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

by George Valsamis

Translating

 

Φάτο is not used in the Attic dialect, you won't find it in Plato, for example, not once. Φάτο is the equivalent of ἔφη. It is third person, singular, (second) aorist tense, of the verb φημί (I say, speak) and it means "he/she said". We shall see this verb in details in a future lesson, because it is common and irregular (=even more difficult!). However, if you open your dictionary to find φάτο you will see there the words φατίζω, which is a verb, and φάτισις, which is a noun. Judging from the stem, you can easily and safely enough guess that φάτο may have something to do with "speaking". Explaining φάτισις, Liddell-Scott dictionary connects it with φημί. If you follow this connection and go the lemma of φημί, you will - at last - find there the form φάτο. Thus, after a 5 or 10 minutes journey, you finally discovered the verb of your sentence. But what about ἐκάλυψε? Maybe this is another verb. If it is indeed, then you will have two sentences, because each verb supports its own sentence.

From what we have already seen about augmentations you should suspect that the first syllable (ε) might be an augmentation, so that the stem - and most probably the present tense of the verb - starts with καλ. You open your dictionary again, in καλ- , where you find lots of words. You proceed to καλυψ- hopping for better results. You find κάλυψις, attibuted to καλύπτειν. Then in καλύπτω you see that its aorist is ἐκάλυψα. Knowing (when you will know) the basic endings of a verb, you won't have any difficulties understanding that ἐκάλυψε is the third person, singular: he/she/it covered something.

Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/lessons/lesson2b.asp?pg=9