The tragic aorist

This article discusses the 'tragic' or 'instantaneous' use of the aorist tense in ancient Greek. It argues that traditional interpretations are inadequate, since most examples are neither more 'instantaneous' nor more forceful than the equivalent presents. This type of aorist is invariably performative, and its function is to distance the speaker from a more forceful present performative. This often has the effect of making the utterance more polite, and this is discussed in the light of face-threat politeness theory.