Plb. 6.5.2

[pster]

ἀκριβέστερον μὲν οὖν ἴσως ὁ περὶ τῆς κατὰ φύσιν μεταβολῆς τῶν πολιτειῶν εἰς ἀλλήλας διευκρινεῖται λόγος παρὰ Πλάτωνι καί τισιν ἑτέροις τῶν φιλοσόφων: ποικίλος δ᾽ ὢν καὶ διὰ πλειόνων λεγόμενος ὀλίγοις ἐφικτός ἐστιν. διόπερ ὅσον ἀνήκειν ὑπολαμβάνομεν αὐτοῦ πρὸς τὴν πραγματικὴν ἱστορίαν καὶ τὴν κοινὴν ἐπίνοιαν, τοῦτο πειρασόμεθα κεφαλαιωδῶς διελθεῖν...

αὐτοῦ is giving me a fair bit of difficulty.

Possibility 1:

On account of which, as much of it as we understand to come up to practical history and common sense, we will attempt to go through that in summary fashion.

Possibility 2:

On account of which, in so far as we understand it to come up to practical history and common sense, we will attempt to go through that in summary fashion.

I like 2 better because I want to read ὅσον as adverbial. But I don't think ὑπολαμβάνομεν can take a genitive in that way.

I'm also confused as to where the neuter τοῦτο comes from. From the context, it seems we have a masculine subject. ὁ λόγος really seems to be our original subject. Then we switch to a part of it, it is true. But does that then allow us to just switch to neuter?

Here are a couple of translations available online, but as I said, after looking at LSJ, I don't see how ὑπολαμβάνομεν can take a genitive in this way:

I will therefore endeavour to give a summary of the subject, just so far as I suppose it to fall within the scope of a practical history and the intelligence of ordinary people.

I therefore will attempt to give a short summary of the theory, as far as I consider it to apply to the actual history of facts and to appeal to the common intelligence of mankind.

[Baker]

I'm also confused as to where the neuter τοῦτο comes from. From the context, it seems we have a masculine subject. ὁ λόγος really seems to be our original subject. Then we switch to a part of it, it is true. But does that then allow us to just switch to neuter?

Considering the LSJ entry at B.II.1-4, it seems it can switch to the neuter.

As for your first problem, I'm looking into it further. I also like your second choice but, like you, wonder about the genitive. Hmm... let me know what you come up with.

Eliot

[pster]

I'm sorry. Which LSJ entry?

[Baker]

Sorry --

οὗτος, αὕτη, τοῦτο

[pster]

OK, good. Thanks. Then I think I have to go with 1. τοῦτο is the demonstrative paired with the relative ὅσον which is also partitive to the genitive αὐτοῦ.

[Qimmik]

Pstr: Possibility 1 is right. ὅσον is correlative with τοῦτο. αὐτοῦ is partitive genitive, referring back to ὁ . . . λόγος (which we might translate as "subject" or "topic"). Something like this: "We will therefore try to cover succinctly as much of this subject as we consider pertinent [ἀνήκειν ὑπολαμβάνομεν] to practical history and common sense."

[pster]

I just hadn't seen the switch from masculine to neuter before in Polybius, or indeed in any writer. As you said before, he is not very careful. But he does usually manage to keep the genders straight!

Thanks to both of you.

[Qimmik]

I don't see a switch from masculine to neuter here. ὅσον and τοῦτο are both neuter--indefinite quantities. ὅσον doesn't modify αὐτοῦ (which is masculine because its antecedent is λόγος). ὅσον is accusative (object of ὑπολαμβάνομεν); αὐτοῦ is a "partitive" genitive depending on ὅσον. "As much of it . . ., that much . . . " Not sure I've made myself clear.

[pster]

I understand you. I don't have the energy to go to Smyth right now to look at ὅσοs. The last time I did, I spent a month doing so. You are definitely right that ὅσον doesn't modify αὐτοῦ. But despite having put it on the table, I don't like this partitive very much. I guess the partitive has to be used because αὐτοῦ is a pronoun. English is similar:

I want as much pizza as ...

