practice questions

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spiphany
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Re: practice questions

Post by spiphany »

Nooj wrote:καὶ οὐ φοβούμενος μὴ ἁμαρτάνοι τῇ ἑαυτοῦ γνώμῃ πιστεύων, ἐστρατεύσατο ἐπὶ τοὺς Πέρσας, ἵνα τούτους νικήσας τῆς Ἀσίας ἄρχοι.

I don't understand why an optative ἁμαρτάνοι is being used here. The fearing clause needs a secondary tense verb to introduce it in order for an optative to be used, but φοβούμενος is in the present tense...
The main verb of the sentence here is in the past tense: ἐστρατεύσατο
Participles generally express only aspect (eg. completed, simple, repeated), not tense (temporal sequence).
See Smyth §2043:
The tenses of the participle (except the future) not in indirect discourse are timeless, and denote only stage of action. When they stand in indirect discourse and represent the indicative, they denote time relatively to that of the main verb.
IPHIGENIE: Kann uns zum Vaterland die Fremde werden?
ARKAS: Und dir ist fremd das Vaterland geworden.
IPHIGENIE: Das ist's, warum mein blutend Herz nicht heilt.
(Goethe, Iphigenie auf Tauris)

NateD26
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Re: practice questions

Post by NateD26 »

perhaps i misunderstand the sentence...
we seem to have three participles and three verbs.

the purpose clause has a participle (antecedent to the verb that follows) and a verb.
the fear clause begins in a participle that within it we have a participle
and a verb, but isn't this clause as a whole an independent supplement to the clause you call main
by the fact it starts with the conjunction καί?

how is it that you treat only ἐστρατεύσατο as the main verb?
Last edited by NateD26 on Sun Nov 15, 2009 7:40 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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NateD26
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Re: practice questions

Post by NateD26 »

ok, i understand now my error. thanks.
Nate.

Nooj
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Re: practice questions

Post by Nooj »

Horribile dictu, I've neglected my Greek during the holidays and I'm revising all over again...from the front of the textbook. Heh.

If you lend me your help, δώσω σοι εὐχαριστίας.

English to Greek translations:

The fact that not even the children are afraid will aid the army.
τὸ τὰ παιδία μηδὲ φοβεῖσθαι ὡφελήσε τὴν στρατιαν.

Neither the sailor nor the juror will ever do any harm to any of those rich citizens.
οὔποτε οὔτε ὁ ναύτης οὔτε ὁ δικαστὴς τί τινας τῶν πλουσίων πολιτῶν ἐκείνων βλάψετον.

Greek to English translation:

Image

You will never understand, you wicked man, not even those small things. For it will seem good to the citizens to not trust...? The ταῦτα λέγειν is really tripping me up.
Dolor poetas creat.

modus.irrealis
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Re: practice questions

Post by modus.irrealis »

Nooj wrote:If you lend me your help, δώσω σοι εὐχαριστίας.
I believe it's better to say χάριν σοι εἴσομαι.
The fact that not even the children are afraid will aid the army.
τὸ τὰ παιδία μηδὲ φοβεῖσθαι ὡφελήσει τὴν στρατιάν.
With μηδέ there that means "the fact that the children aren't even afraid". It should be "τὸ μηδὲ τὰ παιδία..."
Neither the sailor nor the juror will ever do any harm to any of those rich citizens.
οὔποτε οὔτε ὁ ναύτης οὔτε ὁ δικαστὴς τί τινας τῶν πλουσίων πολιτῶν ἐκείνων βλάψετον.
It should be βλάψει because οὔτε ... οὔτε ... doesn't make a single subject together -- looking it up in Smyth, it seems that the verb agrees with the closest subject. I'm not sure about the position of οὔποτε or of the τι and τινας, but I'm not confident enough to say what's right or wrong.
You will never understand, you wicked man, not even those small things. For it will seem good to the citizens to not trust...? The ταῦτα λέγειν is really tripping me up.
It's just that πείθεσθαι here is passive, "be persuaded to say these things".

Nooj
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Re: practice questions

Post by Nooj »

I believe it's better to say χάριν σοι εἴσομαι.
Am I right to say that εἴσομαι is from oida, I know?

I didn't know how to say thank you, so I bastardised the Latin.
With μηδέ there that means "the fact that the children aren't even afraid". It should be "τὸ μηδὲ τὰ παιδία..."
Ah, so μηδὲ refers forward. If I wrote τὸ φοβεῖσθαι τὰ παιδία μηδὲ, that would be correct as well?
It's just that πείθεσθαι here is passive, "be persuaded to say these things".
Thank you. Must stop thinking so narrowly.

