Bowen's Advanced Greek Unseens

Greek Learning Greek
1

dikaiopolis recommended that I go through Bowen’s Advanced Greek Unseens textbook, and I thought that I’d give it a try. There are no notes, so I’ll attempt them without. I’ll point out when I use a dictionary.

Xen. Ana. 4.7.21-25

καὶ ἀφικνοῦνται ἐπὶ τὸ ὄρος τῇ πέμπτῃ ἡμέρᾳ· ὄνομα δὲ τῷ ὄρει ἦν Θήχης. ἐπεὶ δὲ οἱ πρῶτοι ἐγένοντο ἐπὶ τοῦ ὄρους καὶ κατεῖδον τὴν θάλατταν, κραυγὴ πολλὴ ἐγένετο. ἀκούσας δὲ ὁ Ξενοφῶν καὶ οἱ ὀπισθοφύλακες ᾠήθησαν ἔμπροσθεν ἄλλους ἐπιτίθεσθαι πολεμίους· εἵποντο γὰρ ὄπισθεν ἐκ τῆς καιομένης χώρας, καὶ αὐτῶν οἱ ὀπισθοφύλακες ἀπέκτεινάν τέ τινας καὶ ἐζώγρησαν ἐνέδραν ποιησάμενοι, καὶ γέρρα ἔλαβον δασειῶν βοῶν ὠμοβόεια ἀμφὶ τὰ εἴκοσιν. ἐπειδὴ δὲ βοὴ πλείων τε ἐγίγνετο καὶ ἐγγύτερον καὶ οἱ ἀεὶ ἐπιόντες ἔθεον δρόμῳ ἐπὶ τοὺς ἀεὶ βοῶντας καὶ πολλῷ μείζων ἐγίγνετο ἡ βοὴ ὅσῳ δὴ πλείους ἐγίγνοντο, ἐδόκει δὴ μεῖζόν τι εἶναι τῷ Ξενοφῶντι, καὶ ἀναβὰς ἐφ’ ἵππον καὶ Λύκιον καὶ τοὺς ἱππέας ἀναλαβὼν παρεβοήθει· καὶ τάχα δὴ ἀκούουσι βοώντων τῶν στρατιωτῶν Θάλαττα θάλαττα καὶ παρεγγυώντων. ἔνθα δὴ ἔθεον πάντες καὶ οἱ ὀπισθοφύλακες, καὶ τὰ ὑποζύγια ἠλαύνετο καὶ οἱ ἵπποι. ἐπεὶ δὲ ἀφίκοντο πάντες ἐπὶ τὸ ἄκρον, ἐνταῦθα δὴ περιέβαλλον ἀλλήλους καὶ στρατηγοὺς καὶ λοχαγοὺς δακρύοντες. καὶ ἐξαπίνης ὅτου δὴ παρεγγυήσαντος οἱ στρατιῶται φέρουσι λίθους καὶ ποιοῦσι κολωνὸν μέγαν.

And on the fifth day they were arriving [present-tense] on the mountain. Theches was the name of the mountain. And after the first troops came to be upon the mountain and they saw the sea, a great cry went up. Xenophon heard it and the rearguard thought __ that other enemies were attacking in the front, for they were followed from behind out of the burned countryside. And the rearguard had set up an ambush and had both killed and captured some of these, and took about twenty rawhide shields made from shaggy skins. But then more people and closer took up the cry and constantly the ones going up took up running at top speed after those continuing to cry and the cry became much [πολλῷ - or does he mean more people?] louder with so many more people having come. And to Xenophon it seemed that something major was happening, and he mounted his horse and after gathering Lukius and his horses, went to help. And quickly they heard the soldiers crying “the sea the sea” and crowding in. And then the entire rearguard took up the run, and the pack animals and the horse were driven on. And after all had come up on the top, they were hugging each other and the generals and the captains were crying. And appearing from somewhere nearby the soldiers were carrying [present-tense] rocks and they set up a huge column.

