A.Ag Χορός a hymn 355 ...

Greek Learning Greek
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A.Ag Χορός a hymn 355 …

355
ὦ Ζεῦ βασιλεῦ καὶ νὺξ φιλία
μεγάλων κόσμων κτεάτειρα,
ἥτ᾽ ἐπὶ Τροίας πύργοις ἔβαλες
στεγανὸν δίκτυον, ὡς μήτε μέγαν

I noticed there were 13 votes in Perseus for reading ἥτ᾽ as a vocative
where it seems to me a nominative is perfectly adequate.

Raeburn-Thomas recommend reading μεγάλων κόσμων as “great glories” in reference to the following net thrown over the Trojan fortifications, i.e., victory in warfare. Perhaps I am letting my exposure to Koine get in the way here but νὺξ φιλία μεγάλων κόσμων κτεάτειρα looks like an unambiguous reference to the visual splendor of the night sky. R-T call this reading merely decorative. I don’t think so.

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Δία τοι ξένιον μέγαν αἰδοῦμαι 362
τὸν τάδε πράξαντ᾽ ἐπ᾽ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ
τείνοντα πάλαι τόξον, ὅπως ἂν
μήτε πρὸ καιροῦ μήθ᾽ ὑπὲρ ἄστρων 365
βέλος ἠλίθιον σκήψειεν.

τὸν τάδε πράξαντ᾽ caused me to pause. The referent of τὸν is Δία. Joining τάδε with πράξαντ᾽ as part pl aor act neut acc/nom didn’t seem right. In other words there is a conflict between joining τὸν or τάδε with the participle. Probably something perfectly obvious that I am overlooking, having one of those days when the obvious isn’t at all obvious.

Another alternative suggested by the voting in Perseus

verb 3rd pl aor ind mid homeric ionic unaugmented
the had 11 votes in Perseus. Not sure how this voting works, if it is linked to the [co-]text you migrated from. If not, it is irrelevant.

UDATE:

This morning I looked at the various translations, David Grene’s “He has done all this” renders my understanding of the 364a syntax τὸν τάδε πράξαντ᾽ where τὸν is the subject of πράξαντ᾽ and τάδε the object. Some translations eliminate this clause altogether, e.g., Ann Carson, R. Fagles.

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An update to the update, it looks like not only is τὸν the subject of πράξαντ᾽ and τάδε the object but τὸν is also the subject of τείνοντα and τόξον the object. The referent of τὸν once again is Δία line 361. One might consider this a parallelism with πράξαντ᾽ and τάδε in parallel with τείνοντα and τόξον, but the syntactical complexity would argue against it.

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I wish I could help with this particular sentence, but regarding the Perseus voting system,
it seems to be linked to the given text.

μείζω in Pl. Ap. 20e1 has 79.9% parsing it as adj pl neut acc comp contr,
whereas Euripeds’ Medea l.44 has 70.5% parsing it as adj pl neut nom comp contr.

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Thanks Nate, that makes sense. Otherwise votes would be useless. David Grene’s translation is the only clue I could come up with about how a Tragedy expert might parse this clause. But translations are dicey guides to parsing.

The only way I can make any sense out of πράξαντ᾽ as a finite verb (3rd pl aor ind mid homeric ionic unaugmented[1]) is to look all the way back to line 355 ὦ Ζεῦ βασιλεῦ καὶ νὺξ φιλία for the subject, which doesn’t fly since we have a subject more close at hand in Δία in 362.

[1] 11 votes in Perseus

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I think the voting on Perseus is not always trust-worthy.
Here πράξαντ᾽ seems to be aor. ind. act. part. sg. masc. acc. referring to Δία with τάδε
as its object. Unless Tragedy has a different way of forming the aor. part. of πράττω.
And like you said, it’s in parallel with pres. ind. act. part. sg. masc. acc. τείνοντα with
object τόξον.

There’s a long treatment on Peile about the final clause here. He referenced Matthiae’s Grammar
vol. 2 §520 Obs.2 for similar examples.

Sidwick rightly notes that ὅπως ἂν … σκήψειεν (opt.) is not allowed
in Attic final clauses, but is a common Homeric usage.

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Usually I find these Perseus votes helpful. However, it looks like that in this particular section the votes have been given by aspiring Hellenists who have just begun their first semester of Greek… Because for καιροῦ, at line 365, the incomprehensible “verb 3rd sg imperf ind act homeric ionic contr unaugmented” gets 6 votes (while “noun sg masc gen” gets 3 votes + the vote I just gave).

Just ignore the votes in this section. But like I said, I often find them helpful.

