Symposium 174.a.3

[Cursus]

I'm picking my way back through the Symposium, and this line from fairly early in (Apollodorus is JUST beginning to tell the story of the banquet to his companions) is confusing me a bit:

"Ἔφη γάρ οἰ Σωκράτη ἐντυχεῖν λελυμένον τε καὶ τὰς βλαύτας ὑποδεδεμένον...."

My understanding of the grammar is that this is indirect speech, so Socrates is an accusative subject with an infinitive verb (ἐντυχεῖν). Ἐντυχεῖν then takes a dative object (οἰ), so I would translate this all as "for he [Aristodemus] said Socrates, having bathed and put slippers on his feet, chanced upon him [Aristodemus]...."

However all my translations have Aristodemus as the subject (or are at best ambiguous). Are they all wrong, or am I simply missing yet another freakish exception in Greek grammar?

[anphph]

In Attic, οἱ as dative is usually reflexive, meaning it refers back to the subject of the sentence, and is an equivalent of ἑαυτῷ. So we have here Aristodemus speaking about none other than himself. He is both the subject of έφη and the referent of οἱ.

I don't see how your translation (which seems to be correct) conflicts with the other translations you mentioned, but a rather harmless way to put it would be

ἔφη γάρ οἱ Σωκράτη ἐντυχεῖν λελουμένον τε καὶ τὰς βλαύτας ὑποδεδεμένον

[Aristodemus=He] said that Socrates chanced upon him [=Aristodemus] newly bathed and wearing shoes.


EDIT: I think I understand what your problem might be. οἱ is referring to the subject of the main sentence, which is the same as the subject of έφη, and not to the accusative subject of the accusative sentence, which you correctly identified as Σωκράτη.

[Cursus]

Your edit addressed what I was trying to get at. With Socrates as my expected subject, I couldn't understand why my translations all had Aristodemus as the subject instead. But given the reflexive meaning of the pronoun, I now see why. Thank you!