I ran across a sentence in my textbook with some apparent inconsistencies in the use of the verbs:
ἐὰν ἑλών τίς τινα κουσίου ϕόνου καὶ σαϕῶς ἐπιδείξᾱς μὴ καθαρόν, μετὰ ταῦτ᾿ αἰδέσηται καὶ ἀϕῇ, οὐκέτ᾿ ἐκβαλεῖν κριος τὸν αὐτόν ἐστιν.
If anyone convicts a man of involuntary homicide and clearly shows him to be polluted (lit. not pure), and then feels pity for him and releases him, he no longer has the power to cast the same person into exile.
ἑλών (no relation to Musk, I hope!) and ἐπιδείξᾱς are both aorist participles, whereas αἰδέσηται is aorist subjunctive, but they all play the same conditional future role after ἐὰν (I think). Is that just “elegant variation” (to avoid repetition) or is there some meaningful distinction?
Betts, Gavin; Henry, Alan. Complete Ancient Greek: A Comprehensive Guide to Reading and Understanding Ancient Greek, with Original Texts (Complete Language Courses) (p. 335). John Murray Press. Kindle Edition.
It’s not so much elegant variation as standard syntactical organization. The participles subordinate the two prior actions to the two subsequent ones, all within the if-clause. It’s all very logical, and exemplary. There’s certainly no inconsistency.
The tense of the subjunctives (aorist, as you say) has aspectual significance, not temporal, as I expect you realize. Similarly with ἐκβαλεῖν.
Apparent typos: τινα κουσίου should be τιν’ ἀκουσίου? And κριος should obviously be κύριος.
This was a quote from Demosthenes with typos added. Is it correct in your Kindle version? If not, you may want to get a print edition of the book. Presumably it’s a bad scan that you’re using.
Thanks for explanations Michael and Joel, and sorry about the typos. What happened is that I cut and pasted the text from the Kindle version, but even the e-version has certain characters that look like they’re drawn in pencil, especially in combinations of certain vowels where a stress mark coincides with a circumflex, etc. Those characters never scan well. I realize it would be better to use the Greek keyboard but I need to use the US International keyboard on a Spanish PC with a Spanish version of Windows and I’m afraid it will screw everything up to add Greek, especially since it took me forever to get US International in the first place.
Never mind. The important thing is that you see how the Greek works, with the preliminary participles subordinate to the following two subjunctives.
Incidentally, it may be a bit misleading to call this a future conditional, when the main verb is not future but present, and there are no futures on the scene; and in English we say e.g. “If he’s released he can no longer be sent into exile.”
Let’s not exaggerate, I just ran the text through CHatGPT4 and it makes some major mistakes:
“If someone captures another person guilty of voluntary [instead of convicts someone of involuntary!] homicide and clearly shows that he is not purified, and afterward feels pity and lets him go, he can no longer expel [exile would be better] that same man by legal judgment.”
They’ve added τινα (which makes sense) but ἐὰν…αἰδέσηται καὶ ἀφῇ should be translated something like “if he becomes reconciled and drops charges” rather than “feels pity and releases him”, (ie., for payment), which ChatGPT also gets wrong. In my posted ChatGPT screenshot, it’s even worse than yours, with “feels shame.” But what can we do about all the errors except learn Greek?
I’m personally fine with “cast out” or similar for ἐκβαλεῖν.
Well, ChatGPT makes a noble (if not a “no-bull”) effort, but what is really kind of creepy is that it never expresses any doubt or points out any possible ambiguities or alternative translations (very apodictic, to translate into Greek for you ). That’s what’s really dangerous about it: everybody makes mistakes, but normally the reader’s critically aware of that possibiity, whereas with the hybris of AI the reader is lulled into complacently accepting every (often erroneous) word.
BTW, what you said about the first two aorist participles setting the backdrop for the subsequent aorist subjunctives suggests that there really is a temporal element, although it could also be seen as aspect, too (perfection, completion):
"if, having convicted…and having demonstrated…, he [then] reconciles himself and lets him go (isn’t it apo + hiemi, excuse my Roman?)
That is the verb, but it functions as a legal term meaning the opposite of αἱρέω. Not “lets him go”. See LSJ II.1.b:
in legal sense, acquit of a charge or engagement, φόνου τινά D.37.59 (abs., ἐὰν αἰδέσηται καὶ ἀφῇ ibid.); συναλλαγμάτων Id.33.12: c. acc. only, acquit, Antipho 2.1.2, etc. (v. infr. 2 c)
On those aorist participles: of course they’re temporal. Only rarely are participles not.
Incidentally, I suspect that ChatGPT may have been rendering not ἀκουσίου but the conjectured ἑκουσίου, in which case it did a better job than ClassyCuss thought, though I’d never use it myself.
And I’d say that “if he becomes reconciled” is not a good translation of αἰδέσηται. It quite fails to convey anything of the idea of αἰδώς and αἰδεῖσθαι. It’s true that “shame” or even “pity” is hardly better. As Joel suggests, the only solution is to learn Greek.
No, it’s definitely ἀκουσίου in the original. It’s clear in the e-book but it looks like it’s penciled in (as they always do in this book with a vowel + macron + stress mark) so it doesn’t scan correctly.
Not my gloss, but the LSJ’s. We have at least three Attic-law terms in this passage, all getting a special citation in the LSJ. For none of αἱρέω, ἀφίημι, or αἰδέομαι, is the legal technical meaning entirely obvious from the base meaning.
Here is αἰδέομαι in the LSJ–
as Att. law-term, to be reconciled to a person, of kinsmen who allow a homicide to return from exile, Lex ap.D.43.57; ἐὰν ἑλών τις ἀκουσίου φόνου . . αἰδέσηται καὶ ἀφῇ D.37.59, cf.38.22; αἰδούμενος Pl.Lg.877a; ᾐδεσμένος D.23.77.
These all seem to describe a legal status or act, always used in a technical sense, and I don’t see justification for trying to bring the etymology in with the gloss.
). That’s what’s really dangerous about it: everybody makes mistakes, but normally the reader’s critically aware of that possibiity, whereas with the hybris of AI the reader is lulled into complacently accepting every (often erroneous) word.