Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/330

320 It is remarkable that all these are connected with the negative and, in the languages we are familiar with, with the inferential particles; as well as in some cases with the adverbs of time. The feeling which produced the relationship with the first is probably the wish to suggest what one does not believe to be the case as the point to be examined, and thus dare a denial. When I say, Is it not so? I call upon the person addressed to deny my opinion, if he can, putting the negative pointedly before him. Perhaps it may be worth while to remark a case, not mentioned by Grimm, of the connection in Greek between the words which ask a question and denote an inference, I mean that of and ; take for instance the following line of the Alcestis:

if we write it in the usual way, interrogatively, and translate "nonne," the sense will be the same as if we omit the question, and understand it as strongly affirmative. Hence it is, I conceive, that Porson says in his Præf. ad Hecub. p. x, "in hisce interrogandi formulis negantem particulam pro arbitrio addunt vel omittunt Tragici." Not that it was originally immaterial whether the negative was inserted or not, but that to ask a question negatively is equivalent to an assertion. The case was originally parallel to that of οὐκοῦν and οἴκουν; "apud veteres Atticos utraque particula semper propriam suam significationem servat. Ego ubique scribo, adhibita, prout opus est, vel omissa interrogatione . So that perhaps the passage in the Œdipus Tyrannus might be pointed thus,

The first clause asserting directly, the second interrogatively. When therefore we are told to translate by " nonne," it might not have been amiss to have accounted for this ap-