Iliad 1:87

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Bert
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Iliad 1:87

Post by Bert »

εὐχόμενος δαναοῖσι θεοπροπίας ἀναφαίνεις,
I learned that the participle can be translated as temporal, using when/while or after, depending on the tense in relation to the main verb.

If I do that in Iliad 1:87 I get something like; ...while praying you reveal oracles to the Greeks.
Two translations that I checked have it like; ...you pray while you reveal the oracles to the Greeks.
In this last case I would have expected the first word in this line to be a finite verb, and the last one a participle.
Am I missing something?

Skylax
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Post by Skylax »

It is because of the idiomatic structure ᾧ ... εὐχόμενος ... ἀναφαίνεις where the relative pronoun belongs to the participle agreeing with the subject, not to the verb of the relative clause (literally "to whom praying you reveal"). A literal translation don't fit in French, it is maybe impossible in English, too. But in Greek, it is very common. Otherwise the meaning is effectively "When (or even "if") you pray to Apollo, you reveal..."

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