Greek: syntax of dilemmas in the past

Question

I want to find out how Greek expresses the protases of conditions like the following:

What was I to do? If I remained in Athens I would be killed; if I left, I would lose all my property.

This is a type of past-tense condition, but it isn't one of the usual three types discussed in grammars and textbooks. It's not an open condition (the speaker knows now whether he stayed or left); it's not a counterfactual (one of the two options must be true); and it's not a general condition (not a recurring situation). Rather, it's a kind of free indirect speech, in which we are being asked to take the viewpoint of the speaker at that moment in the past.

If the same condition were about the present, it would be easy: If I remain in Athens I will be killed is a straightforward future more vivid. But what happens when it's shifted into the past?

I'm asking specifically about the protasis because I feel pretty sure that the apodosis would be expressed by ἔμελλον + infinitive. There are examples of such usages in Goodwin's Moods and Tenses (p. 99), but unfortunately none involve a condition. Can anyone point to an example of such a condition in a Greek text (or even better, to a grammatical discussion of this type)?

(ETA: added a related question about free indirect speech in Greek and Latin.)

Answer 1

Here is a potentially similar example of a past dilemma from Diogenes Laertius (3rd c. AD), Vitae Philosophorum, in which he uses the aorist optative for the protasis. The surrounding clause is in direct speech, so the apodosis is in an aorist infinitive. The OP is probably in a better position to judge whether this fits the case or not.

φησὶ δὲ Δημήτριος ὁ Μάγνης τραπεζίτῃ τινὶ παρακαταθέσθαι τἀργύριον, συνθέμενον, εἰ μὲν οἱ παῖδες ἰδιῶται γένοιντο, αὐτοῖς ἀποδοῦναι: εἰ δὲ φιλόσοφοι, τῷ δήμῳ διανεῖμαι. (VI.88)

Hicks' translation:

Demetrius of Magnesia tells a story that he entrusted a banker with a sum of money on condition that, if his sons proved ordinary men he was to pay it to them, but, if they became philosophers, then to distribute it among the people.