Dictionary:

ἐπὶ for accusative v. genitive. The difference really seems to be motion v. rest here.
ἐπιτίθημι - verified that the middle was the sense “attack” and that ἐπιτίθεσθαι wasn’t passive
ἐνέδρα - ambush (I should have known this one)

Philoctetes, questions.
2

Joel, Not bad, but you have rather too many unforced errors here. A few notes (selective).

ἀκούσας δὲ ὁ Ξενοφῶν καὶ οἱ ὀπισθοφύλακες ᾠήθησαν ἔμπροσθεν ἄλλους ἐπιτίθεσθαι πολεμίους·
Casual writing. ακουσας applying to Xen but then its reference is expanded when he adds the rearguard.

εἵποντο γὰρ ὄπισθεν ἐκ τῆς καιομένης χώρας
Not “they were followed,” επομαι is not passive. They (the enemy) were following behind. Now they think there’s other enemy ahead of them.

πολλῷ μείζων ἐγίγνετο ἡ βοὴ ὅσῳ δὴ πλείους ἐγίγνοντο
πολλω just “much,” yes (lit. greater by much), but ὅσῳ δὴ πλείους ἐγίγνοντο not “with so many more people having come”; lit. “by how much there were more.” As their number increased, the yelling became correspondingly greater. Very neat in Greek, difficult in English. The two αειs are hard to translate too.

τοὺς ἱππέας not “his horses”!

ἀκούουσι Note switch to vivid present.

ενταῦθα δὴ περιέβαλλον ἀλλήλους καὶ στρατηγοὺς καὶ λοχαγοὺς δακρύοντες.
Not “they were hugging each other and the generals and the captains were crying”! Very careless.

ὅτου δὴ παρεγγυήσαντος. Cannot mean “appearing from somewhere nearby.” Look up the verb (2nd occurrence) and see if you can figure out οτου and the construction.

Note the contribution of the various δη’s.

3

Thanks.

ενταῦθα δὴ περιέβαλλον ἀλλήλους καὶ στρατηγοὺς καὶ λοχαγοὺς δακρύοντες.
Not “they were hugging each other and the generals and the captains were crying”! Very careless.

Yes, I’m not sure how I mistook the accusatives for nominatives.

ὅτου δὴ παρεγγυήσαντος. Cannot mean “appearing from somewhere nearby.” Look up the verb (2nd occurrence) and see if you can figure out οτου and the construction.

Yes, I see, after looking it up. ἐγγυάω turns out not to mean anything like ἐγγύς. In the first case “βοώντων τῶν στρατιωτῶν Θάλαττα θάλαττα καὶ παρεγγυώντων”, the soldiers were passing the word. In the second “ὅτου δὴ παρεγγυήσαντος”, someone having given the word.

Note the contribution of the various δη’s.

Are they all acting as emphasis markers here? It feels like they are making the statements more forceful and emotional.

4

Euripides Hecuba 531 - 549

ΤΑΛΘΥΒΙΟΣ

κἀγὼ καταστὰς εἶπον ἐν μέσοις τάδε·
Σιγᾶτ’, Ἀχαιοί, σῖγα πᾶς ἔστω λεώς,
σίγα σιώπα. νήνεμον δ’ ἔστησ’ ὄχλον.
ὁ δ’ εἶπεν· Ὦ παῖ Πηλέως, πατὴρ δ’ ἐμός,
δέξαι χοάς μοι τάσδε κηλητηρίους, (535)
νεκρῶν ἀγωγούς· ἐλθὲ δ’, ὡς πίηις μέλαν
κόρης ἀκραιφνὲς αἶμ’ ὅ σοι δωρούμεθα
στρατός τε κἀγώ· πρευμενὴς δ’ ἡμῖν γενοῦ
λῦσαί τε πρύμνας καὶ χαλινωτήρια
νεῶν δὸς ἡμῖν †πρευμενοῦς† τ’ ἀπ’ Ἰλίου (540)
νόστου τυχόντας πάντας ἐς πάτραν μολεῖν.
τοσαῦτ’ ἔλεξε, πᾶς δ’ ἐπηύξατο στρατός.
εἶτ’ ἀμφίχρυσον φάσγανον κώπης λαβὼν
ἐξεῖλκε κολεοῦ, λογάσι δ’ Ἀργείων στρατοῦ
νεανίαις ἔνευσε παρθένον λαβεῖν. (545)
ἡ δ’, ὡς ἐφράσθη, τόνδ’ ἐσήμηνεν λόγον·
Ὦ τὴν ἐμὴν πέρσαντες Ἀργεῖοι πόλιν,
ἑκοῦσα θνήισκω· μή τις ἅψηται χροὸς
τοὐμοῦ· παρέξω γὰρ δέρην εὐκαρδίως.

