Questions from Athenaze

[gigas phoberos]

some sentences from Athenaze, please confirm my translations. (I pretty sure number 2 is wrong).

from page 142
1. τῶν παρόντῶν πολλοὶ μεθύοντες κωμάζουσιν many of those present, being drunk, revel

from page 149
2. οὶ σοὶ φιλοὶ βούλονται τὰ τῆς πόλεως γιγνώσκειν the friends want to know about the affairs of the city for you.

also from page 149
3. αἱ ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ διαλέγονται ἀλλήλαις περὶ τοῦ καλοῦ the women in the house discuss beauty with each other.


as always I am thankful for any help.
your humble servant,
Gigas Phoberos.

[Damoetas]

Number 1 is right, but you could put it a little differently in English: "Many of those present are drunk and reveling." μεθύοντες is a circumstantial participle describing the reveling, but we don't usually subordinate those things in English. (If we do, it implies that one of them is background information or a parenthetic afterthought, which isn't what the Greek means.)

In number 2, you're mistaking σοὶ for the dative of the personal pronoun; it's actually the possessive adjective σός, σή, σόν, "your." Any time you see a form like σοι inside a noun phrase, between the article and the noun (e.g. οἱ and φίλοι), you can be virtually certain that it's not the dative of the personal pronoun (even apart from matters of accent: the pronoun is enclitic).

EDIT: PS: Don't hesitate to translate with a present continuous tense ("is X-ing") when the Greek sentence is talking about action that is in progress at the time of speaking. The Greek present tense is used both for that and to describe things that generally or habitually occur. Your sentence 1 looks like action in progress; sentence 3 could be either in progress or habitual.

[LSorenson]

Line 3

3. αἱ ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ διαλέγονται ἀλλήλαις περὶ τοῦ καλοῦ the women in the house discuss beauty with each other.

ὁ καλος = νεανιας οραιος (a good-looking young man)
ἡ καλὴ = κορη οραια (a good-looking young woman)

So I take περὶ τοῦ κάλοῠ as "about the young stud-muffin"

[spiphany]

Line 3

3. αἱ ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ διαλέγονται ἀλλήλαις περὶ τοῦ καλοῦ the women in the house discuss beauty with each other.

ὁ καλος = νεανιας οραιος (a good-looking young man)

or τὸ καλόν (= κάλλος )
I tend to find a reading with the neuter/abstract noun meaning more plausible -- the use of the article where we would omit it in English is typical of Greek -- but I guess there's nothing that would completely rule out the other reading.

[Damoetas]

Yes - it's a contrived sentence anyway, so how can we rule anything out? But since τὸ καλόν is such a major topic in Greek philosophy, and it's something that you διαλέγεσθαι about, I would guess that's what the authors of Athenaze had in mind.