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LESSON 2 - Second Part / First Part
ACHILLES' GRIEF - From Homer's Iliad

by George Valsamis

Pluperfect in Greek is called Ὑπερσυντέλικος. It means a time when an action was complete (τετελεσμένη, perfected) above/before (ὑπὲρ) some other action of the past: "and they whom I had loved (ἠγαπήκειν) very much, turned against me" (Job 19.19). The grammatical meaning is I had loved them very much, before they turned against me - and here is how the King James translation destroys it: "and they whom I loved are turned against me". By transforming the Pluperfect love into an aorist the King James version disjoins Job's love from his friends' turning against him. By changing the aorist of their turn into a perfect strengthens even more that disjunction, while infusing into the present something that is not of primary importance any more. But Job's thought was, instead, a memory of the time when his complete love was lost, having encountered the turning of his friends against him. In the now that Job speaks both are past, his love and his friends' assault, he is now all alone remembering both, and praying to God for his overall suffering.

 

Future Perfect is called Συντελεσμένος Μέλλων. You can think of it as a reflexion of Pluperfect to the future, meaning a time when an action will be complete (συντελεσμένη, perfected) before something else happens (I will have gone before it rains).

As in English, various demands of the meaning sometimes make a time belonging to a specific tense, to be expressed in the form of some other tense - such as, e.g. when narrating a past action in a present tense, "he dies" instead of "he died" (which is called "historical present"), etc. There is (much) more to be said on tenses, but these are enough for the moment.

Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/lessons/lesson2b.asp?pg=7