Anabasis II.v.10

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Dean
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Anabasis II.v.10

Post by Dean »

Could someone explain the grammer to me here?<br />Thanx!

bingley
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Re:Anabasis II.v.10

Post by bingley »

Could you be a wee bit more specific? Perhaps if you quoted the sentence that's giving you trouble and a bit of context(you could cut and paste from Perseus), and gave some idea of what the problem was.

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Re:Anabasis II.v.10

Post by Dean »

[size=150]εἰ δὲ δὴ καὶ μανέντες σε κατακτείναιμεν, ἄλλο τι ἂν ἢ τὸν εὐεργέτην κατακτείναντες πρὸς+ βασιλέα τὸν μέγιστον ἔφεδρον ἀγωνιζοίμεθα; ὅσων δὲ δὴ καὶ οἵων ἂν ἐλπίδων ἐμαυτὸν στερήσαιμι, εἰ σέ τι κακὸν ἐπιχειρήσαιμι ποιεῖν, ταῦτα λέξω<br />I know that these are two indirect questions in conditions, but what about the translation? What about de da kai at the beginning?

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Re:Anabasis II.v.10

Post by bingley »

I had hoped somebody who was a bit more advanced than I am would take up the challenge ;D.<br /><br />I think the [size=150]δὴ καὶ is there for emphasis. So the first part would be something like, "Well just supposing we did go mad and kill you" <br /><br />We have a conditional with [size=150]εἰ plus aorist optative and [size=150]ἂν plus present optative in the first sentence. I would translate:<br /><br />Well, just supposing we did go mad and kill you, wouldn't we then, having killed a benefactor, have to fight the Great King, who had sat this one out? <br /><br />The conditional in the second sentence is similar but with two aorist optatives. I would translate:<br /><br />How many and of what sort are the hopes I would be depriving myself of if I were to lay hands on you to do something bad, I will tell you.<br /><br />I think in both sentences it's optative to show it's unlikely to happen (at least the speaker wants his interlocutor to think so). [size=150]λέξω is future, and doesn't need the change to optative for indirect speech. (I think ;D.) I think [size=150]ταυ^τα sums up everything he's said previously, so the actual words are not the object of [size=150]λέξω

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Dean
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Re:Anabasis II.v.10

Post by Dean »

Thanks for your analysis!<br /><br />I was wondering if I was on the right track. This is a fairly difficult passage and I came to some of the same conclusions you did. I just needed a little reinforcement. I guess I'm not doing so badly after all. I guess if you can tackle an author like Livy or Tacitus I guess you're ready for anything!<br />Thanks again!<br />Dean :)

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