Cyrop 5.2.28

[ducky123]

Hi eveyone

ἑνὸς δὲ ἀνδρὸς πολὺ δυνατωτέρου ἢ ἐγὼ υἱόν, καὶ ἐκείνου ἑταῖρον ὄντα ὥσπερ τὸν ἐμόν, συμπίνοντα παρ᾽ ἑαυτῷ συλλαβὼν ἐξέτεμεν

Why isn’t ἐγὼ (nominative) agreeing with ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς (genitive) after the comparitive δυνατωτέρου ἢ. I thought the cases of the thing being compared is usually the same after ἢ.

[mwh]

ἑμοῦ would be quite possible, but ἐγώ is a step up in the syntactical hierarchy. It’s like the difference between “of a man more powerful than me” and “of a man more powerful than I (am).” Grammatically speaking, εγώ is a new subject, with its verb not expressed.
And it avoids a pile-up of genitives with differing syntactical functions.

[ducky123]

Thanks for explaining, much appreciated. The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek, section 32.6 (which I referred to) doesn’t offer this cicumstance/exception and simply states the ‘second member of the comparison (after ἢ) stands in the same case as the first’. However, after somehow missing it first time around I’ve just found where it’s covered in Smyth (1070), and it offers a similar explanation to your own. I do find the CGCG to be very clear but I’ll need to start bearing in mind it’s not as ‘comprehensive’ as Smyth.

[mwh]

ἡμεῖς ὑπὸ κρείττονος διδασκάλου πεπαιδεύμεθα ἢ οὗτοι at 2.3.13 (where we might have expected ἢ τούτων) is comparable—again from the Cyropedia. But I wouldn’t attach very much significance to this.

Yes, CGCG, which is basically Dutch, doesn’t have quite everything but is linguistically less dated than Smyth, which is basically German.

[Constantinus Philo]

ἑμοῦ would be quite possible, but ἐγώ is a step up in the syntactical hierarchy. It’s like the difference between “of a man more powerful than me” and “of a man more powerful than I (am).” Grammatically speaking, εγώ is a new subject, with its verb not expressed.
And it avoids a pile-up of genitives with differing syntactical functions.

I have never thought that εμου would be possible here; the nominative being quite natural.

[mwh]

Yes I agree the nominative is “quite natural” (It is what Xenophon used, after all) but attraction into the genitive would have been no less “natural”—and in accordance with normal Greek usage.