I want as much of it as ...

But where to place the gender switch? English doesn't have genders. What about Italian?

I think in Italian one says for a feminine:

Voglio quanta di questa che...

google.it seems to confirm it.

It seems we could regard ὅσον as masculine and regard the switch to neuter as taking place only when we get to τοῦτο. I don't see how at this stage we can say for sure whether ὅσον is masculine or neuter.

[Qimmik]

I don't like this partitive very much.

I don't see any objection to the partitive here. The English analogy is not "I want as much pizza as" but rather "I want as much of the pizza as". "We will try to cover as much of it [the subject or if you prefer, the theory] as . . ." If the partitive construction is rejected, how else can the genitive αὐτοῦ be explained? There's really no need to posit a "gender shift" here. ὅσον doesn't have the same gender as αὐτοῦ; it's not the same as αὐτοῦ, it's a part of αὐτοῦ. ὅσον is neuter and correlative with neuter τοῦτο because it refers to an abstract quantity or amount or partial extent of the λόγος, not to the λόγος itself.

[Baker]

ὅσον doesn't have the same gender as αὐτοῦ; it's not the same as αὐτοῦ, it's a part of αὐτοῦ. ὅσον is neuter and correlative with neuter τοῦτο because it refers to an abstract quantity or amount or partial extent of the λόγος, not to the λόγος itself.

This makes it clearer...thanks.

Eliot

[pster]

The logic behind your interpretation is clear. But I can't find another example where the partitive genitive has two genders in play. In every example in LSJ, the genders are the same:

2. [select] with a partit. gen. in the principal clause, “Τρώων θάνον ὅσσοι ἄριστοι” Il. 12.13; “ἄριστοι ἵππων, ὅσσοι ἔασιν” 5.267 ; “Περσῶν ὅσοιπερ” A.Pers.441; οὔ τις . . ὀνόσσεται, ὅσσοι Ἀχαιοί of all the Achaeans, Il.9.55; [τῶν στρατειῶν] ὅσαι τε καὶ μὴ ἐπικίνδυνοι which are and which are not . . , Pl.R.467d; on τῶν ὅσοι, v. ὁ, ἡ“, τό” A. 111.

I spent about 50 hours looking at every example of osos in Thucydides and at an equal number of examples in the rest of Attic literature and I don't ever recall seeing a partitive where the gender of osos is different from the gender of the whole. And while the logic of saying it is "abstract" quantity or amount and therefore neuter is clear, there is a whole family of reasons that strongly suggest that the part and the whole should have the same gender.

Do you know of another example? Or do you remember having seen one?

[Qimmik]

A couple of unambiguous examples of ὅσον + singular feminine partitive genitive (i.e., no ambiguity between masculine and neuter) from Plato:

Cratylus 422c: λέγε μόνον, ὡς ὅσον γε δυνάμεως παρ᾽ ἐμοί ἐστιν συνεπισκέψομαι.

Charmides 157d: πολὺ δοκεῖ σωφρονέστατος εἶναι τῶν νυνί, καὶ τἆλλα πάντα, εἰς ὅσον ἡλικίας ἥκει, οὐδενὸς χείρων ὤν.

Hope this helps.

[pster]

Neither of those is a partitive genitive. Taking them in reverse order:

In the second example, oson is being used idiomatically to strengthen the superlative. When that happens, a form of dunamai has to be added. See Smyth 1086-1091, especially 1087. Moreover, this actually looks like an adverbial usage of oson, in which case a partitive is out of the question.

In the first example, oson is not a part of the lifetime/age/years. The genitive here is a rather bland genitive of quality. We are arriving at a point. Yes, it is a point in a lifetime, but that point is abstract and not a part of the whole. Socrates is talking about the youth's being at a certain point in his lifetime. He is not talking about some measureable part of the youth's lifetime/age/years. This I would argue frees up and indeed probably requires oson to be neuter since the point is indeed abstract (not having been explicitly stated other than through the pronoun oson).

