anabasis 1.9.21

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daivid
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anabasis 1.9.21

Post by daivid »

Xenophon:
καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸ τοῦτο οὗπερ αὐτὸς ἕνεκα φίλων ᾤετο δεῖσθαι, ὡς συνεργοὺς ἔχοι, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπειρᾶτο συνεργὸς τοῖς φίλοις κράτιστος εἶναι τούτου ὅτου αἰσθάνοιτο ἕκαστον ἐπιθυμοῦντα.
In one place word order was especially problematic for me. Putting ἕνεκα next to φίλων invites one to link to to and this is especially so in that the genitive that ἕνεκα actually relates to is οὗπερ. φίλων is separated from the verb it actually relates to ( δεῖσθαι) by ᾤετο.
Wouldn't a more neutral word order be this?
καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸ τοῦτο οὗπερ ἕνεκα αὐτὸς ᾤετο φίλων δεῖσθαι, ὡς συνεργοὺς ἔχοι, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπειρᾶτο συνεργὸς τοῖς φίλοις κράτιστος εἶναι τούτου ὅτου αἰσθάνοιτο ἕκαστον ἐπιθυμοῦντα.

Even with that all sorted out I am still a little uncertain. This is my current translation:
for even in relation to the very thing on account of which he felt his lack of friends that he should have collaborators so too he strived to be the best collaborator to his friends (of-this) of whatever he should perceive each to desire.

Two questions:
I now think that the “the very thing on account of which” (αὐτὸ τοῦτο οὗπερ αὐτὸς) relates to his need for collaborators. Is that correct?
Why τούτου ὅτου? Wouldn't ὅτου its own convey what ever just as well?
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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by Hylander »

An anacolouthon.

. . . the very thing on account of which he thought he needed friends, [namely], so that he would have collaborators -- he himself also tried to be the most effective collaborator for his friends for that which he perceived each one to want/be desirous of.
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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by daivid »

Hylander wrote:An anacolouthon.

. . . the very thing on account of which he thought he needed friends, [namely], so that he would have collaborators -- he himself also tried to be the most effective collaborator for his friends for that which he perceived each one to want/be desirous of.
It is reassuring to know there is a reason I found it so tricky but what would be needed to be added to remove the anacolouthon?
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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by daivid »

MarkAntony198337 wrote:In regard to the second question, might "αὐτὸ τοῦτο" be intended as antithetical to "τούτου ὅτου"? The "precise object" for which he thought he needed friends himself, namely, to have people who would collaborate with him, seems to be contrasted with his being a collaborator for his friends in turn, and in that capacity endeavouring to attain for them whatever he perceived each of them to desire.
or possibly whatever exactly he perceived each to desire ?
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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by Hylander »

whatever exactly he perceived each to desire ?
Yes, you're right. This is a "general" relative clause, as ὅτου and the optative indicate.

I think that fronting αὐτὸς immediately after the relative οὗπερ and before the postposition ἕνεκα puts greater on αὐτὸς, which is balanced by his friends' need for him as collaborator: the very thing that he himself thought he needed friends for, namely, to have collaborators. . . , he himself also tried to be the most effective collaborator for his friends for whatever he felt each of them was desirous of.

I wouldn't think of this as a less "natural" word order--the word order as it stands is what came naturally to Xenophon. Nor can the sentence be modified to "remove" the anacolouthon: again, that's just the way Xenophon expressed himself.

καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸ τοῦτο οὗπερ ἕνεκα αὐτὸς ᾤετο φίλων δεῖσθαι, ὡς συνεργοὺς ἔχοι, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπειρᾶτο -- we expect a transitive verb after this, a verb for which αὐτὸ τοῦτο would be the direct object, something like "he tried to accomplish for his friends", but instead X. switches to "he tried to be the most effective collaborator for his friends . . . "

συνεργὸς takes a genitive complement: "collaborator of whatever . . . ", i.e, "collaborator for obtaining whatever . . . "

δεῖσθαι here is best translated "need," not "lack."
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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by daivid »

Hylander wrote: I think that fronting αὐτὸς immediately after the relative οὗπερ and before the postposition ἕνεκα puts greater on αὐτὸς, which is balanced by his friends' need for him as collaborator: the very thing that he himself thought he needed friends for, namely, to have collaborators. . . , he himself also tried to be the most effective collaborator for his friends for whatever he felt each of them was desirous of.

I wouldn't think of this as a less "natural" word order--the word order as it stands is what came naturally to Xenophon. Nor can the sentence be modified to "remove" the anacolouthon: again, that's just the way Xenophon expressed himself.
What I said was neutral not natural word order. It follows that as Xenophon was a native speaker that what he wrote was natural but if word order is being used to stress something then my expectation would be that there is a order of words that an Ancient Greek would choose if he did not want anything to have salience.

That is surely even more true of an anacolouthon. To say that there is an anacolouthon means a divergence from expected syntax in that the sequence is a little disjointed. That surely does imply that there is a way Xenophon could have expressed the same general sense without an anacolouthon. To understand the choices Xenophon made do we do not need be aware of the more obvious choices that he did not make? Also for me as a beginner, with as yet weak grasp of the more standard forms I feel the need to know what more conventional forms are when I am reading sentences that don't stick to them.

Okay that's my defense for asking the questions. You have gone a considerable way to answering them. Thanks
Hylander wrote:καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸ τοῦτο οὗπερ ἕνεκα αὐτὸς ᾤετο φίλων δεῖσθαι, ὡς συνεργοὺς ἔχοι, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπειρᾶτο -- we expect a transitive verb after this, a verb for which αὐτὸ τοῦτο would be the direct object, something like "he tried to accomplish for his friends", but instead X. switches to "he tried to be the most effective collaborator for his friends . . . "
That is a big help, Thanks.
Hylander wrote:συνεργὸς takes a genitive complement: "collaborator of whatever . . . ", i.e, "collaborator for obtaining whatever . . . "
I missed that detail. Again thanks.
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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by seneca2008 »

Most of this seems to have been cleared up but it might be helpful daivid if you learn that ἕνεκα is usually postpositive ie that it comes after the word it refers to. Hylander mentions that it is postpositive but I thought I would highlight it. Here is what Smyth 1665 says :

a. ἕνεκα and χάριν (usually) and ἄνευ (sometimes) are postpositive. The retention of the postpositive use of περί may be due to the influence of ἕνεκα. In poetry many prepositions are postpositive.
To say that there is an anacolouthon means a divergence from expected syntax in that the sequence is a little disjointed. That surely does imply that there is a way Xenophon could have expressed the same general sense without an anacolouthon. To understand the choices Xenophon made do we do not need be aware of the more obvious choices that he did not make?
Also I am not sure you have grasped what anacoluthon is. Here I think it is a rhetorical device and it means that the grammatical construction changes from what a reader might have assumed when starting out reading the sentence. It requires some fluency to spot this and beginners are always foxed by it. Again Smyth (3004-8) is helpful on this here. It might seem disjointed to us but to a Greek it would seem a quite normal device (although possibly surprising) as it does when employed by English speakers. You need to understand that it is a rhetorical effect. We all use anacoluthon frequently when speaking for good and bad reasons!
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by mwh »

I wouldn’t view the anacoluthon here as any kind of rhetorical device, and I don’t think Xen’s readers would either. It seems entirely natural, as his syntax shifts slightly as the sentence goes along. As Hylander put it, “the word order as it stands is what came naturally to Xenophon.”

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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by daivid »

seneca2008 wrote:Most of this seems to have been cleared up but it might be helpful daivid if you learn that ἕνεκα is usually postpositive ie that it comes after the word it refers to. Hylander mentions that it is postpositive but I thought I would highlight it. Here is what Smyth 1665 says :

a. ἕνεκα and χάριν (usually) and ἄνευ (sometimes) are postpositive. The retention of the postpositive use of περί may be due to the influence of ἕνεκα. In poetry many prepositions are postpositive.
I did know this but I also have heard that it sometimes isn't. I don't read fast enough to get a feel for whether that is "so rare that it might as well be never" or "fairly often". And so when the word order means I can see no genitive to the immediate left the siren call of the genitive to the right wins out.
mwh wrote:I wouldn’t view the anacoluthon here as any kind of rhetorical device, and I don’t think Xen’s readers would either. It seems entirely natural, as his syntax shifts slightly as the sentence goes along. As Hylander put it, “the word order as it stands is what came naturally to Xenophon.”
I do get that to an Ancient Greek the syntax is perfectly natural - so much so that were we to have an Ancient Greek native speaker as a member s/he would be at a loss to explain why it is fine and why anything I would produce if I were to try the same thing isn't. And until I get to understand why they will continue to trip me up.

---

Having said that having just spent half and hour staring at it, the sentence now makes absolute sense. The infinitive which ἐπειρᾶτο requires is εἶναι which has the subject "συνεργὸς τοῖς φίλοις κράτιστος" and that in turn could be replaced by αὐτὸ τοῦτο from the first half.
Hence the bare skeleton is καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸ τοῦτο ἐπειρᾶτο αὐτὸ τοῦτο εἶναι. meaning For in relation to the very object he tried to be the very object. The actual sentence is what you get when you flesh it out to convey something more useful.

Except I can no longer see any anacoluthon at all. :( So I must have gone wrong somewhere.
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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by seneca2008 »

I wouldn’t view the anacoluthon here as any kind of rhetorical device, and I don’t think Xen’s readers would either. It seems entirely natural, as his syntax shifts slightly as the sentence goes along. As Hylander put it, “the word order as it stands is what came naturally to Xenophon.”
My starting point was my experience of hearing in classes people misunderstanding what an anacoluthon was, characterising it as some sort of grammatical inconsistency which need to be corrected or ironed out rather than a common feature of Greek . Daivid's suggestion that something could be done to the text to "normalise" it to remove the anacoluthon (even though we are to understand he wants to do this in his head or by reading rather than formal textual amendment) reminded me of this.

I read all of Xenophon as a piece of rhetoric. So the various devices he uses which form part of his style are all elements of his rhetorical practice. His (at times disarming) simplicity has parallels with the effect achieved by Lysias in On the Murder of Eratosthenes. What you consider "entirely natural" I think is the effect of rhetoric rather than evidence of its absence.

As you would expect I think " and I don’t think Xen’s readers would either" is a bold claim. But rather than press you on that I will merely observe that we (including Daivid) are readers of Xenophon and that our reception of this text also matters just as much as an appeal to other "supposed readers" whom we are not able to interrogate.

I posted a link to Smyth which lists several examples of anacoluthon which he describes thus: "Anacoluthon is sometimes real, sometimes only slight or apparent. It is natural to Greek by reason of the mobility and elasticity of that language; but in English it could not be tolerated to an equal extent because our tongue—a speech of few inflected forms—is much more rigid than Greek." While I have problems with the way in which this is expressed, for example, in that it makes no allowance for the register in which Greek texts are written and that he like you slips in an unexplained "natural", at least it clearly expresses that Greek has to be taken on its own terms and not to be imagined as some form of coded English. We have had enough experience of that to last another lifetime!
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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by seneca2008 »

Except I can no longer see any anacoluthon at all. :( So I must have gone wrong somewhere.
Daivid doesnt Hylander's post make the anacoluthon clear?
καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸ τοῦτο οὗπερ ἕνεκα αὐτὸς ᾤετο φίλων δεῖσθαι, ὡς συνεργοὺς ἔχοι, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπειρᾶτο -- we expect a transitive verb after this, a verb for which αὐτὸ τοῦτο would be the direct object, something like "he tried to accomplish for his friends", but instead X. switches to "he tried to be the most effective collaborator for his friends . . . "
Persuade tibi hoc sic esse, ut scribo: quaedam tempora eripiuntur nobis, quaedam subducuntur, quaedam effluunt. Turpissima tamen est iactura, quae per neglegentiam fit. Et si volueris attendere, maxima pars vitae elabitur male agentibus, magna nihil agentibus, tota vita aliud agentibus.

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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by daivid »

seneca2008 wrote:
Except I can no longer see any anacoluthon at all. :( So I must have gone wrong somewhere.
Daivid doesnt Hylander's post make the anacoluthon clear?
καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸ τοῦτο οὗπερ ἕνεκα αὐτὸς ᾤετο φίλων δεῖσθαι, ὡς συνεργοὺς ἔχοι, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπειρᾶτο -- we expect a transitive verb after this, a verb for which αὐτὸ τοῦτο would be the direct object, something like "he tried to accomplish for his friends", but instead X. switches to "he tried to be the most effective collaborator for his friends . . . "
In a word no. I read thru that carefully and I posted what I came up with. True, εἶναι is not a transitive but I don't see why that makes a difference here.

I do get that anacoluthon is not a mistake on the part of Xenophon
. But Smyth says " is inadvertent or purposed deviation in the structure of a sentence ". "Deviation from what?" seems a perfectly valid question to ask and don't think I will understand this sentence until I can find an answer to this. The explanation as to why that question should not be answered seems to be that that would be correcting Xenophon and implying he had made mistake. Not at all. Unless someone can answer that question they can not understand the freedom that Xenophon is taking advantage of. I can't help feeling that anyone who doesn't feel that question to be appropriate has a sufficient grasp of Greek that they already know the answer.

I, however, don't.


PS In attempting to reply to your post I clicked the wrong button and edited it instead. I apologize if I have failed to put it back to how it was before. :(
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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by John W. »

Daivid - if I may be permitted to try to explain, the point is that, in the second half of the sentence, the structure changes from what one would have expected on the basis of its first half.

When reading the first half of the sentence, one naturally (I would say) expects that αὐτὸ τοῦτο will be the object of the second half - in other words, as Hylander has said, that the sentence will run something like:

'And that very thing on account of which he thought he needed friends, ... that is what he tried to accomplish for his friends.'

However, despite having 'set up' this expectation by means of αὐτὸ τοῦτο, the sentence does not continue in this way; instead, a fresh construction is started, which one would not have expected from the sentence's opening. The αὐτὸ τοῦτο is lost sight of, and the words 'he himself also tried to be the most effective collaborator ...' are effectively an independent statement, which could stand in its own right; it does not follow on 'naturally' as the expected conclusion to the first part of the sentence.

Unsurprisingly, there are examples of this sort of thing in Thucydides, one of which I could exhume for you if it would help.

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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by daivid »

John W. wrote: 'And that very thing on account of which he thought he needed friends, ... that is what he tried to accomplish for his friends.'
Do you mean something like:
καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸ τοῦτο οὗπερ ἕνεκα αὐτὸς ᾤετο φίλων δεῖσθαι, καὶ τοῦτο αὐτὸς ἐπειρᾶτο τοῦτο παρέχειν τοῖς αὐτοῦ φίλοις.

This of course would not really be what he intended to say which might be why he resorted to anacoluthon.

EDIT
Actually maybe it is just possible to keep the full sense without an anacoluthon:
καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸ τοῦτο οὗπερ ἕνεκα αὐτὸς ᾤετο φίλων δεῖσθαι, ὡς συνεργοὺς ἔχοι,, καὶ τοῦτο αὐτὸς ἐπειρᾶτο τοῦτο παρέχειν τοῖς αὐτοῦ φίλοις ὤν συνεργός αὑτοῖς.
I stress that I do not think that it is more correct to be without an anacoluthon.
It goes without saying that anything I come up with that is likely to be poor Greek but I can grasp that even were a native Ancient Greek speaker to rewrite Xenophon to avoid an anacoluthon the result would be as likely to be awkward rather than an improvement. It's just this is an exercise I need to do to understand in what the anacoluthon lies.
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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by Hylander »

Daivid, you're misunderstanding "deviation" in Smyth's definition. An anacolouthon is not a deviation from some normative sentence structure--it's a deviation in the sense that the structure of the sentence changes mid-stream.

Here, the sequence αὐτὸ τοῦτο οὗπερ ἕνεκα αὐτὸς ᾤετο φίλων δεῖσθαι, ὡς συνεργοὺς ἔχοι doesn't fit syntactically into the main clause of the sentence, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπειρᾶτο συνεργὸς τοῖς φίλοις κράτιστος εἶναι τούτου ὅτου αἰσθάνοιτο ἕκαστον ἐπιθυμοῦντα. αὐτὸ τοῦτο is just a dangling accusative (or nominative) that doesn't get attached as a complement to anything as the main clause proceeds. X. changes the structure mid-stream. There's no normative sentence that underlies this.
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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by swtwentyman »

For what it's worth, (I'm not sure it's saying anything new), Mather & Hewitt have here:

αὐτὸ τοῦτο: has no construction as the sentence stands; ὡς ἔχοι is in apposition with it. Translate, and for this very reason for which he thought he himself needed friends -- namely, that he might have coworkers, -- he, too, on his part, tried to be for his friends a most efficient coworker, etc.

and Goodwin & White:

αὐτὸ τοῦτο οὗπερ ἕνεκα, κ.τ.λ. he tried to secure for his friends that very object for which he thought that he needed friends himself -- viz. that he might have co-workers, -- he tried (I say) also on his own part to be a most vigorous co-worker with his friends, etc. αύτὸ τοῦτο would naturally have been the object of some verb like πράττειν after ἐπειρᾶτο, but for this simple αὐτὸ τοῦτο πράττειν the amplified expression συνεργὸς ... εἶναι ... ἐπιθυμοῦντα was substituted, to express the same idea more fully. Cf. ἃ ... καίουσιν in iii 5.5

there we find

...in both cases a more definite expression (here καίουσι) is substituted by anacoluthon for a more general one like ποιοῦσι.

Coincidentally this is in today's reading.

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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by daivid »

Hylander wrote:Daivid, you're misunderstanding "deviation" in Smyth's definition. An anacolouthon is not a deviation from some normative sentence structure--it's a deviation in the sense that the structure of the sentence changes mid-stream.

I do understand that but I still would like to know what you would get if the sentence did not deviate but continued in a way that involved no deviation.
Hylander wrote:Here, the sequence αὐτὸ τοῦτο οὗπερ ἕνεκα αὐτὸς ᾤετο φίλων δεῖσθαι, ὡς συνεργοὺς ἔχοι doesn't fit syntactically into the main clause of the sentence, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπειρᾶτο συνεργὸς τοῖς φίλοις κράτιστος εἶναι τούτου ὅτου αἰσθάνοιτο ἕκαστον ἐπιθυμοῦντα. αὐτὸ τοῦτο is just a dangling accusative (or nominative) that doesn't get attached as a complement to anything as the main clause proceeds. X. changes the structure mid-stream. There's no normative sentence that underlies this.
This I can't get my head around. My brain can't grasp what a dangling accusative means unless I can see what it would look like if it weren't. I have made the attempt to rewrite it (καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸ τοῦτο οὗπερ ἕνεκα αὐτὸς ᾤετο φίλων δεῖσθαι, ὡς συνεργοὺς ἔχοι,, καὶ τοῦτο αὐτὸς ἐπειρᾶτο τοῦτο παρέχειν τοῖς αὐτοῦ φίλοις ὤν συνεργός αὑτοῖς.) and it would really help to know whether that does avoid a dangling accusative or whether it is completely wrong.

There is a shade of color that most English speakers see as orange and most (all?) French speakers see as rouge. I once missed a train because I was frantically looking for a red thing to stamp my ticket - it never occurred to me that all the orange things were intended. Despite this both English and French speakers will agree on what is cardinal rouge/red.
If an English speaker is shown that shade of orange an is told it is rouge it is not unreasonable to then ask 'what is cardinal rouge'."
swtwentyman wrote:For what it's worth, (I'm not sure it's saying anything new), .

Mather & Hewitt
didn't help at all but Goodwin & White is very helpful though it will still need a lot of thought before I get it.
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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by Hylander »

The anacolouthon doesn't have a "meaning" in and of itself--it's simply a syntactic discontinuity.

Try this rough effort at English translation:

And the reason why he thought he needed friends himself, namely, to have collaborators--well, he himself also tried to be the most effective collaborator for his friends in obtaining for them what he saw each of them wanted.

The main clause leaves "the reason why . . . " dangling, with no relation to the main clause. The anacolouthon doesn't have a "meaning" in itself, but there's no point in rewriting the sentence to make the two parts fit together.

But you're right that αὐτὸ τοῦτο . . . raises the expectation that it will be the object of a transitive verb (or maybe the subject of a transitive or intransitive verb), but the rest of the sentence disappoints that expectation and moves off in a different direction.
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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by mwh »

What others have told you, I too am having a go at helping you.

daivid, can you recognize that as an anacoluthon? (Not quite the same as Xenophon’s, but still.)

In the terms of Smyth’s definition, there’s a deviation in the (syntactical) structure of the sentence. If you ask what it deviates from, the only answer is that it deviates from its original course, the course on which it appeared to be set when it started out, whatever that may have turned out to be if it hadn't deviated. You want to ask what course it would have taken if it hadn't deviated. But that’s a hypothetical, to which there can be no certain answer since it didn’t happen. As a historian I'm sure you understand that. You don't try to explain something that happened, however unexpectedly, by speculating what would have happened if it hadn't. Of course we could try writing a sentence that continued as it started out, but the point is that Xenophon didn’t. We should focus more on what Xenophon wrote (or dictated) than on what he didn’t.
seneca2008 wrote: I read all of Xenophon as a piece of rhetoric. So the various devices he uses which form part of his style are all elements of his rhetorical practice.
You could say (as some have) that everything we say and do is rhetorical. (And it could also be said that everything we say and do is natural, as being part of human nature.) I knew you’d object to Smyth’s and Hylander’s and daivid’s and my use of “natural,” and naturally the distinction Smyth draws could indeed be deconstructed (though not usefully, I think). What I might object to is describing Xenophon’s language in terms of his use of “devices.” To see the anacoluthon here as a “rhetorical device” (or any more of one than his ananacoluthonic sentences) seems to me misguided.
As you would expect I think "and I don’t think Xen’s readers would either" is a bold claim. But rather than press you on that I will merely observe that we (including Daivid) are readers of Xenophon and that our reception of this text also matters just as much as an appeal to other "supposed readers" whom we are not able to interrogate.
seneca, with respect, I’m tempted to say Give it a rest. You had said (boldly claimed?) “to a Greek it would seem a quite normal device,” implicitly distinguishing between Greeks and readers such as daivid. By Xen’s readers I meant his ancient Greek readers, obviously. And again I see no grounds for asserting that Greeks would regard the anacoluthon here as any kind of device, whether normal or abnormal.

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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by jeidsath »

The sentence flows much better if you quote the one before it as well. Despite having read this chapter a few times, I had to re-read it in context before I understood it. I think that the appearance of anacolouthon comes from taking it out of context. It all seems very well connected in the Greek.
φίλους γε μήν, ὅσους ποιήσαιτο καὶ εὔνους γνοίη ὄντας καὶ ἱκανοὺς κρίνειε συνεργοὺς εἶναι ὅ τι τυγχάνει βουλόμενος κατεργάζεσθαι, ὁμολογεῖται πρὸς πάντων κράτιστος δὴ γενέσθαι θεραπεύειν. καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸ τοῦτο οὗπερ αὐτὸς ἕνεκα φίλων ᾤετο δεῖσθαι, ὡς συνεργοὺς ἔχοι, καὶ αὐτὸς ἐπειρᾶτο συνεργὸς τοῖς φίλοις κράτιστος εἶναι τούτου ὅτου αἰσθάνοιτο ἕκαστον ἐπιθυμοῦντα.
My attempt at a translation. As always, I appreciate mwh's and Hylander's, and others' critiques.
Verily towards friends, as many as he might make and might believe to be kindly disposed and might judge worthy to be his fellow workers at whatever he was then planning to accomplish, it is agreed from all that he became the strongest indeed in helping. And for these same plans, for the reason of which he thought himself to be in need of friends, so he might have fellow workers, even he himself attempted to be the strongest fellow worker towards his friends in this, whatever he might think each one desired.
EDIT: Some minor changes above. Looking over it, I have the feeling that that τούτου must refer back to the τοῦτο, which refers to the to ὅ τι τυγχάνει βουλόμενος κατεργάζεσθαι, but now it's their plans, not his, so I'm not sure of this.
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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by Hylander »

In the first sentence, φίλους, the first word of the sentence, is the direct object of θεραπεύειν. So "towards friends" is not quite right. In English, the word order has to be adjusted. "It is agreed by all that he became the strongest/very strong to serve his friends, as many as . . . ".

But that doesn't remove the anacoluthon from the next sentence. αὐτὸ τοῦτο still has no function in the main clause. τούτου ὅτου doesn't refer back to αὐτὸ τοῦτο: the ὅτου clause explains τούτου. "for these very plans" -- "For" eliminates the anacoluthon in English translation, but there's nothing in the Greek that motivates it. αὐτὸ τοῦτο is still on its own.

"whatever he might think" This isn't exactly wrong, but αἰσθάνοιτο is simply imperfect optative in a "general" relative clause in "secondary sequence", i.e., after a "historical" tense verb in the main clause (ἐπειρᾶτο), so "whatever he thought" would be equally accurate and more idiomatic. After a present-tense verb (in "primary" sequence), it would be subjunctive + αν : καὶ αὐτὸς πειρᾶται συνεργὸς τοῖς φίλοις κράτιστος εἶναι τουτου οτου αν αισθανηται ἕκαστον ἐπιθυμοῦντα. The point is αἰσθάνοιτο isn't a potential optative. (This is also true of the optatives in the first sentence, ποιήσαιτο, γνοίη, κρίνειε.)
Last edited by Hylander on Tue Jun 14, 2016 3:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by jeidsath »

Thank you for the critique. I need to get back to composition work and really learn the moods.
"for these very plans" -- "For" eliminates the anacoluthon in English translation, but there's nothing in the Greek that motivates it. αὐτὸ τοῦτο is still on its own.
Isn't the γάρ in καὶ γὰρ αὐτὸ τοῦτο a case of inversion?
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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by Hylander »

καὶ γὰρ is a relatively common combination of particles.

See Smyth 2813-2815.

2814: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... 99.04.0007

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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by seneca2008 »

MWH

All I wanted to do was to draw attention to the idea that "rhetoric" is a slippery term. What one reader might regard as an example of a particular rhetorical practise (or device) others might see as "normal" , "regular" or "natural". Rhetoric is surely something more than the use of various figures, or strategies listed in handbooks. I think that one should reflect on this. How one discusses it without lapsing into some reductive soup is difficult. I also wished to make the point perhaps not obvious to other readers that Xenophon's "simplicity" is hard won not through some employment of "natural" language but as a result of careful rhetorical training.

And now I will take your advice and "give it a rest". :D
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Re: anabasis 1.9.21

Post by Hylander »

Joel, three more small suggestions:

ἱκανοὺς κρίνειε συνεργοὺς εἶναι ὅ τι τυγχάνει βουλόμενος κατεργάζεσθαι,

ἱκανοὺς -- "capable"

βουλόμενος -- βουλομαι "want", not βουλευομαι "resolve, plan"

κατεργάζεσθαι -- must depend directly on ἱκανοὺς, not βουλόμενος: "collaborators capable of accomplishing whatever he happened to want". Otherwise, the phrase ὅ τι τυγχάνει βουλόμενος κατεργάζεσθαι wouldn't be anchored syntactically in the clause--we would embark on another anacoluthon, and this one would be unbearably violent, disrupting the entire sentence.

". . . friends, however many he made and knew to be well-disposed and judged collaborators capable of accomplishing whatever he happened to want"

Again, you might expect τυγχάνοι (optative in general relative clause in secondary sequence; would be subjunctive + αν in primary sequence), but the mss. have τυγχάνει. Someone (Schäfer) actually conjectured τυγχάνοι, but Marchant's Oxford text prints τυγχάνει, which would have been pronounced the same after the classical period. We saw this same vacillation a few weeks ago, I think.
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