ἀναλαμβάνων οὖν αὐτῶν τὰ ποιήματα ἅ μοι ἐδόκει μάλιστα
πεπραγματεῦσθαι αὐτοῖς, διηρώτων ἂν αὐτοὺς τί λέγοιεν,
ἵν' ἅμα τι καὶ μανθάνοιμι παρ' αὐτῶν.
What does this verb πραγματεύομαι mean exactly?
"Taking for testing, then, the poems/works of them which seemed to me
their most laborious/(elaborated?) ones,..."? what does the dat. αὐτοῖς doing here?
is it some dative of possession? LSJ entry wasn't very clear to me.
My second question is regarding the ἄν after the impf. διηρώτων.
In the indirect question we have opt. after secondary tense,
so it must be that ἄν is not intended to be read with the opt. What then?
impf. + ἄν represents an unfulfilled possibility/condition in the past/present.
that doesn't seem to fit this context.
In LSJ (and my commentary) it says that it can also represent a repeated action in the past:
- with impf. and more rarely aor. ind. in ITERATIVE construction, to express elliptically a condilion fulfilled whenever
an opportumty offered:...“διηρώτων ἂν αὐτοὺς τί λέγοιεν” Pl.Ap.22b: