Imperfect Tense One

STESICHORUS ON THE SETTING SUN

̓Αέλιος δ̕ ̒Υπεριονίδας δέπας ἐσκατέβαινε χρύσεον,

and Helios the son of Hyperion into the golden bowl descended,

So what 's special about this opening line of Stesichorus' poem.

You can read the rest of the text in Trypanis P. 154 of the Penguin paperback edition.

Like many fragments of ancient verse it survived in an incomplete form because it was quoted in a later text as an example of metre or dialect by an author who never realised so many literature would become to the ravages of time.

I've cited this opening line because it has an excellent example of the Imperfect Tense.

Eskatebaine is the Imperfect and poetic form of the Verb εἰσκαταβαίνω go down into and the topic of the next few blog posts will be the Imperfect Tense of Greek Verbs.