4 Stratton L. Ladewig arguments used to refute deponency is historical in nature. The argu- ment suggests that deponency was a later development in which Latin’s grammatical framework was illegitimately imposed on the understand- ing of voice function in Greek. The proponents of this view suggest that deponency was foreign to ancient native Greek speakers of the language. Bernard Taylor claims, “... the Greeks themselves never found recourse to the concept [i.e., deponency] despite their close attention to the form and function of the language”3. So, he concludes, “Rather, what is needed is to go back to the point prior to the Late Latin grammarians where recourse to deponency for Greek was not deemed necessary, and work from there to understand the function of the three different voices, especially the middle”4. Jonathan T. Pennington follows Taylor’s reconstruction of the historical development of deponency5. He queries, “But is there any evi- dence that a Greek person would have ever conceived of a verb as being ‘deponent’”6? The denial of deponency is beginning to impact newer treatments on the Greek text. For example, Baylor University Press’s se- ries of handbooks on the Greek text have likewise adopted the approach of Taylor and Pennington, citing diachronic evidence as a reason for the decision7. However, what do ancient grammarians have to say on the discrep- ancy between voice form and voice function? The purpose of the present investigation is to explore the witnesses from ancient Greek (ca. 500 b.c.- a.d. 500) to the grammatical Sitz im Leben in order to establish the fact that deponency is a phenomenon with roots that reach back to before the Christian era. The texts of three significant ancient grammarians will be evaluated to determine the ancient perception of the relationship of the action of the verb to the subject when form and function are incongruent: Dionysius Thrax, Apollonius Dyscolus, and Macrobius. com/~cwconrad/ (accessed September 25, 2007); C.W. Conrad, “Observations on Ancient Greek Voice (LONG!)”, BGreek, web page, May 27, 1997, http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/ test-archives/html4/1997-05/19077.html (accessed April 26, 2007); C.W. Conrad, “New Observations on Voice in the Ancient Greek Verb”, PDF, November 19, 2002, http://www. ioa.com/~cwconrad/Docs/NewObsAncGrkVc.pdf (accessed April 26, 2007); C.W. Conrad, “Active, Middle, and Passive: Understanding Ancient Greek Voice”, PDF, December 16, 2003, http://www.ioa.com/%7Ecwconrad/Docs/UndAncGrkVc.pdf (accessed April 26, 2007). 3 Taylor, “Deponency and Greek Lexicography”, 174. 4 Taylor, “Deponency and Greek Lexicography”, 174. 5 Pennington, “Deponency in Koine Greek”, 63-64; Pennington, “Setting Aside ‘Depo- nency’”, 187-88. 6 Pennington, “Deponency in Koine Greek”, 63. 7 For example, see M.M. Culy, 1, 2, 3 John: A Handbook on the Greek Text (Waco, TX 2004) xx-xxii.