Talthybios [one of the attendants of Agamemnon?]

And I having stood up was saying the following in the middle of them:
Be silent, Achaeans, Let the whole people be silent,
Be silently silent. The crowd stood in good order.
He spoke: Child of Peleus, my father,
receive <words I don’t know>
leading the dead. Come, so that you may drink the black
freshly spilled (?) blood of the girl which we give to you,
the army and myself. Provide a good wind (?) for us
and loosen the prows and the anchors (?)
of the ships, give us good winds out of Ilias
of homecoming, all having chanced to blow to the fatherland.
Such he said, and the whole army prayed for it.
Then taking the gold-wrapped sword <κώπης ? noun or adj.?>
he drew it from his scabbard. And he directed the young male captains
of the army of the Argives to take the virgin.
And she spoke thus and signaled this speech:
You Argives having sacked my city,
I die willingly. Let no one lay hold of my skin,
For I present my body with good heart.

5

Now I’m looking up the words that I didn’t know in the LSJ after the fact:

δέξαι χοάς μοι τάσδε κηλητηρίους,
νεκρῶν ἀγωγούς·

receive these appeasing drink offerings that lead the dead

χοή - drink offering
κηλητήριος - charming/appeasing
ἀκραιφνής - unmixed/pure
πρευμενὴς - gentle/favorable
χαλινωτήρια - mooring cables
κώπη - handle

6

You can look up Talthybius.

σιγα σιωπα both imperative.

νήνεμον δ’ ἔστησ’ ὄχλον. οχλος is masc.!

ἀπ’ Ἰλίου Ilius or Ilium. Ilias is the Iliad.

νόστου dep. on τυχοντας.

ἅψηται touch

παρέξω tense?!

Just a small selection.

7

Joel, this is good. A few notes to add to Michael’s:

ἔστησ’: 1st person here

πρευμενὴς δ’ ἡμῖν γενοῦ
λῦσαί τε πρύμνας καὶ χαλινωτήρια
νεῶν δὸς ἡμῖν †πρευμενοῦς† τ’ ἀπ’ Ἰλίου (540)
νόστου τυχόντας πάντας ἐς πάτραν μολεῖν.: Your syntax is a little off here. Should we take λῦσαι as an inf. or impv.? And “blow to the fatherland?”

λογάσι δ’ Ἀργείων στρατοῦ/νεανίαις: λογάς (chosen)

ὡς ἐφράσθη: not “she spoke thus”

Too bad it stops here. The next lines are great.

For these short dramatic passages, it might not be a bad idea to read a quick plot summary (I like the introductions to Kovacs’ LCL volumes, or in the Grene/Lattimore Euripides, or just Wikipedia) if you don’t have time to read the whole play.

8

Thanks to both of you. Your notes and the LSJ clears up most of my issues, I think. However, this section remains difficult, even with the help.

πρευμενὴς δ’ ἡμῖν γενοῦ
λῦσαί τε πρύμνας καὶ χαλινωτήρια
νεῶν δὸς ἡμῖν †πρευμενοῦς† τ’ ἀπ’ Ἰλίου (540)
νόστου τυχόντας πάντας ἐς πάτραν μολεῖν.

