What are the uses of the optative mood, and how would you identify its meaning in context?

The optative mood is more remote than the subjunctive, and only exists in Greek and a handful of other languages, so I think it’s useful to have students identify it and know how best to express it in translation (since, strictly speaking, we don’t have an equivalent mood in English). Most students will have come across it in (historical) dependent clauses (e.g. purpose, some temporals, some conditionals, and sometimes in indirect speech): I would expect a stronger student to remember how the optative works in isolation to express wishes (hence the name), and weak commands (e.g. ‘may you never die’ as opposed to ‘do not die’) as well, although these show up less often. For translation, I think it’s best to use the subjunctive in English, but to show an awareness of the remoteness of the idea where appropriate (translations using ‘would…’ or ‘may…’ are best to express this). For a student struggling to come up with examples, I would show them verbs as formed in the optative to see if they recognise the form in anything they’ve read (since it looks quite distinctive), or if not to try and get them to identify it and suggest possible meanings/translations from examples. For this purpose, the particle ‘ei)qe’ is a good ‘signpost’ to show a wish is being expressed. If the student is entirely unfamiliar with it, I would introduce them to the original sense in wishes and weak commands first, then show them how it can have a similar ‘remoteness’ in hypothetical clauses.