Introduction to Ancient Greek Present Middle Indicative Verbs
As the name suggests, Ancient Greek present tense, middle voice, indicative mood verbs describe (or indicate!) actions that are currently being performed in the present by the subject of the sentence.
However, the middle voice differs from the active voice in that sometimes the subject of the sentence is also the object (eg: "I stop myself"). Or, sometimes the middle voice denotes reciprocal action: "The soldier fights the enemy" (and the enemy fights 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).
Every present middle indicative in Ancient Greek is composed of a verb stem and one of the following endings: -ομαι, -ῃ (or -ει), -εται, -ομεθα, -εσθε or -ονται. 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.
N.B. The second person singular endings for Present Middle Indicative verbs can be identical to the third person singular endings for Present Active Indicative verbs (ie: ει, ᾳ or οι). When seeing these endings in real translation situations, the translator will have to ascertain whether the verb is active or middle voice from the the verb stem before deciding whether the verb is second or third person singular.
Click "NEXT" to start the quiz: