Apology 22e

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vir litterarum
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Apology 22e

Post by vir litterarum »

a)pokru/ptein: w(/ste me e)mauto\n+ a)nerwta=n+ u(pe\r tou= xrhsmou= po/tera decai/mhn a)\n ou(/twj w(/sper e)/xw e)/xein, mh/te ti sofo\j w)\n th\n e)kei/nwn sofi/an mh/te a)maqh\j th\n a)maqi/an+, h)\ a)mfo/tera a(\ e)kei=noi e)/xousin e)/xein. a)pekrina/mhn ou)=n e)mautw=| kai\ tw=| xrhsmw=| o(/ti moi lusiteloi= w(/sper e)/xw e)/xein.
P.A. 22e

Why does Plato use "mh/te" with the participle "on" instead of "oute"? The participle definitely has no conditional or general force.

modus.irrealis
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Post by modus.irrealis »

The most straightforward explanation is probably to see it as an influence of the construction δεξαίμην ἂν ... ἔχειν, where the participle ὦν refers to the subject of ἔχειν, and ἔχειν would have μή if it were made negative. This is mentioned in Smyth 2737.

vir litterarum
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Post by vir litterarum »

but isn't ἔχειν just a direct object wihout a subject, i.e. "...should I choose to be..." and hence has no subject?

modus.irrealis
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Post by modus.irrealis »

I see what you're saying, although the way I think of it is that ἔχειν still has a subject, but because it's used with δέχομαι, it has to be the same subject as the one δέχομαι has (δέχομαι being that kind of verb). But if you look at the examples in Smyth there, one is ὑπέσχετο εἰ?ήνην ποίησειν μήτε ὄμη?α δοὺς μήτε... and that seems to be parallel to this case.

vir litterarum
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Post by vir litterarum »

I think your explanation is probably the correct one. I guess I just do not understand why the usage of "me" transfers into the participial phrase merely because the infinitive would take it if it were negatived.

modus.irrealis
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Post by modus.irrealis »

For me, this sort of "attraction" is one of the characteristics of Greek, whether it's things like τοῖς νομίζουσι σοφοῖς εἶναι or how relative pronouns can take the case of the noun they refer back to and so on -- even things like the sequence of moods are similar. I'm not sure if there is a deeper reason than thinking there's a tendency to express the same concept with the same grammatical expressions as far as possible, e.g. in this case, all negatives should be expressed by μή.

IVSTINIANVS
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Post by IVSTINIANVS »

Off-topic but the next time you have a Betacode stream of text you may want to paste it into the Unicode inputter here:

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~tayl0010/letters ... etpos2.htm

It will generate a Unicode stream of Greek polytonic text for you:

ἀποκ?ύπτειν· ὥστε με ?μαυτὸν+ ἀνε?ωτᾶν+ ὑπὲ? τοῦ χ?ησμοῦ πότε?α δεξαίμην ἂν οὕτως ὥσπε? ἔχω ἔχειν, μήτε τι σοφὸς ὢν τὴν ?κείνων σοφίαν μήτε ἀμαθὴς τὴν ἀμαθίαν+, ἢ ἀμφότε?α ἃ ?κεῖνοι ἔχουσιν ἔχειν. ἀπεκ?ινάμην οὖν ?μαυτῷ καὶ τῷ χ?ησμῷ ὅτι μοι λυσιτελοῖ ὥσπε? ἔχω ἔχειν.

(I'm not sure what you're using the + signs for; I thought they stood for diaereses; in any event they're coming through untranslated.

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