I would like to prevail upon the kindness and generosity of the forum membrs once again. I have just renewed my acquaintance (a nodding acquaintance I fear) with my Greek from university days. I worked through White’s First Greek Book and then plodded painfully through Gunion’s First Greek Grammar, including the Syntax. Now I am grappling with Epictetus. There are a few points in the introduction by his pupil Arrianus that I cannot grasp. I am using the Perseus text. For instance, in line 2 I do not understand ὡς οἷον τε ἦν. Is this the adverbial usage of οἷος and does it express abilty and go with the preceding verb ἐπειράθην? “I tried as much as possible”? What I find most helpful is when members give me the references in LSJ and Smyth.
Hi Charlie,
I think this is what you’re looking for:
https://logeion.uchicago.edu/οἷος
This is section III.2 of the LSJ entry:
more freq. οἷός τε c. inf., fit or able to do, λιποίμην οἷός τʼ . . ἀέθλια κάλʼ ἀνελέσθαι Od. 21.117 (preceded by τοῖον ib. 173), Hdt. 1.29, 67, 91; λέγειν οἷός τε κἀγώ Ar. Eq. 343, cf. Th. 3.16, Isoc. 8.69, etc.; inclined to . ., Plb. 3.90.5, J. AJ 4.6.3: most freq. in neut. sg. and pl., οἷόν τε [ἐστί] it is possible to . ., Th. 1.80, etc.; οἷά τε [ἐστί] Hdt. 1.194, etc.; a dat. is sts. added, μὴ οἷόν τε εἶναι ἐμοὶ κωλῦσαι Th. 7.14.
You can also have a look at Smyth 2497, but that doesn’t really address the impersonal usage here.
ὅσα δὲ ἤκουον αὐτοῦ λέγοντος, ταῦτα αὐτὰ ἐπειράθην αὐτοῖς ὀνόμασιν ὡς οἷόν τε ἦν γραψάμενος ὑπομνήματα εἰς ὕστερον ἐμαυτῷ διαφυλάξαι τῆς ἐκείνου διανοίας καὶ παρρησίας.
It seems parenthetical and though it could refer to the wider statement, my guess is that it refers specifically to the αὐτοῖς ὀνόμασιν, as a concession that it’s not always possible take notes transcribing the very words.
@Aetos, you may wish to quote the next section of the LSJ there instead, III.3
Thank you kindly, Aetos and jeidsath. With your indulgence, I would like to pursue my analysis of this whole passage. There remain a few things I am not sure I understand. In line 2, am I right in taking εἰς ὕστερον together. For the preposition, I saw LSJ II. 2. to determine a period (of time). So could I translate “for later”? In line 3, I have trouble construing ἐστι δὴ τοιαῦτα ὥσπερ εἰκὸς. Ιs the sense “It is indeed likely that the were the sorts of things…”? I will surely have other questions.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0235%3Atext%3Ddisc
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οὔτε συνέγραψα ἐγὼ τοὺς Ἐπικτήτου λόγους οὕτως ὅπως ἄν τις συγγράψειε τὰ τοιαῦτα οὔτε ἐξήνεγκα εἰς ἀνθρώπους αὐτός, ὅς γε οὐδὲ συγγράψαι φημί.
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ὅσα δὲ ἤκουον αὐτοῦ λέγοντος, ταῦτα αὐτὰ ἐπειράθην αὐτοῖς ὀνόμασιν ὡς οἷόν τε ἦν γραψάμενος ὑπομνήματα εἰς ὕστερον ἐμαυτῷ διαφυλάξαι τῆς ἐκείνου διανοίας καὶ παρρησίας.
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ἔστι δὴ τοιαῦτα ὥσπερ εἰκὸς ὁποῖα ἄν τις αὐτόθεν ὁρμηθεὶς εἴποι πρὸς ἕτερον, οὐχ ὁποῖα ἂν ἐπὶ τῷ ὕστερον ἐντυγχάνειν τινὰς αὐτοῖς συγγράφοι.
As I read it:
- His claim not to to be the original author of these words.
- His note-taking process.
- His characterization of what he has written (or the notes for it). (Structure: like A, not like B)
So could I translate “for later”?
That’s how I read it, anyway.
In line 3, I have trouble construing ἐστι δὴ τοιαῦτα ὥσπερ εἰκὸς. Ιs the sense “It is indeed likely that the were the sorts of things…”?
I wouldn’t think so. For one thing, it wouldn’t fit with the rest of the sentence. He’s characterizing what he has written down. ὥσπερ εἰκὸς strikes me as another parenthetical and means something like “as much as is reasonable” to me, but no doubt the dictionaries have better glosses for it.
