Un costrutto discusso: participio pro verbo di modo finito?

Abstract

Abstract This paper re-examines a very peculiar and discussed use of the Greek participle, which has been recognized by some scholars and defined as ‘participle used as a finite verb’ or, better, as ‘participle used instead of a finite verb’. However, this viewpoint has not been generally accepted. The pattern in question occurs mainly, although not exclusively, in late Greek prose, when a participle is found where we expect, and the syntax would require, a finite verb, both in independent and subordinate clauses. In most cases editors alternatively either choose a more regular reading, if witnessed, or simply emend the text. Therefore we can find not a scanty amount of examples of this construction relegated to (exhaustive) critical apparatuses, as discarded variants, where we see that a participle is actually the only reading or a better attested variant than the correspondent finite verb. In order to strongly argue in favor of the real existence and legitimacy, sometimes disputed, of this use of the pa...