John W. wrote:pster - apologies for the late reply, amd for the fact that it's somewhat perfunctory.
On some of your points:
- when you suggest 'rose to action' for ἀνίστησιν, do you mean it's intransitive? I don't see how it can be, or how this would work in the run of the sentence. Did you mean 'rouse to action'?
Argh. I should have said "raised to action".
John W. wrote:
- Thucydides not infrequently refers to (e.g) places when the rest of the sentence clearly shows he is thinking of the people who inhabit them.
Sure. But irrespective of what he is thinking, when it comes to how verbs function, people inhabit places. (See below.)
John W. wrote:
You cannot strictly rouse up a place, only its inhabitants,
I was thinking "raise up". We could also translate it as "call up".
John W. wrote:
- Like Rusten, I take κατῴκητο to be passive, not middle, and I don't know why Marchant mentions the middle. But you're right that, since it goes with μέρη, it's somewhat unreasonable to criticise Thucydides for using it of persons.
Well, I am not sure I follow your reasoning here. I thought I did, but I'm not so sure. We are both taking it as passive. People inhabit places actively speaking. Places are inabited by people passively speaking. We take it to be the latter because irrespective of what he is thinking, Thucydides uses the word μέρη which is for places. When you say it is unreasonable to criticize Thucydides since it goes with μέρη, that sounds like a defense for his using it actively: μέρη are really people and people inhabit...
My question is more direct. When Marchant says, "μέρη = ἔθνη", is that right? The rest of what he says I think follows from that. If μέρη = ἔθνη, then when he gets to κατῴκητο he can't read it passively since we are talking about tribes and tribes aren't inhabited, rather they inhabit. And he can't read it actively since it isn't an active verb form. So that leaves some kind of middle.
But why say μέρη = ἔθνη in the first place? It is one thing to say Thucydides uses places (place names?!) when
thinking of people. It is quite another say μέρη = ἔθνη as though it were a semantic fact.
John W. wrote:
- Bear in mind that Marchant was writing for Victorian schoolboys, few of whom would ever have been likely to disturb the pages of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and so I don't find the omission of a specific reference surprising.
Point taken. But in defense of those schoolboys, they were probably more likely to disturb said pages than almost any other group of schoolboys.
John W. wrote:
- I also think you're being rather hard on Smyth. Identifying a couple of points of disagreement (or even errors) doesn't suddenly turn his Grammar into a bad book - the same sort of thing could doubtless be found in any very long and highly technical work. I used to have Goodwin's Greek Grammar - while not quite as full as Smyth, it might be worth trying as an alternative.
Haha. I never said Smyth was a bad book. I'm just having a bit of fun trying to get you and Nate and whomever else a bit roused up and a bit raised up to action. I figure after 20 hours and nearly two weeks trying to understand a handful of sections, I have earned the right to shoot a few spitballs.
Smyth seems to have much much more detail, at least on this subject.
John W. wrote:
- I have somewhat more sympathy with your views on Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who tends to judge everything from the perspective of whether it can be recommended as a model for rhetoricians; his Second Letter to Ammaeus does, however, offer some interesting comments on Thucydides' style.
Haha. I wouldn't say I have any views on him. The only view I have is that he knew of some great beaches and I have found some great deals on vacations to them!
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OK, no more messing around. We can come back to that momentarily. Let's get down to business: Smyth 2532. He explicitly takes up the other ὅσα example from this page of Thucydides.
1) ὅσα in the Smyth example refers to ἔθνη.
2) Has an antecedent dropped out?
3) Has there been incorporation?
4) If so, why hasn't the incorporated element been placed further back in the relative clause?
5) If there has been incorporation, why is the adjective still in the main clause?
6) What are the minimal conditions for something to be a case of attraction? This is perhaps such a case.
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You see the two ὅσα sentences are different. One has a copula and falls under Smyth 2532. The other doesn't have a copula and so has to be handled by other Smyth sections such as 2522. I am hoping that by understanding the differences we will be able to understand the reversed word order, one of my original questions to John. When thinking about these sentences, there are four kinds of sentences: original Greek; expanded, unattracted, unincorporated, antecedents indicated Greek; translation of expanded Greek; stylish English. I am mostly interested in the second and third of these.