So if I understand correctly, the καλόν is the predicate of μὴ πείθεσθαι, which is the subject of δόξει? i.e. not being persuaded will seem good for the citizens = the citizens will decide not to be persuaded.
Dolor poetas creat.

modus.irrealis
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Re: practice questions

Post by modus.irrealis »

Nooj wrote:Am I right to say that εἴσομαι is from oida, I know?
Exactly.
Ah, so μηδὲ refers forward. If I wrote τὸ φοβεῖσθαι τὰ παιδία μηδὲ, that would be correct as well?
No -- think of μηδέ / οὐδέ = "not even" as being the negative counterparts of και = "even", it has to come before the words it modifies. So τὸ φοβεῖσθαι μηδὲ τὰ παιδία would be alright.
So if I understand correctly, the καλόν is the predicate of μὴ πείθεσθαι, which is the subject of δόξει? i.e. not being persuaded will seem good for the citizens = the citizens will decide not to be persuaded.
δοκῶ can sometimes be a tricky word to analyze, but I agree with you here.

Nooj
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Re: practice questions

Post by Nooj »

For the consonant declension nouns, my textbook says:

The alternative masc./fem acc. sing. endings are in origin the same (a zero-grade n-sound), but have developed to vowel -α or consonant -ν depending on the context.

Now I think this has something to do with the PIE endings? Can someone shed some light on how this came about? I know this may not help me learn Greek but nevertheless, I love learning about the origins of languages.
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modus.irrealis
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Re: practice questions

Post by modus.irrealis »

I'm not sure if I can add anything to what your textbook says, but I do know that if you go back to PIE it was actually an m-sound (as preserved in Latin e.g.), but Greek changed final m to n. My understanding is that this has to do with the syllabification rules of PIE, so PIE treated nasals as either consonants or "vowels" (meaning they formed the nucleus of a separate syllable). The accusative ending was just m, and after vowels it was a consonant and became n in Greek, but after a consonant it was a "vowel" and became a. (Outside of the accusative ending, there's also δέκα < dekm, with Latin decem.)

Things that look like exceptions at first usually indicate a consonant that has been lost, e.g. τριήρη < τριήρεα < τριήρεσα < τριήρεσm or βασιλέα < βασιλέwa < βασιλέwm.

Nooj
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Re: practice questions

Post by Nooj »

modus.irrealis wrote:I'm not sure if I can add anything to what your textbook says, but I do know that if you go back to PIE it was actually an m-sound (as preserved in Latin e.g.), but Greek changed final m to n. My understanding is that this has to do with the syllabification rules of PIE, so PIE treated nasals as either consonants or "vowels" (meaning they formed the nucleus of a separate syllable). The accusative ending was just m, and after vowels it was a consonant and became n in Greek, but after a consonant it was a "vowel" and became a. (Outside of the accusative ending, there's also δέκα < dekm, with Latin decem.)

Things that look like exceptions at first usually indicate a consonant that has been lost, e.g. τριήρη < τριήρεα < τριήρεσα < τριήρεσm or βασιλέα < βασιλέwa < βασιλέwm.
Yes, that's exactly what I wanted to know. One further question. When you say that the nasal formed the nucleus of a seperate syllable, how was it pronounced? In that last example βασιλέwm, what was the sound in between the digamma and the mu?
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modus.irrealis
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Re: practice questions

Post by modus.irrealis »

With the usual disclaimer that no one knows for sure the actual pronunciation, if it were a syllabic m, it would just be a normal m -- the m itself would function as the vowel. Think of English "hm" or "button" where many English speakers have a syllabic n at the end. I find that tough to do with wm, but it must have formed it's own syllable with w being a consonant to explain the subsequent development.

I made a mistake though because historically the words in -ευς had a long e so it was -ēwm > -ēwa > -ēa (in Homer) > -eā (in Attic) -- I always forget it's a long a there. And of course I wasn't implying anything about how the βασιλ- part of the word goes back -- in fact I recall reading somewhere that there's evidence that β actually goes back to gʷ.

Nooj
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Re: practice questions

Post by Nooj »

It's a long translation, but I feel pretty good about all of it except just one bolded section. That's all I'm asking for a one-over.