λῦσαί must be infinitive, because there would need to be a connective word near δὸς otherwise. It took me a very long time staring at this to realize λῦσαι δὸς ἡμῖν was “give us to loose”. Now it’s obvious.

Become gentle to us, give to us to loose the prows and mooring-cables of our ships and for all to go to their fatherland having made a favorable homecoming.

There still seems to be something wrong with this, because πρευμενοῦς is not an adverb, and should not be modifying νόστου. Related question: What does “s.v.l.” mean in the LSJ?

  1. of events, favourable, κατελθὼν . . πρευμενεῖ τύχῃ
    Id.Ag.1647; τελευτὰς . . πρευμενεῖς κτίσειεν
    Id.Supp.140 (lyr.); πρευμενοῦς . . νόστου τυχόντας
    E.Hec.540 (s.v.l.).
9

πρευμενοῦς is adjective (in the genitive), modifying νόστος. It’s in the genitive because that’s what tuxein governs.

N πρευμενὴς νόστος
G πρευμενοῦς νόστου

10

πρευμενοῦς is adjective (in the genitive), modifying νόστος.

Got it. I don’t know how I missed that. On the first read-throughs, I think that I just really wanted it to be accusative to fit with δός, and didn’t rethink that even after I realized that λῦσαι was the object of δός.

11

s.v.l. = si vera lectio (I looked it up). Literally, “if the reading is true”. I notice that πρευμενοῦς is enclosed by daggers, so I suspect its placement in this line is not certain.
My hard copy of the Intermediate Lexicon does not have the abbreviation listed, so I went to Perseus and “rechunked” the text to show the front matter of the full LSJ.

12

Demosthenes, against Timocrates (24) 139-141.

Per Michael, I’ve attempted to read this a few more times, and with a slower initial pace, before attempting the translation. I agree with him that being able to read accurately is the proper goal, not translating. But I don’t know of another way other than translating to allow you all to correct my errors.

This was another fairly easy one, so I guessed at words rather than looking anything up.

Βούλομαι δ’ ὑμῖν, ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί, ἐν Λοκροῖς ὡς νομοθετοῦσι διηγήσασθαι· οὐδὲν γὰρ χείρους ἔσεσθε παράδειγμά τι ἀκηκοότες, ἄλλως τε καὶ ᾧ πόλις εὐνομουμένη χρῆται. ἐκεῖ γὰρ οὕτως οἴονται δεῖν τοῖς πάλαι κειμένοις χρῆσθαι νόμοις καὶ τὰ πάτρια περιστέλλειν καὶ μὴ πρὸς τὰς βουλήσεις μηδὲ πρὸς τὰς διαδύσεις τῶν ἀδικημάτων νομοθετεῖσθαι, ὥστ’ ἄν τις βούληται νόμον καινὸν τιθέναι, ἐν βρόχῳ τὸν τράχηλον ἔχων νομοθετεῖ, καὶ ἐὰν μὲν δόξῃ καλὸς καὶ χρήσιμος εἶναι ὁ νόμος, ζῇ ὁ τιθεὶς καὶ ἀπέρχεται, εἰ δὲ μή, τέθνηκεν ἐπισπασθέντος τοῦ βρόχου. καὶ γάρ τοι καινοὺς μὲν οὐ τολμῶσι τίθεσθαι, τοῖς δὲ πάλαι κειμένοις ἀκριβῶς χρῶνται. καὶ ἐν πολλοῖς δὲ πάνυ ἔτεσιν, ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί, εἷς λέγεται παρ’ αὐτοῖς νόμος καινὸς τεθῆναι. ὄντος γὰρ αὐτόθι νόμου, ἐάν τις ὀφθαλμὸν ἐκκόψῃ, ἀντεκκόψαι παρασχεῖν τὸν ἑαυτοῦ, καὶ οὐ χρημάτων τιμήσεως οὐδεμιᾶς, ἀπειλῆσαί τις λέγεται ἐχθρὸς ἐχθρῷ ἕν’ ἔχοντι ὀφθαλμὸν ὅτι αὐτοῦ ἐκκόψει τοῦτον τὸν ἕνα. γενομένης δὲ ταύτης τῆς ἀπειλῆς χαλεπῶς ἐνεγκὼν ὁ ἑτερόφθαλμος, καὶ ἡγούμενος ἀβίωτον αὑτῷ [εἶναι] τὸν βίον τοῦτο παθόντι, λέγεται τολμῆσαι νόμον εἰσενεγκεῖν, ἐάν τις ἕνα ἔχοντος ὀφθαλμὸν ἐκκόψῃ, ἄμφω ἀντεκκόψαι παρασχεῖν, ἵνα τῇ ἴσῃ συμφορᾷ ἀμφότεροι χρῶνται. καὶ τοῦτον μόνον λέγονται Λοκροὶ θέσθαι τὸν νόμον ἐν πλεῖν ἢ διακοσίοις ἔτεσιν.

And I wish to relate to you, gentlemen lawgivers, how they make the laws among the Lokroi. You won’t be any worse off for hearing an example, especially not if it is something done by a well-governed city. For there, thinking as they do that they need to live by the laws set down in olden times and to live according to (?) their inheritance, and to not create laws according to the wishes or according to the machinations (?) of lawbreakers, whenever someone wishes to create a new law, he proposes the law holding his neck in a stock (?). And if the law appears to be good and useful, the lawgiver lives and goes away. But if not, the stock being pressed together (?), he dies. And since really they do not dare to set new laws, the laws of olden times are used exactly [as set down]. And in very many years, gentlemen lawgivers, one new law is said to have been created for them. For there is a law there, if a man cuts out an eye, he is required to have an eye of his own cut out, and is not penalized any money at all. A certain enemy is said to have threatened an enemy having one eye that he would cut out the one eye from him. This threat having come about, the [formerly] one-eyed man bore it hard, and thinking that life was unlivable for him having suffered this, he is said to have braved to set forth a new law: If anyone cuts out the only eye of a man, he is required to have both his eyes cut out in return, so that both endure the same misfortune. And the Lokroi say this is the only law to be created in more than two hundred years.

τὰ πάτρια περιστέλλειν - live according to their inheritance ?
διαδύσεις (διαδύσ- what ending in nom.?)- “according to the machinations” (I recognize δυς in there)
βρόχῳ from βρόχος - stock ?
ἐπισπασθέντος (ἐπισπασω ?) - something you do with a βρόχος to kill someone

  • τιμήσεως - this looks like an adverb? But seems to make sense as a perfect participle. I probably need to check my accidence.
13

First can we stay with the Euripides for a moment, that πρευμενοῦς passage?
… πρευμενὴς δ’ ἡμῖν γενοῦ
λῦσαί τε πρύμνας καὶ χαλινωτήρια
νεῶν δὸς ἡμῖν †πρευμενοῦς† τ’ ἀπ’ Ἰλίου
νόστου τυχόντας πάντας ἐς πάτραν μολεῖν.
Do we all see how it goes? Both τε’s (postpositive, of course) mean “and.” The first connects the two imperative clauses, γενου and δος, while the second, after πρευμενους, connects the two infinitives that depend on δος, λῦσαι and μολειν. The switch from dat. ημιν to the acc. (τυχοντας παντας) is unexceptional, with τε intervening.
As for πρευμενοῦς, the objection to it is not the repetition as such but rather the syntactical imbalance between the two occurrences of the word. It’s indefensible. Hylander’s ευμενοῦς is too close to it, intolerable after the πρευμενὴς γενοῦ invocation of Achilles. Diggle in the OCT reports Heimsoeth’s ευμαροῦς, which seems as good a guess as we’re likely to get.

Incidentally, was anyone surprised to find that the sacrificial victim is not Iphigeneia?


OK, moving on to the new passage (unless anyone wants to come back on this). Joel, τιμήσεως ought not to look like an adverb to you, especially with ουδεμιᾶς directly following it.

