Apology 41a, καὶ ἄλλοι ὅσοι τῶν ἡμιθέων

Greek Learning Greek
1

The end of the Apology turns out to be quite straightforward grammatically, except for one sentence that’s tripping me up (difficulty in bold):

εἰ γάρ τις ἀφικόμενος εἰς Ἅιδου, ἀπαλλαγεὶς τουτωνὶ τῶν φασκόντων δικαστῶν εἶναι, εὑρήσει τοὺς ὡς ἀληθῶς δικαστάς, οἵπερ καὶ λέγονται ἐκεῖ δικάζειν, Μίνως τε καὶ Ῥαδάμανθυς καὶ Αἰακὸς καὶ Τριπτόλεμος καὶ ἄλλοι ὅσοι τῶν ἡμιθέων δίκαιοι ἐγένοντο ἐν τῷ ἑαυτῶν βίῳ, ἆρα φαύλη ἂν εἴη ἡ ἀποδημία;

Translation (H. N. Fowler): “and all the other demigods who were just men in their lives”.

I would expect καὶ (οἱ) ἄλλοι τῶν ἡμιθέων [part. gen.] ὅσοι [or simply οἱ] δίκαιοι ἐγένοντο ἐν τῷ ἑαυτῶν βίῳ. That would be the same word order as the English. But Plato sandwiches the relative pronoun ὅσοι inbetween ἄλλοι and τῶν ἡμιθέων. Why? Is ἄλλοι ὅσοι some sort of fixed expression? Writing it off as hyperbaton for no good reason seems unsatisfying (and not in the style of the rest of the text). I suspect I am misunderstanding something deeper?

Re-reading before posting – perhaps like this?

καὶ ἄλλοι,
and others,
ὅσοι τῶν ἡμιθέων δίκαιοι ἐγένοντο …
however many of the demigods were just men …

2

“and as many others of the demigods who were just men in their own lives”

There’s no reason to expect Greek word order to map word for word onto English. It’s hyperbaton only if you expect English word order. I think you just have to accept that this is how Plato expressed himself.

3

Certainly, but I didn’t see it match the usual word order I would expect from reading the rest of the text. But I think the missing piece may be that ὅσοι is to be taken as “as many who” rather than loosely equivalent to οἵ here, with τῶν ἡμιθέων dependent on ὅσοι rather than ἄλλοι?

Let’s say it said καὶ ἄλλοι οἵ τῶν ἡμιθέων δίκαιοι ἐγένοντο – would that be just as natural?

With the semantics of your translation in my head the Greek makes more sense to me. Perhaps wrongly so. Or maybe it’s similar to how French likes to use autant where English prefers a simple relative pronoun.

4

I’ve been trying to put my finger on why your phrase καὶ ἄλλοι οἳ τῶν ἡμιθέων δίκαιοι εγένοντο doesn’t feel quite right to me. I think it’s because the partitive genitive τῶν ἡμιθέων calls for the quantitative relative ὅσοι. See LSJ ὅσος 2.

Regarding whether τῶν ἡμιθέων "depends on ἄλλοι or ὅσοι, Greek doesn’t force you to choose, unlike English, which is constrained by word order.