Dear friends,
the verbal form “ἀπαλλάγωμεν” feels so out of place. I’ve never seen it anywhere else and I’d expect something different of this verb. It feels as either complicated, sophisticated, artificial or a wrong form.
Opinion anyone?
Isn’t that ἀπαλλάσσω, aorist subjunctive passive 1st person plural?
But I’m not sure I understand the whole - ”unless we are released from some of the marines”??
Maybe get rid of some of the many passengers. Still sinister, but less difficult: marines tend to put stiff resistance to being killed.
I don’t see anything strange or untoward about ἀπαλλάγωμεν, the strong form of the aorist passive regular in prose whether or not in compounds. Presumably “unless we get rid of” vel sim., but I don’t have the book and don’t know the context. That cluster of genitives looks a bit odd, though.
Or am I missing the point? —P.S. Perhaps so. It’s an adaptation of Hdt.8.118, which does not have the verb but the noun.
I do understand the whole, but my main expectation is the form ἀπαλλαγῶμεν, especially followed by the genitive. That is, ± “if we don’t rid ourselves of/from some passengers“
With the accent on the antepenult (ἀπαλλάγωμεν) it *sounds to me like saying “let’s rid some of them of the many passengers”.
The form seems to be a subjunctive of 2nd middle/passive aorist, but still I’ve never seen this form and it still doesn’t fix the problem…
the main point is clear, some people have to been thrown to the fish… but the missing detail is to whom is the speaker talking, his position in the whole scheme and, if the text wants to show “leaders” planning or one “leader” conspiring with a member of the group to be victimized.
This is the actual difference the accented syllable makes (which leads to a different prosody of this and the following phrase. For me it’s not directly a grammatical problem, but a matter of sonification when recording).
Wow, I haven’t reached that point in Herodotus 
But according to the accent’s position the subsequent change in attitude would demand a different vocal intonation and prosody. One can reckon both as correct forms (however I’d like ἀπαλλάξωμεν + acc. more, as the action will be taken once, else the resistance mentioned above by @bedwere could void the plan )
Yes it looks as if ἀπαλλάγωμεν is just a mistake for ἀπαλλαγῶμεν. I missed that.
I guess there are few people who give as much attention to accentuation as you do, Ioannis, given what you do!
Fine to know I’m not the only one who thought it’s an error…
One (irrelevant) reason is that they survived for 2000 years and I’m trying to discover why, what motivated all these scholars to keep using them. They must have felt or known something which fell in silence and I need to discover it… I call this persecution mania
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