marcofurio wrote:In Chapter XIII there are some triky sentences I am not able to completely understand:
Οἱ δὲ ἡμέτεροι πατέρες ἡγεμόνες καὶ διδάσκαλοι ἡμῖν ἐγένοντο ὄτι οὐκ ἄμαχός ἐστιν ἡ τῶν Περσῶν δύναμις
Our fathers, leaders and masters ¿developed in us? that not invincible is the strength of the Persians
Here ἡγεμόνες and διδάσκαλοι don't have the article so they don't go with "our fathers" but rather with ἐγένοντο "became" -- ἡμῖν here you can translate as "for us" but I'd prefer translating as a possessive, so "and our fathers became our guides and teachers that the strength of the Persians is not invincible", i.e. "showed and taught us that..."
(Although I'm a little unsure just because I'm not sure if the ὅτι-clause like that can directly modify the nouns.)
Edit: I searched and this passage is based on a very similar one in Plato, so obviously you can, and so γίγνομαι can basically turn nouns into verb equivalents -- I mean διδάσκαλοι ἡμῖν ἐγένοντο = ἡμᾶς ἐδίδαξαν.
Ἐκεῖνοι οὗν οἰ ἄνδρες οὐ μόνον τῶν σωμάτων τῶν ἡμετέρων πατέρες ἐγένοντο, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς ἐλευθερίας τῆς ἡμετέρας.
Therefore those men not only of the bodies of our fathers grew but... ¿of our freedom?
Here πατέρες is nominative so it doesn't go with the preceding ἡμετέρων but again with the verb, so "therefore those men became not only the fathers of our bodies, but also [the fathers] of our freedom."