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8.3: The middle voice   

In this lesson you discover, probably to your chagrin... that there are three, not just two, voices of the Greek verb: Active, Middle, and Passive.  You also learn that the Present and the Imperfect of the Middle are exactly like those of the Passive voice.  We will return to the issue of recognizing which is which in a context.  

The distribution in the three voices of the stems and endings studied so far may be summed up in the following chart:

Let us restate these important facts:

1)  not all Greek verbs have a middle voice. We should not conjugate a verb in the middle voice unless we have evidence that it was used as middle. 

2) The endings of the Middle and Passive voices are the same in the Present and Imperfect (i.e. in the Present stem of the verb),  but not in the Future.

What is the meaning of a verb in the middle voice?  When we find the middle voice of a verb for which we know the active meaning, we may attempt an interpretation of its middle forms.  Languages are unpredictable: our assumption may be wrong and and should be tested against some source such as a dictionary.  How to interpret the middle voice of a verb on the basis of its general active meaning?  The contrast, in very general terms, is as follows: the subject of the active voice  is or does something; the subject of a verb in the middle voice is involved or interested in the action he/she performs. 

EXAMPLES

1) The subject is at the same time the object of the verbal action:

ACTIVE:     λούω   = I wash (something)                MIDDLE:     λούομαι   = I wash myself, I bathe

ACTIVE:    γυμνάζω   = I train someone else        MIDDLE:    γυμνάζομαι   = I exercise (myself)¹

2) The action is reciprocal:

οἱ ἀθληταὶ ἠγωνίζοντο  = the athletes were competing (against each other)              

αἱ κόραι ἠμείβοντο καλῇ ἀοιδῇ  = the maidens were alternating with (=in) beautiful song       

3) The subject charges another to do something for him/her:

 τὸ τέκνον διδάσκομαι  = I have (e.g. a tutor)  teach my child  

4) The subject does something to his/her advantage, or is deeply interested in the action and its consequences:

 ἄγει τοὺς φίλους   = he leads //his// friends;  ἄγεται τὸν ἵππον  = he leads away the horse, i.e. steals the horse

 φυλάσσω (Att. -ττω)  = I guard (someone or something);  φυλάσσομαι  = I protect myself, ward off (an attacker)

 ἀλλάσσω (Att. -ττω) = I change  (someone or something into something else);  

 ἀλλάσσομαι  (Att. -ττομαι)  = I exchange something (acc) for something else(gen)

 πείθω  = I persuade;   πείθομαι  = I listen to, obey  (someone in the dative)

and...

Having said all of the above, I must grant that in many cases it is impossible to predict what the middle voice of a given verb means, and often we can only translate it approximately. Yet it is important to understand the range of meanings of  the middle voice.

1) Note that English to train is ambiguous: it translates both the transitive active  γυμνάζω and the middle  γυμνάζομαι.