Sorry Qimmik, I'm not trying to be argumentative, just trying to think it through as I see it.

[Qimmik]

In the second example, oson is being used idiomatically to strengthen the superlative. When that happens, a form of dunamai has to be added. See Smyth 1086-1091, especially 1087. Moreover, this actually looks like an adverbial usage of oson, in which case a partitive is out of the question.

This seems to refer to the first example. There's no superlative; there's no form of the verb dunamai: δυνάμεως is the genitive of the noun dunamis, and depends on ὅσον. ὅσον is the subject of ἐστιν. "as much ability as I have".

In the first example, oson is not a part of the lifetime/age/years. The genitive here is a rather bland genitive of quality. We are arriving at a point. Yes, it is a point in a lifetime, but that point is abstract and not a part of the whole. Socrates is talking about the youth's being at a certain point in his lifetime. He is not talking about some measureable part of the youth's lifetime/age/years. This I would argue frees up and indeed probably requires oson to be neuter since the point is indeed abstract (not having been explicitly stated other than through the pronoun oson).

Call it what you will, but ἡλικίας is a genitive depending on neuter ὅσον. He didn't write εἰς ὅσην ἡλικίαν, but he could have.

This I would argue frees up and indeed probably requires oson to be neuter since the point is indeed abstract (not having been explicitly stated other than through the pronoun oson).

Not sure I see the distinction you're drawing here, but why isn't this true of ὅσον ... αὐτοῦ in the passage from Polybius?

I don't mean to be argumentative, either--I'm trying to be helpful--but I think you're needlessly torturing yourself to find an abstruse explanation for a construction that seems perfectly transparent.

Let me add this: Your original problem was that τοῦτο is neuter. You assumed that its correlative ὅσον was masculine, because you thought that ὅσον had to be of the same gender as αὐτοῦ, which you correctly recognized as masculine because its referent is ὁ λόγος. But the examples from Plato show that ὅσον is not necessarily of the same gender as the noun that depends on it. In fact, ὅσον is neuter in both of the examples, and the genitive nouns that depend on it are both feminine: ὅσον δυνάμεως, ὅσον ἡλικίας. Doesn't that take care of your original problem?

[pster]

In the second example, oson is being used idiomatically to strengthen the superlative. When that happens, a form of dunamai has to be added. See Smyth 1086-1091, especially 1087. Moreover, this actually looks like an adverbial usage of oson, in which case a partitive is out of the question.

This seems to refer to the first example. There's no superlative; there's no form of the verb dunamai: δυνάμεως is the genitive of the noun dunamis, and depends on ὅσον. ὅσον is the subject of ἐστιν. "as much ability as I have".

Sorry, I got the examples backwards because of how they opened in my browser. Yes, of course there is no form of the verb. I was using a shorthand for what Smyth says: "a form, or a synonym, of dunamai". I don't know how I want to translate this example. I was incorrect to call it a superlative, but I take the matter of the idiom seriously because it pops up in other forms around osos and oios. I'll look for the references.

In the first example, oson is not a part of the lifetime/age/years. The genitive here is a rather bland genitive of quality. We are arriving at a point. Yes, it is a point in a lifetime, but that point is abstract and not a part of the whole. Socrates is talking about the youth's being at a certain point in his lifetime. He is not talking about some measureable part of the youth's lifetime/age/years. This I would argue frees up and indeed probably requires oson to be neuter since the point is indeed abstract (not having been explicitly stated other than through the pronoun oson).

Call it what you will, but ἡλικίας is a genitive depending on neuter ὅσον. He didn't write εἰς ὅσην ἡλικίαν, but he could have.

I don't agree. I don't think he could write that. That would mean he arrived at so much of his lifetime. But it makes no sense to arrive at a quantity.

This I would argue frees up and indeed probably requires oson to be neuter since the point is indeed abstract (not having been explicitly stated other than through the pronoun oson).