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Thanks for pointing this out, though Peile’s text is heavy reading, with all those comparisons to Latin among other things. (My Latin is rudimentary.) But it reminds me that I need to study those final clauses. Also, thanks for pointing out this isn’t standard Attic.

Peile doesn’t have the same line numbers as the recent editions. Does anyone know from which edition the now standard numbers come from?

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Nate,

I spent some time looking into this with what I have on hand; Smyth 2201-2202, Cooper 1:54.8.4.C p. 717, 2:54.8.4.B p. 2430. It doesn’t appear that ὡς ἂν or ὅπως ἂν with the optative in final clauses is limited to Homer. Cooper’s treatment was very hard for me to understand (read it several times last night and again this morning). He seemed to be saying that ὡς/ὅπως ἂν with subjunctive isn’t really a final clause but with optative it is final. I wouldn’t place much confidence in my understanding of Cooper’s explanation.

I did a tabulation of translations on hand to see who translated this as an unambiguous final clause:

  • Lattimore, Collard, Grene, McNiece
    0 Fagles
  • Hamilton, Carson

Thanks for doing the work of finding these references. I looked at each one.

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Thanks, Stirling. Can you please explain what is ὡς/ὅπως ἂν with subjunctive then if not final?

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Nate,
I don’t claim to understand what Copper is driving at. For what it’s worth Cooper (1:54.8.4 v1. p716) says the subjunctive w/ ἂν “presents a less specifically final conception so that ὅπως ἂν becomes the equivalent of ἤν πως…” and again, the subjunctive w/ ἂν introduces a “slightly evasive doubt” into final clauses. The “slightly evasive doubt” does not apply to Epic (Cooper 2:54.8.4.A v3. p2430).

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I wish I could understand all those nuances. Quite an intriguing distinction!

Smyth wrote this in 2001b. Not sure I understand it properly:

b. ἄν (κέ) does not appreciably affect the meaning. Originally these particles seem to have had a limiting
and conditional force (1762): ὡς ἄν in whatever way, that so (cp. so = in order that so) as in “Teach
me to die that so I may Rise glorious at the awful day” (Bishop Ken), and cp. ὡς with ὅτῳ τρόπῳ in
ἱκόμην τὸ Πυθικὸν μαντεῖον, ὡς μάθοιμ’ ὅτῳ τρόπῳ πατρὶ δίκας ἀροίμην I came to the Pythian shrine
that I might learn in what way I might avenge my father S. El. 33. With ὅπως ἄν cp. ἐάν πως. Both ὅπως
and ὡς were originally relative adverbs denoting manner (how, cp. 2578), but when they became
conjunctions (in order that), their limitation by ἄν ceased to be felt.

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Nate,

Smyth and Cooper appear to disagree.

Smyth 2001b

ἄν (κέ) does not appreciably affect the meaning.

Cooper 1:54.8.4 p. 717, observes that we never see ἄν with ἵνα because ἵνα is unambiguously final: in order that at, whereas ὅπως ἂν with subjunctive means something like: to see if. Just to see if Cooper was right I searched for ἵνα ἄν with subjunctive. It appears in

Aristoteles et Corpus Aristotelicum Phil., Ἀθηναίων πολιτεία
Section 55, subsection 4, line 8

νῦν δ᾽ ἀνάγκη πάντας ἐστὶ διαψηφίζεσθαι περὶ αὐτῶν, ἵνα ἄν τις πονηρὸς ὢν ἀπαλλάξῃ τοὺς κατηγόρους, ἐπὶ τοῖς δικασταῖς γένηται τοῦτον ἀποδοκιμάσαι.

but now all are compelled to vote one way or the other about them, in order that if anyone being a rascal has got rid of his accusers,1 it may rest with the jurymen to disqualify him.
Trans. H. Rackham.

Hippocrates et Corpus Hippocraticum Med., De articulis (0627: 010)
“Oeuvres complètes d’Hippocrate, vol. 4”, Ed. Littré, É.
Paris: Baillière, 1844, Repr. 1962.
Section 11, line 50

Ἔκτοσθεν δὲ τῆς μασχάλης, δισσὰ μόνα ἐστὶ χωρία, ἵνα ἄν τις
ἐσχάρας θείη, τιμωρεούσας τῷ παθήματι· μίαν μὲν ἐν τῷ ἔμπρο-
σθεν μεσηγὺ τῆς τε κεφαλῆς τοῦ βραχίονος καὶ τοῦ τένοντος τοῦ
κατὰ τὴν μασχάλην·