ἐγώ, ὦ ἄνδρες, ἥδομαι μὲν ὑφ᾽ ὑμῶν τιμώμενος, εἴπερ ἄνθρωπός εἰμι, καὶ χάριν ἔχω καὶ εὔχομαι δοῦναί μοι τοὺς θεοὺς αἴτιόν τινος ὑμῖν ἀγαθοῦ γενέσθαι: τὸ μέντοι ἐμὲ προκριθῆναι ὑφ᾽ ὑμῶν ἄρχοντα Λακεδαιμονίου ἀνδρὸς παρόντος οὔτε ὑμῖν μοι δοκεῖ συμφέρον εἶναι, ἀλλ᾽ ἧττον ἂν διὰ τοῦτο τυγχάνειν, εἴ τι δέοισθε παρ᾽ αὐτῶν: ἐμοί τε αὖ οὐ πάνυ τι νομίζω ἀσφαλὲς εἶναι τοῦτο. ὁρῶ γὰρ ὅτι καὶ τῇ πατρίδι μου οὐ πρόσθεν ἐπαύσαντο πολεμοῦντες πρὶν ἐποίησαν πᾶσαν τὴν πόλιν ὁμολογεῖν Λακεδαιμονίους καὶ αὐτῶν ἡγεμόνας εἶναι.

My comrades, I'm happy to be honoured by you, if in fact I am a man, and I am thankful and I pray that the gods grant that I become worthy of some good for you; but the fact that I was selected as leader by you over the present Spartan man, doesn't seem to me to be good for you, but rather it seems to me that a worse thing might happen because of this, if you should ask for anything from them. And again, for me personally, I really don't believe that this would be a prudent thing to do. Because I see that in my fatherland too, previously they (the Spartans?) did not stop waging war until they compelled all of Athens to agree that the Spartans were the leaders of them as well.
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modus.irrealis
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Re: practice questions

Post by modus.irrealis »

For the bold part, I'd take τυγχάνω here to mean "get" referring to the εἰ-clause that follows, "you would less get [it], if..." = "you would be less likely to get [it], if...". I don't think ἧττον can mean "worse" in that sense -- it's more like "inferior" or "weaker".

I read Λακεδαιμονίου ἀνδρὸς παρόντος as "while a Spartan man is present" rather than as going with προκρίνω mostly because there's no article. Also for ἐμοί τε αὖ οὐ πάνυ τι νομίζω ἀσφαλὲς εἶναι τοῦτο, I'm not sure from your translation, but I took ἐμοί with ἀσφαλές, "I don't believe this is safe for me". And I think the "they" has to refer to the Spartans as well.

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Re: practice questions

Post by Nooj »

modus.irrealis wrote:For the bold part, I'd take τυγχάνω here to mean "get" referring to the εἰ-clause that follows, "you would less get [it], if..." = "you would be less likely to get [it], if...". I don't think ἧττον can mean "worse" in that sense -- it's more like "inferior" or "weaker".

I read Λακεδαιμονίου ἀνδρὸς παρόντος as "while a Spartan man is present" rather than as going with προκρίνω mostly because there's no article. Also for ἐμοί τε αὖ οὐ πάνυ τι νομίζω ἀσφαλὲς εἶναι τοῦτο, I'm not sure from your translation, but I took ἐμοί with ἀσφαλές, "I don't believe this is safe for me". And I think the "they" has to refer to the Spartans as well.
Thank you, I get it now.

τοῦτ᾽ οὖν ἡμεῖς ἐπιθυμοῦντες μόλις ηὕρομεν, ὥστε γενέσθαι
βούλευμα καλὸν καὶ γενναῖον καὶ χρήσιμον εἰς ἅπαν ἔργον.
So then, we who are desiring discovered a way so that it became a plan that was good, noble and useful to every action.

Even with the help from my textbook, I've been staring at these two lines for forever, but I don't understand it. Please help?
Dolor poetas creat.

NateD26
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Re: practice questions

Post by NateD26 »

Hi, Nooj. You've forgotten to translate μόλις.

In this version, the translator suggests to put the comma after γένεσθαι,
and insert the opening τοῦτο after it, referring to the previous sentence as a whole.
[sorry. edited my previous statement.]
http://www.archive.org/stream/plutus00a ... 6/mode/1up
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Nooj
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Re: practice questions

Post by Nooj »

Hello everybody. I'm now reading Xenophon's Anabasis on the good advice that it was suitable for a beginner.

ἐπεὶ δ᾽ ἐδόκει ἤδη πορεύεσθαι αὐτῷ ἄνω, τὴν μὲν πρόφασιν ἐποιεῖτο ὡς Πισίδας βουλόμενος ἐκβαλεῖν παντάπασιν ἐκ τῆς χώρας:

What construction the ὡς is introducing? I'm thinking it's an indirect statement clause from τὴν μὲν πρόφασιν ἐποιεῖτο. So it isn't required for a main (indicative) verb to be there in the subordinate clause?
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modus.irrealis
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Re: practice questions

Post by modus.irrealis »

Since it is the participle, I think it's just ὡς in the sense "as if". It does seem kind of awkward to me, but like you say, it would have to be a finite verb if it were an indirect statement.

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