Not sure I see the distinction you're drawing here, but why isn't this true of ὅσον ... αὐτοῦ in the passage from Polybius?

No it is not true of the Polybius. oson in the Polybius passage refers to "as much (of the logos)". It is part of the logos. Indeed, Polybius could have used an adjectival oson, oson logon. In the example from Plato, the youth has arrived at a point in his life. The moment perhaps belongs to the life. But it is not part of the life. You cannot rewrite the Plato sentence with an adjectival oson without gymnastics or destruction of sense. If it were truly partitive genitive you could. Socrates isn't talking about a period of time. He's not talking about "as much time". He is talking about arriving at a moment. What kind of moment? A moment of time, in time. Time is a quality of the oson. It is a moment of time. It could have been a moment of forgetfulness. It could have been a moment of pleasure. Time is just a quality. But is not the whole from which a part is taken. Hence the genitive is not partitive.

I don't mean to be argumentative, either--I'm trying to be helpful--but I think you're needlessly torturing yourself to find an abstruse explanation for a construction that seems perfectly transparent.

I've been needlessly torturing myself since the day I took up Attic. Indeed, I thought that masochism was the point.

More seriously, I think it is far from transparent. You have yet to confront all the examples from LSJ where the gender of the part is the same as that of the whole. Is it your view that it is optional? That when one is using osos for a part, then one can either use the gender of the whole or the neuter? And what of oios? Do we have an option there also? And how about other pronouns?

[Qimmik]

I'll leave one last thought. The citations of the ὅσος entry in LSJ may all happen to follow the pattern of agreement in gender between ὅσος and a noun modified by it, but that doesn't mean that neuter ὅσον can't be used with a noun in the genitive of a different gender, and the examples from Plato demonstrate conclusively that extrapolating any such rule from the LSJ examples is just not valid.

[pster]

λέγε μόνον, ὡς ὅσον γε δυνάμεως παρ᾽ ἐμοί ἐστιν συνεπισκέψομαι

The really key question on which this Plato example turns is what is the relationship between συνεπισκέψομαι and ὡς ὅσον γε δυνάμεως παρ᾽ ἐμοί ἐστιν.

It seems to me ὡς ὅσον γε δυνάμεως παρ᾽ ἐμοί ἐστιν has to be adverbial because I don't think συνεπισκέψομαι is taking an object here.

OK, so then what makes it adverbial?

Not the ὡς. I think that following Smyth 1086-1091 (and perhaps Mastronarde at the end of U29), this has to be regarded as merely strengthening, especially given the lurking δυνάμεως.

So that leaves ὅσον. ὅσον here is playing an adverbial role in the main clause. Hence it has to be neuter.

I only say, I will meditate as much as is in my power.

That's the sense of it. I think one has to admit that the relative has an adverbial role in the main clause. Hence the neuter.

[Qimmik]

OK, so you have a neuter ὅσον with a feminine genitive noun, δυνάμεως, dependent on it. In the Polybius passage, why don't you have a neuter ὅσον -- neuter because it's correlative with τοῦτο -- with a masculine genitive pronoun, αὐτοῦ, dependent on ὅσον? Why aren't these parallel? It's really quite simple.

In the Plato passage I would actually suggest that there is an understood antecedent of ὅσον in the main clause: something like κατὰ τοσοῦτον [δυνάμεως]

[pster]

When it comes to oson, I'm a big believer in understood antecedents. I didn't want to bring up that matter since we have enough stuff to debate. In this particular case, I don't see the need for κατὰ τοσοῦτον since an adverbial τοσοῦτον would do just as well.

What I've been trying to emphasize about this particular Plato example is that it is so tied up with an idiom, that it doesn't shed any light. Indeed, it is because it is so tied up with the idiom that we can have oson functioning as an adverb in the main clause then functioning as a pronoun in the subordinate clause.

ὡς is a strengthener for superlatives because it is eliptical for an "is possible" phrase. Mastronarde talks about this explicitly. That "is possible" phrase has either dunamai or a synonym for it, such as dunamis. Smyth talks about this explicitly. So to say that dunamews depends on oson isn't really doing the situation justice. It is very very far from a run of the mill partitive genitive, if it is even one at all. Very very far from a paradigmatic case.