I’d try translating this version first:
ἔστι δὲ τοιαῦτα ὁποῖα ἄν τις εἴποι πρὸς ἕτερον, οὐχ ὁποῖα ἂν ὕστερον συγγράφοι.
Thank you. Your suggestion of a parenthetical phrase makes sense to me. I think I see it more clearly now. I would translate “They are the sort of things one might say to another person, not the sort that one would compose later.”
I agree with Joel that it’s possible to take ὥσπερ εἰκός as a parenthetical expression, meaning something like “as it seems, as one expects” This is how I break the sentence down:
ἔστι δὴ τοιαῦτα ὥσπερ εἰκὸς ὁποῖα ἄν τις αὐτόθεν ὁρμηθεὶς εἴποι πρὸς ἕτερον, οὐχ ὁποῖα ἂν ἐπὶ τῷ ὕστερον ἐντυγχάνειν τινὰς αὐτοῖς συγγράφοι.
- ἔστι δὴ τοιαῦτα (ὥσπερ εἰκός) main verb
1.1.1. αὐτόθεν ὁρμηθεὶς temporal clause nested in τις … εἴποι
1.1 ὁποῖα ἄν τις … εἴποι πρὸς ἕτερον, relative clause /antecedent = τοιαῦτα
1.2.1.ἐπὶ τῷ ὕστερον ἐντυγχάνειν τινὰς αὐτοῖς prepositional phrase nested in ἂν … συγγράφοι
1.2 οὐχ ὁποῖα ἂν … συγγράφοι. parallel relative clause with ὁποῖα ἄν τις…
What I’ve done is underline every verb, then paired it with the phrase or clause it controls, then listed and arranged the clauses, numbering them to show: 1, 2, 3=main verb, 1.1.,1.2.=subordinate clause, 1.1.1, 1.2.1=nested clause. You’ll notice the nested expressions actually are listed preceding the clause within which they are found. This is a method developed by Eleanor Dickey (An introduction to the Composition and Analysis of Greek Prose) for analysing sentence structure and I have found it quite useful. In the sentence above, you can see that we could remove ὥσπερ εἰκός altogether and there would be no loss in the general integrity or meaning of the sentence.
Some more notes on ὥσπερ εἰκός- ὡς εἰκός=ὡς ἔοικε= (just)as it seems. ὡσπερ is frequently used after demonstrative pronouns (such as τοιαῦτα) in Attic, so it’s no real stretch to see ὡσπερ following τοιαῦτα and paired with εἰκός.
I am still plodding through this passage. There are a few things in the following passage that are giving me a bit of trouble.
εἰ μὲν δὴ τοῦτό γε αὐτὸ διαπράττοιντο οἱ λόγοι οὗτοι, [6] ἔχοιεν ἂν οἶμαι ὅπερ χρὴ ἔχειν τοὺς τῶν φιλοσόφων λόγους: [7] εἰ δὲ μή, ἀλλ᾽ ἐκεῖνο ἴστωσαν οἱ ἐντυγχάνοντες ὅτι, αὐτὸς ὁπότε ἔλεγεν αὐτούς, ἀνάγκη ἦν τοῦτο πάσχειν τὸν ἀκροώμενον αὐτῶν ὅπερ ἐκεῖνος αὐτὸν παθεῖν ἠβούλετο. [8] εἰ δ᾽ οἱ λόγοι αὐτοὶ ἐφ᾽ αὑτῶν τοῦτο οὐ διαπράττονται, τυχὸν μὲν ἐγὼ αἴτιος, τυχὸν δὲ καὶ ἀνάγκη οὕτως ἔχειν. ἔρρωσο.
In the first line, I do not understand the first part εἰ μὲν δὴ τοῦτό γε. I take αὐτὸ as the direct object of διαπράττοιντο “If these words accomplished it” i.e., moving the thoughts of his hearers to the good. So what does τοῦτό express? Unless the two are to be taken together. Of course, the particles here quite escape me. I think it will be a long time before I have any true understanding of their function. In line(verse?) 8, τοῦτο is the object of the same verb, so perhaps my question is really just about αὐτὸ.
He just described something that the original version would do: λέγων αὐτοὺς οὐδενὸς ἄλλου δῆλος ἦν ἐφιέμενος ὅτι μὴ κινῆσαι τὰς γνώμας τῶν ἀκουόντων πρὸς τὰ βέλτιστα
τοῦτό γε αὐτὸ refers to this effect
Thank you. I understand that it refers to what comes before. What I have difficulty with is the τοῦτό and αὐτὸ together.
