person plural (ie: I and We).
Every present middle imperative in Ancient Greek is composed of a verb stem and one of the following endings: -ου, -εσθω, -εσθε or -εσθων. Of course, these verb-endings will be modified according to the Ancient Greek contraction rules if the word in question is an α-, ε-, or o- contract verb. (Click the yellow review button for more details.)
This test does not include accent marks, but does include 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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