Now back to Polybius. Is ὅσον neuter because it's correlative with τοῦτο? First of all, τοσοῦτον is stricly speaking, grammatically speaking, the correlative of oson. But Polybius doesn't use that. He uses τοῦτο which, as Baker has pointed out, does change gender on a whim. So, I think it is much simpler to just assume that the gender switching goes on there. If τοῦτο came first, then it might be harder to hold this position. But the fact that it comes second makes it a lot easier.

I think that interpretation is much simpler. But the easiest way to get me to change my mind about it is to find some a crystal clear example where the part and the whole have different genders. I am willing to wager that they are few and far between.

[pster]

And one last point. And maybe this goes to the crux of the whole matter. While a priori, it is plausible to think that the amount or quanity is abstract and has to be expressed by a neuter, this is just not borne out in any way by the evidence. I looked specifically at hundreds of osos examples, and that is not the way these words work. It is only true when they are adverbial since the adverbs take the neuter form. But of course, adverbs cannot be partitive genitives anyway.

[Qimmik]

I'll make one more effort to convince you that ὅσον is neuter, but, more importantly, that you need to rethink the inference you've drawn about the use of ὅσος. Let's suppose that Polybius were to omit ὑπολαμβάνομεν and instead were to frame the clause introduced by ὅσον in the direct mode.

Instead of "I will therefore try to cover succinctly as much of the topic [or if you prefer, theory] as I consider to be relevant to practical history and common sense", suppose he were to write (in English translation) simply "I will therefore try to cover succinctly as much of the topic as is relevant to practical history and common sense".

If you are correct, he would have had to write:

διόπερ ὅσος ἀνήκει αὐτοῦ πρὸς τὴν πραγματικὴν ἱστορίαν καὶ τὴν κοινὴν ἐπίνοιαν, τοῦτο πειρασόμεθα κεφαλαιωδῶς διελθεῖν κτλ

That's really not intelligible Greek. Masculine ὅσος . . . αὐτοῦ sets up the expectation that a male human being is under discussion, not an abstract quantity or part of a thing. The reader would be forced to search for a human antecedent to ὅσος. And "how much of him" is just unintelligible.

[pster]

I think we are just going to have to agree to disagree about it.

[Qimmik]

Yes. We've conducted this discussion without descending into vituperation.

[pster]

I think that internet forums are tricky places that really lend themselves to misunderstandings. I participate on a half dozen different forums and I see all kinds of problems occur. It is very hard to tell what register someone is using. The posters are strangers to each other. Sometimes there are large age and maturity differences. And people make assumptions all the time about who they are dealing with. Somebody might be a beginner in one area, but an expert in another. Add to all that, that it is really really really slow. It is a horribly inefficient method for discussing anything detailed, especially where there are differences of opinion--maybe 5% as efficient as sitting across a table. I know sometimes I sound rather pushy, but that is just because I have a lot going on and really want to just get to the crux of some issue as quickly as possible. I cannot justify taking an entire afternoon to craft a post so that all possible misunderstandings are clarified. And that is often a complete waste of time because, if one does that, others often just skim it anyway. lol. I've been on the other side of it a bunch too, where somebody thinks because I have asked a string of naive questions that I'm supposed to accept their judgments on all matters.

Anyway, Qimmik, thanks for all the input. I'm very glad you have joined the forum. I was debating whether to say it to you for fear of jinxing things. But I am sure that some others would agree that your regular participation is the best thing that has happened around here in the last year.

