Assistance with some English to Greek translations

Greek Learning Greek
1

Hi all! I am working on some of my first English to Greek translations, and I am stuck on these two:

“You know we have always helped you.”
Would this be translated as “you know (that) we have always helped you”? Should I be using a primary-secondary clause structure and what tenses would be appropriate? I have present for the main clause but I am unsure how to denote the continuing past aspect.

“If I had seen this, I would have not said anything until we arrived home.”
I know I have to use a conditional form – should I be using εἰ? What tenses would be appropriate?

2

οἶσθα ὅτι ἀεὶ ἐβοηθοῦμεν σοι.

3

What composition textbook are you using? Does it cover these topics?

I could be wrong, but based on Lewis and Styler, p. 54, I believe that ὅτι is not used with verbs of thinking, and “help” should probably be a participle rather than a conjugated verb.

For the counterfactual, I would suggest looking at your text’s treatment of the topic. I suppose you’re using Attic, but in the Homeric language I believe if-then constructions involving counterfactuals in the past are done using the indicative for both verbs (not the optative). The counterfactuality is expressed only by the particles.

4

In like manner as I have translated it - οἶσθα ὅτι ἀεὶ ἐβοηθοῦμεν σοι. - I have read it many times in the New Testament:
https://biblehub.com/greek/oida_1492.htm

But it’s used the same way in Attic Greek:
https://artflsrv03.uchicago.edu/philologic4/Greek/query?report=concordance&method=proxy&q=οἶσθα%20ὅτι&start=0&end=0

5

This is from Smyth’s Greek Grammar for Schools and Colleges:
Section 2106:
2106. Verbs of Knowing and Showing.—After verbs signifying to know, be ignorant of, learn (not learn of), remember, forget, show, appear, prove, acknowledge, and announce, the participle represents a dependent statement, each tense having the same force as the corresponding tense of the indicative or optative with ὅτι or ὡς, the present including also the imperfect, the perfect including also the pluperfect.
Such verbs are: οἶδα, γιγνώσκω, ἐπίσταμαι, ἐννοῶ, μανθάνω (2136), (οὐκ) ἀγνοῶ, μέμνημαι, ἐπιλανθάνομαι (2134), δηλῶ, (ἐπι) δείκνυ_μι, φαίνω, ἀποφαίνω, φαίνομαι (2143), ἔοικα (2089 c, 2133), (ἐξ-) ἐλέγχω, ὁμολογῶ (rarely), ἀγγέλλω, ποιῶ represent (2115).

Section 2139:
οἶδα and ἐπίσταμαι with part. in O. O. (2106) = know that something is; with inf. not in O. O. = know how to do something. Thus, ““ἐπιστάμενος νεῖν” knowing how to swim” X. A. 5.7.25. In poetry (very rarely in prose, except with ἐπίσταμαι in Hdt.) these verbs take also the inf. (in O. O.) in the meaning know or believe: ““ἐπιστάμεθα μή πώ ποτ᾽ αὐτὸν ψεῦδος λακεῖν” we know that he has never yet spoken falsehood” S. Ant. 1094.

Perhaps “οἶσθα ἡμᾶς σοι ἀεὶ βοηθόντας”

Regarding the contrafactual, εἰ + aor. ind. in protasis, aor. ind. + ἄν in the apodosis.

6

Thanks for the reply re ὅτι, paveln. It does seem common with οἶδα in Koine, examples being Matthew 28:5, and Job 19:25 in the septuagint: https://biblehub.com/sepd/job/19.htm https://biblehub.com/interlinear/matthew/28-5.htm

Most likely Lewis and Styler are generalizing about Attic authors who they think have the best style. The composition textbook by Dickey (p. 107ff) says something similar to what Lewis and Styler say, but she presents it as a series of formulae to be used with different types of verbs. She doesn’t actually say that ὅτι is not to be used with verbs of knowing, but her examples (p. 109) all omit it.

Here’s an example from Homer, Iliad 20.431:

Πηλεΐδη, μὴ δὴ ἐπέεσσί με νηπύτιον ὣς
ἔλπεο δειδίξεσθαι, ἐπεὶ σάφα οἶδα καὶ αὐτὸς
ἠμὲν κερτομίας ἠδ’ αἴσυλα μυθήσασθαι.
οἶδα δ’ ὅτι σὺ μὲν ἐσθλός, ἐγὼ δὲ σέθεν πολὺ χείρων.

Here he uses οἶδα twice, once with ὅτι and once without, and the pattern seems similar to the one in English: no ὅτι with “to know how,” ὅτι with “to know that.” However, I found this by searching the text for ὅτι, so it may be that this usage is uncommon in Homer, and I only found it because I was searching for it.

It would be interesting to know which Greek writers these authors of composition textbooks are using as their models, since every example we’re turning up does seem to use ὅτι.

7

For the second sentence, would something like this work? I really struggle with contrafactuals!
Εἰ ταῦτα εἷδον, οὐδεν ἔλεξα πρὶν ἄν οἴκαδε ἀφικέσθαι.

8

The contrast that Lewis and Styler are trying to teach is that verbs of perception (which includes “knowing” in Greek) take a participle construction instead of an infinitive construction. Both can take ὡς or ὅτι.

