translating ἐπί ῥιπὸς

[godingly]

I'm trying to translate the following snippet:
θεοῦ θέλοντος κἄν ἐπί ῥιπὸς πλέοις.
(παροιμία, Εὐριπίδης)

What I got is : "When God wishes, even ??? may go to sea. "
Is this correct? how does ἐπί ῥιπὸς translate? What is the subject of the sentence?

[Hylander]

"If the god is willing, you could even sail on a wicker mat."

Let's take this apart.

θεοῦ θέλοντος is of course a genitive absolute. Here it functions as the protasis (the "if" clause) of a conditional. Better translate "if" than "when".

κἃν -- crasis for και αν. As you realize, "και" here means "even", not "and."

πλέοις -- 2d person singular of present optative of πλέω: "you would/could sail". The subject is the understood 2d pers. singular personal pronoun συ. This is the apodosis (the conclusion) of the conditional, optative + αν ("future less vivid" in the traditional cllassification of Greek conditionals).

ἐπί ῥιπὸς -- "on a mat". ριψ is a wicker mat. See LSJ:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/tex ... Aentry%3Dr(i%2Fy

This is a fragment which was attributed (not necessarily correctly) by an ancient source to Euripides' Thyestes, a play that hasn't survived intact. It was apparently proverbial and is repeated in several ancient sources. It's an iambic trimeter. It makes sense on its own as an expression of the power of a god to accomplish impossible things, but might make more sense in its lost context.

[jeidsath]

It's a saying from Euripides, but what textbook are you taking all these translation questions from? I asked on earlier threads and didn't get an answer.

[godingly]

Hylander - gratias ago te. This is an exemplar answer.
jeidsath - I apologize. This is simply the textbook the professor wrote for the class. It's not in your nearest bookstore, we paid him and he printed several copies for us. It contains both modified sections from Herodotus (translated to Attic), and unmodified poetry segments.

[jeidsath]

Ah, I was wondering because of the other thread where I wasn't sure if there was a transcription error or an error in the original text.