Translation Help. Please, I'm going insane!

Here you can discuss all things Ancient Greek. Use this board to ask questions about grammar, discuss learning strategies, get help with a difficult passage of Greek, and more.
Post Reply
All5Horizons
Textkit Neophyte
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Mar 19, 2010 10:18 pm

Translation Help. Please, I'm going insane!

Post by All5Horizons »

During summer break, my Greek professor recommended that we practice Greek by translating a few paragraphs from Freeman's "Greek Reader for Schools." The excerpt I am trying is from Herodotus and I'm getting incredibly frustrated because I can't seem to get even the opening two sentences right. I have difficulty moving on because I keep wanting to go back and get the correct translation of the first two sentences. Below are the opening sentences and my attempt at a translation underneath.

ὁ δέ κῦρος, ὡς εἶδε τούς λυδούς ἐς μάχην τασσομένους ἐν πεδίῳ μεγάλῳ τε και ψιλῷ,φοβούμενος τήν ἵππον ἐποίησε τοιονδε. ὄσαι τῷ στρατῷ τῷ αὑτοῦ εἵποντο σκευοφόροι κάμηλοι, ταύτας πάσας συλλεξας, καί ἀφελών τά σκεύη, ἄνδρας ἐπ᾽ αὐτάς ἀνεβιβασεν.

"And Cyrus, when he saw the Lydians arranging into battle in a large and bare plain, was afraid of the cavalry made as such. How many baggage carrying camels followed the same army, all those gathering together, and after taking away the baggage, he put men upon them."

Now, I'm fairly confident in the first part of the first sentence and the second part of the second. But from ὄσαι to συλλεξας makes no sense to me. συλλεξας looks like a verb, but I can't tell its form (the ending seems like a 2nd person singular aorist, but also seems like its the second principle part...I'm not sure how either of those could be right). What am I doing wrong? Thank you so much for your help!

modus.irrealis
Textkit Zealot
Posts: 1093
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2006 6:08 am
Location: Toronto

Re: Translation Help. Please, I'm going insane!

Post by modus.irrealis »

συλλέξας is the aorist participle, so "after gathering all these". About ὅσος, it's often used to mean "all" or "every", so "as many baggage-carrying camels as were following the army = all the baggage-carrying camels that were..."

I'm not sure what you mean by "was afraid of the cavalry made as such". I would translate it as "being afraid of the cavalry, he did the following."

All5Horizons
Textkit Neophyte
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Mar 19, 2010 10:18 pm

Re: Translation Help. Please, I'm going insane!

Post by All5Horizons »

Ahhh, that makes so much more sense! Thank you very much, I can't tell you how crazy that was driving me.

Post Reply