I think here it has to mean “same”, so “this very same effect”, the effect being Epictetus’ words being able to turn men’s thoughts towards what is best. The only information I can find on this usage is A.11 of αὐτός in the LSJ:
αὐτός for ὁ αὐτός, the same, Il. 12.225, Od. 8.107, 16.138, Pi. N. 5.1 (never in Trag.), and in later Prose, αὐταῖς ταῖς ἡμέραις IG 14.966 (ii A. D.), cf. Ev.Luc. 23.12.
Hello again Charlie. I have to say that much of this prefatory note of Arrian’s is clearly quite some way beyond your current knowledge of Greek. I won’t cover it all, but as to your immediate question about τοῦτό γε αὐτὸ, the object of διαπράττοιντο is not αυτο but τουτο. “If these logoi were to accomplish this (τουτο γε) …”. But the αυτο does go with it: “this itself” or “this very thing” or “just this” (i.e. shifting his listeners’ minds “towards the best”).
[Edit @Aetos: I don’t like to disagree, but αυτο without article doesn’t mean “same,” it’s just intensive. In English we might say “this very same thing,” but literal-minded Greek wouldn’t. (Same as what?)]
In the next clause, οἶμαι is parenthetical: the main verb is ἔχοιεν ἂν. The object of ἔχοιεν ἂν is ὅπερ χρὴ ἔχειν τοὺς τῶν φιλοσόφων λόγους, “they’d have what the logoi of the philosophers should have.”
Then (7), where αλλ(α) at the start of the main clause means “at least.” “If not, at least let those encountering them know that at the time that he himself [Epictetus] was saying them [the logoi], it had to have been the case (αναγκη ην) that their listener had the experience which he was wanting him to have.”
In the conclusion (8), ἐφ᾽αὑτῶν means “in and of themselves,” and τυχόν means “maybe.”
And ἔρρωσο is the conventional epistolary sign-off formula, “Farewell.”
Hopefully that gives you enough help to be going on with!
Thank you both very much. It is indeed much clearer to me now. You are right, mwh, in saying that this passage is beyond my current level of Greek. I suppose I could benefit from spending more time with Xenophon (I worked through White’s First Greek Book) and I may well dip into the Anabasis again at some point, but I have my heart set on a better understanding of the Stoicis, so I’d like to persist.
Then persist, my friend, persist. You will certainly need help with the grammar, but that’s what this board is for, after all. And it will probably get easier; prefaces are often the most difficult part of a work.
Incidentally, few use Rutherford these days; it was displaced by Smyth. For classical Greek there’s now both Morwood’s Oxford Grammar and (better still) the Cambridge Grammar. Not that there’s actually anything wrong with Rutherford.
ερρωσο
Charlie,
Once you get into the actual text of Epictetus you might find this site helpful. The notes on Lucian got me over some hard places.
Thanks for the correction, Michael. I was hoping you’d weigh in on this! My thought was that Arrian was writing in the 2nd century A.D. so perhaps by that time this usage had crept into the language, i.e. αὐτός=ὁ αὐτός. It was a long shot, but I couldn’t find anything in Smyth or in the CGCG, which should have been my first clue that I was treading down the primrose path.
I thought that it was a very pretty piece of dedicatory, and liked the warm feeling it gave off. It got me to read the first couple of sections of the main text. I was a bit surprised by the part where he disclaims responsibility for publishing. Too much of a gentleman to be admit involvement with the dirty business-side of publishing? Or maybe I misunderstood something,
For difficulty, I had to slow down and read the page 3-4 times before it clicked, which for me means pretty hard nowadays, for whatever that’s worth. Last year it would have been too hard entirely, But the later sections were substantially easier, though the language struck me as similar.
I am returning to this thread after a long absence, but I have an excellent excuse. I am about halfway through the CGCG and I just today received the Cambridge Greek Lexicon. I still do not understand the phrase αὐτόθεν ὁρμηθεὶς. For ὁρμάω, the Cambridge lexicon under B.8. gives “set out (on an argument,…).” And for αὐτόθεν, it gives as sense 3 “at once, straightway.” So could I translate “having set out straightway” or “having launched into the argument at once”?
ἀκούει λόγου τοῦ Σωκράτους περὶ τοῦ δαιμονίου ἐν τῇ ἀγορᾷ ὁ συκοφάντης.
ὁρμᾶται δ’ αὐτόθεν εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν Μελήτου.
λέγει δ’ τοὺς ἀσεβεὶς λόγους Μελήτῳ.
I think it would help me if I had the reference. Is it from the Apology of Socrates?