[Qimmik]

Plato Menexenus 239e ὁ δὲ ὑὸς Αἰγύπτου τε καὶ Λιβύης ὅσον οἷόν τ᾽ ἦν ἐπιβαίνειν

Timaeus 42d τό τ᾽ ἐπίλοιπον, ὅσον ἔτι ἦν ψυχῆς ἀνθρωπίνης δέον

47c ὅσον τ᾽ αὖ μουσικῆς φωνῇ χρήσιμον πρὸς ἀκοὴν ἕνεκα ἁρμονίας ἐστὶ

61c, ψυχῆς τε ὅσον θνητόν

83a ὅσον μὲν οὖν ἂν παλαιότατον ὂν τῆς σαρκὸς τακῇ,

Sophocles OC 748, οὐκ ἄν ποτ᾽ ἐς τοσοῦτον αἰκίας πεσεῖν / ἔδοξ᾽, ὅσον πέπτωκεν ἥδε δύσμορος,

OT 1189-93, τίς γάρ, τίς ἀνὴρ πλέον / τᾶς εὐδαιμονίας φέρει / ἢ τοσοῦτον ὅσον δοκεῖν / καὶ δόξαντ᾽ ἀποκλῖναι;

Thucydides 3.104.1, ἐκάθηρε μὲν γὰρ καὶ Πεισίστρατος ὁ τύραννος πρότερον αὐτήν, οὐχ ἅπασαν, ἀλλ᾽ ὅσον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἱεροῦ ἐφεωρᾶτο τῆς νήσου

7.62.4. ἐς τοῦτο γὰρ δὴ ἠναγκάσμεθα ὥστε πεζομαχεῖν ἀπὸ τῶν νεῶν, καὶ τὸ μήτε αὐτοὺς ἀνακρούεσθαι μήτ᾽ ἐκείνους ἐᾶν ὠφέλιμον φαίνεται, ἄλλως τε καὶ τῆς γῆς, πλὴν ὅσον ἂν ὁ πεζὸς ἡμῶν ἐπέχῃ, πολεμίας οὔσης.

Xenophon, Anabasis 4.1.5: ἡνίκα δ᾽ ἦν ἀμφὶ τὴν τελευταίαν φυλακὴν καὶ ἐλείπετο τῆς νυκτὸς ὅσον σκοταίους διελθεῖν τὸ πεδίον, τηνικαῦτα ἀναστάντες ἀπὸ παραγγέλσεως πορευόμενοι ἀφικνοῦνται ἅμα τῇ ἡμέρᾳ πρὸς τὸ ὄρος.

[pster]

Thanks Qimmik. I'm afraid I won't have time to go through these until after I get back from making an offering at Segesta in person, ie the end of September, since I'm sure it will be a many round fight to the death!

In the meantime, since you seem to have more energy then the rest of us combined, I'd love it if you could give me your thoughts on the derivations found here:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=59595

I was very happy with them, but poor Nate was the only one brave enough to give me any feedback. I think you can just read the first and last post.

[mwh]

deleted

[mwh]

pster,

Just to clear up a point on the Cratylus quote that occupied so much of this discussion: you seem to have misusunderstood the ws. It's not the intensifying particle you find with superlatives, it introduces the clause ws ... sunepiskepsomai, dependent on lege monon. This ws is causal, common in Plato, used much like gar. "Just go on with your argument [[your "I only say" is a slip]], since/for/and I'll join in the investigation...". oson ge - estin is a clause within that, qualifying sunepiskepsomai: "as much as I can," "to the best of my ability." Hope this helps.

On your main question, it was correctly explained by Qimmik in his first post and further clarified in his subsequent ones. There's really no room for any divergent view.

[mwh]

pster,

Just to clear up a point on the Cratylus quote that occupied so much of this discussion: you seem to have misusunderstood the ws. It's not the intensifying particle you find with superlatives, it introduces the clause ws ... sunepiskepsomai, dependent on lege monon. This ws is causal, common in Plato, used much like gar. "Just go on with your argument [[your "I only say" is a slip]], since/for/and I'll join in the investigation...". oson ge - estin is a clause within that, qualifying sunepiskepsomai: "as much as I can," "to the best of my ability." Hope this helps.

On your main question, it was correctly explained by Qimmik in his first post and further clarified in his subsequent ones. There's really no room for any divergent view.