Dickey’s presentation in chapter X is much harder to defend. “B) … Ὅτι + indicative…is used after verbs of saying…” … E) Participle…is used after verbs of knowing and perceiving".

I think it has with Dickey’s book having been created by extracting constructions from 19th composition books and presenting these constructions somewhat mechanically. It’s hard not to notice that the 19th century guys, in contrast to Dickey, left behind plenty of composed Greek in long form, and it’s often pretty good.

9

Hi,
First, a little more information on ὅτι/ὡς vs. participles vs. infinitives in indirect statements introduced by οἶδα:
According to the Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek, Section 52.28, either ὅτι/ὡς or a participle may be used, but there is a “subtle distinction”.

  1. If a participle is used, the dependent clause contains information already known
  2. If ὅτι/ὡς is used, “the information in the complement is new… and therefore salient”.

I’d place ἄν either directly before or after ἔλεξα (or εἶπον), as this is the balancing verb in the apodosis (εἰ…εἶδον, εἶπον ἄν…). πρὶν οἴκαδε άφικέσθαι is an adverbial clause modifying ἔλεξα/εἶπον

10

Hmm…hard to see how this would apply here (Job 19:25 in the septuagint):

οἶδα γὰρ ὅτι ἀέναός ἐστιν ὁ ἐκλύειν με μέλλων

It seems like Job is simply reaffirming his religious belief, which would be information already known. The distinction between information already known and information not already known would seem to apply to verbs like “to see” (what English speakers would call verbs of perception), but I’m not sure it even makes sense for verbs like “to know.”

11

ὁ δὲ ἑτοίμως ἐκέλευεν ἥκειν. ἐπειδὴ δὲ ξυνῆλθον, λέγει ὁ Κλέαρχος τάδε. ἐγώ, ὦ Τισσαφέρνη, οἶδα μὲν ἡμῖν ὅρκους γεγενημένους καὶ δεξιὰς δεδομένας μὴ ἀδικήσειν ἀλλήλους: φυλαττόμενον δὲ σέ τε ὁρῶ ὡς πολεμίους ἡμᾶς καὶ ἡμεῖς ὁρῶντες ταῦτα ἀντιφυλαττόμεθα. ἐπεὶ δὲ σκοπῶν οὐ δύναμαι οὔτε σὲ αἰσθέσθαι πειρώμενον ἡμᾶς κακῶς ποιεῖν ἐγώ τε σαφῶς οἶδα ὅτι ἡμεῖς γε οὐδὲ ἐπινοοῦμεν τοιοῦτον οὐδέν, ἔδοξέ μοι εἰς λόγους σοι ἐλθεῖν, ὅπως εἰ δυναίμεθα ἐξέλοιμεν ἀλλήλων τὴν ἀπιστίαν.

Xenophon 2.5.3-4

12

I can see how it makes sense in that context, since it’s quoted, dramatized speech in which the speaker says to a listener that he knows something. The first οἶδα is an “as you know,” while the second one is sharing his life experience. But I don’t see how the distinction makes any sense in general, if there isn’t dramatized dialog. If A knows X, then X can’t be new information to A. It can only be new information to some second person, B, if A is telling B about X. In the Job example, it is actually dramatized dialog, but if anything, I would think that Job’s religious faith would not be news to the person he’s speaking to. Maybe I need to understand the text better, to understand what knowledge Job’s listener would already have.

13

CGCG goes out on a limb sometimes on things like this. It seems far too much to make a general rule out of. Information salience is hardly the only thing at play in the Xenophon bit.

οἶδα μὲν ἡμῖν ὅρκους γεγενημένους…

He’s making a statement about himself and what he knows, and emphasizing that he’s an honest broker here. The participle construction fits that perfectly.

ἐγώ τε σαφῶς οἶδα ὅτι ἡμεῖς γε οὐδὲ ἐπινοοῦμεν τοιοῦτον οὐδέν

This is not a statement about himself (despite the ἐγώ and σαφῶς). The point is what he believes, and he is emphasizing its truthiness. It’s not that the information is “new”, but that the information, not the knowing, is the point of the statement.

And there are probably 10 other ways to characterize this bit of prose, which strikes me as fairly stylized compared to other chunks of the Anabasis.

14

Textbooks like to make very rigid distinctions between the ὁτι/infinitive/participle construction, when in reality the distinction is rather more grey.

The traditional rules re οἰδα are:
Verbs of knowing and perceiving tend to take the participle, hence the normal way to render your sentence in Attic prose is ἰσμεν ἡμας ὑμιν ἀει ἐπικουρησαντας.

Under the strict rules, οἰδα can take ὁτι when οἰδα is
a) itself a participle - εἰδοτες ὁτι τουτο ἀληθες ἐστιν, ἐφυγον.
b) stress certainty of knowledge (‘I know as a fact that’) - εὐ οἰδα ὁτι ὁ Λεωνιδας ὁ των Λακεδαιμονιων βασιλευς ἠν.

It seems also that it can take an infinitive to mean ‘I know how to…’ - οἰδα βιβλους ἀναγιγνωσκειν.

As I said, these are not hard-and-fast rules, so don’t be too surprised to see them ‘broken’, particularly outside Attic prose.