Hippocrates et Corpus Hippocraticum Med., De semine, de natura pueri, de morbis iv
Section 51, line 20

Τούτων δ’ ἐόντων, ὅ τι ἂν ἐν νούσῳ
51.20
πλεῖστον ᾖ, ἐν ἀρχῇσι γινομένης τῆς ταραχῆς, ἔρχεται ἐς χωρίον
51.21
ἵνα ἂν πλεῖστον ἔῃ· ἐν δὲ τῇ ταραχῇ εὐρυχωρίης γινομένης, εἰ-
λέεται ἀποκεκριμένον καὶ θερμαίνει τὸ σῶμα

It also appears in Philo and Josephus but that is Koine and according to Margaret Sim[1] ἵνα in Koine is a whole different ball game.

[1]SIM, Margaret G., 2006. A relevance theoretic approach to the particle ἵνα in Koine Greek.

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I do remember from my first- (and only) year of Greek that rule about ἵνα never having ἄν in final
clauses, and that if it does, it has local sense.
From the translation of Aristotle’s quote (though I guess from previous threads
I should be weary of drawing conclusions from translations alone), it seems it comes
with a conditional sense.

What does ἐάν/ἤν πως mean? Smyth and (your quoted) Cooper mentioned it but I can’t find
any reference in Smyth’s index so I don’t know where to look. LSJ didn’t have this other than
εἴ πως but without a gloss.

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Nate, for what its worth, Cooper glosses ἤν πως “to see if” but he is rather tentative about it. Cooper agrees with your memory of " ἵνα never having ἄν in final clauses, and that if it does, it has local sense." He states that ἵνα is a relative local adverb (whereas, wherein) which came to be used in final clauses. (Cooper vol. 2, P. 1335, 1:69.31.1). I didn’t have much success in deciphering the citations I posted from Hippo. other than getting the impression they were probably not final uses of ἵνα ἄν and the citation Section 11, line 50 does NOT have a subjunctive.

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ἵνα like other conjunctions and particles probably does not have much in the way of semantic content. It seems to function as a marker for certain kinds of content. What kind of content is determined by looking at the co-text. If it is used to mark a final clause we will find ἵνα framed in the co-text with semantic contend suitable to that purpose. If it is used as local adverb we will find it in a co-text suitable to that purpose. If the co-text frame is ambiguous in this regard then we start talking about probabilities given patterns of ἵνα use in that author, genre, dialect, historical period.

Margaret Sim[1] calls ἵνα a procedural marker used to guide a readers/hearers interpretation of an utterance. It gives the reader a notice about how to read the text the follows, e.g. “read the following as a final clause.” M. Sim argues that during the Koine period “final clause” is too restrictive a category.

1]SIM, Margaret G., 2006. A relevance theoretic approach to the particle ἵνα in Koine Greek, 2.2.2.6 Procedural Markers.

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Just a minor problem I’m having: what phrase do you search for in the TLG and how do you
enter it? (I have access to a TLG database I’ve once found online and I’m using Diogenes to browse it)
I’ve tried everything but I can’t find the requested phrase ἵνα ἂν. If it is there, I’ll probably
need to wade through a thicket of results to find it.

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Nate,

My Diogenes TLG set up doesn’t parse unicode phrases, only single words. Try entering [space] ina [space] an [space], and see what you get. I limited the search to 8bc-1ad, probably better to limit it to 8bc to 3bc but I didn’t bother with it. Looked through 10 hits and eliminated most of them.

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Much appreciated! Entering the phrase with spaces and in Latin letters is the trick. This would help me
in my searches later on. :slight_smile:

The reason I’m having trouble understanding these nuances is that I’m mainly familiar with
ἵνα (w/o ἄν) + subj. (primary tenses) / opt. (secondary t.) or ὅπως + fut. ind. for final clauses.
Finding more possible constructions and various meanings is intriguing, if a bit puzzling.
Thanks for keeping the discussion going and providing us with Cooper’s citations. :slight_smile:

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396-398
λιτᾶν δ’ ἀκούει μὲν οὔτις θεῶν·
τὸν δ’ ἐπίστροφον τῶν
φῶτ’ ἄδικον καθαιρεῖ.

The middle line here is annoyingly vague. The subject of καθαιρεῖ is τις θεῶν,
the object τὸν … φῶτ’ ἄδικον. τῶν is demonstrative but what is the referent?
Those who are blameworthy? The whole scenario of Paris being a guest who steals
the wife of his host and brings calamity on his people and his city.

ἐπίστροφον takes a genitive τῶν, it is translated all over the place.