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[*] 104. The perfect subjunctive in protasis corresponds exactly to the Latin future perfect indicative; but the Greek seldom uses this cumbrous perfect, preferring the less precise aorist (91). The perfect optative, in both protasis and apodosis, corresponds to the Latin perfect subjunctive; but it is seldom used, for a similar reason (95). The perfect optative can hardly be accurately expressed in English. For when we use the English forms would have suffered and should have suffered to translate the perfect optative, these are merely vaguer expressions for will and shall have suffered. (See the examples above.) I should have suffered is commonly past in English, being equivalent to ἔπαθον ἄν; but here it is future, and is therefore liable to be misunderstood. There is no more reference to past time, however, in the perfect optative with ἄν, than there is in the future perfect indicative (77) in such expressions as “μάτην ἐμοὶ κεκλαύσεται,” “I shall have had my whippings for nothing (referring to those received in his boyhood),” AR. Nub. 1436.
Macmillan. London, Melbourne, Toronto. 1889. reprint edition:. St. Martin's Press. New York. 1965.
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