The rest I’ll leave to others.

14

It takes a lot of time to go through your translation and correct your errors, but here we go:

ἄνδρες δικασταί – more like 'gentlemen of the jury"

ᾧ πόλις εὐνομουμένη χρῆται – better “[a model] that a well-governed city observes”

περιστέλλειν – “cherish”, see LSJ.

τὰ πάτρια περιστέλλειν – “to cherish ancestral customs/laws”

μὴ πρὸς τὰς βουλήσεις μηδὲ πρὸς τὰς διαδύσεις τῶν ἀδικημάτων νομοθετεῖσθαι – I think the idea is to “legislate neither to achieve results desired in the short term nor to allow evasions of responsibility for illegalities”

βρόχος – “noose”; once you read OT you won’t forget this word. I couldn’t find this word in the on-line LSJ. You need to equip yourself with a print dictionary, specifically, the Intermediate Liddell & Scott, as the on-line LSJ is very inadequate.

ἐπισπασθέντος – from ἐπισπάω, “yank”.

τοῖς δὲ πάλαι κειμένοις ἀκριβῶς χρῶνται – “they observe those that were enacted long ago [and remain on the books] punctilliously”. Not sure whether you understood the syntax: χρῶνται is middle, “they observe”, τοῖς δὲ πάλαι κειμένοις is the dative complement of χρῶνται.

εἷς λέγεται παρ’ αὐτοῖς νόμος καινὸς τεθῆναι – “one new law is said to have been enacted among them”; παρ’ αὐτοῖς is not “for them” but rather something like “among them”, “in their community”.

ὄντος γὰρ αὐτόθι νόμου, – a genitive absolute. You didn’t translate it as such, so I can’t tell whether you understood the syntax.

τιμήσεως – gen. of τιμησις, “assessment of monetary indemnification for injury”. The idea is that instead of an assessment monetary compensation for the loss of an eye, the tortfeasor must furnish his own eye to be knocked or cut out. Genitive of price or value. You could have found this easily in a print dictionary, and you should have recognized this as an ι stem genitive to begin with.

ἐκκόψῃ – probably better “strike/knock out” than “cut out”.

ἀντεκκόψαι παρασχεῖν τὸν ἑαυτοῦ – he must furnish/offer his own eye to be stricken out in compensation/reciprocity [ἀντ-]". Not sure from your loose translation whether you understood this.

ἀπειλῆσαί τις λέγεται ἐχθρὸς ἐχθρῷ – better “a certain man is said to have threatened his enemy”. ἐχθρὸς ἐχθρῷ is idiomatic Greek but can’t be translated literally in English.

“the [formerly] one-eyed man” – why formerly?

braved? Why not just dared?

χαλεπῶς ἐνεγκὼν – this idiom means something like “getting angry”.

νόμον εἰσενεγκεῖν – propose a law

ἐάν τις ἕνα ἔχοντος ὀφθαλμὸν ἐκκόψῃ – “if anyone should strike out the eye of someone/a man having only one eye”. Your translation, “If anyone cuts out the only eye of a man” suggests that you didn’t work out the syntax.

λέγονται Λοκροὶ θέσθαι τὸν νόμον – No! Not “the Locrians say this is the only law to have been enacted”. Instead “the Locrians are said to have enacted only this law”. λέγονται is passive; θέσθαι is aorist middle, not passive. Aorist passive infinitive of τιθημι is τεθῆναι. I don’t want to be captious, but this is another example of a tendency to write what you think the Greek words mean without paying attention to how they fit together, which mwh mentioned.

15

From the previous passage:

νήνεμον δ’ ἔστησ’ ὄχλον – ἔστησ’ is transitive. νήνεμον ὄχλον are masculine accusative. I’m not sure you figured out how phrase works.

16

I appreciate your having taken that time, and also everybody else who does. I meant “make possible” in the earlier post. I realize now that “allow” could seem to imply “permit” (which wasn’t meant). I’m sorry if that came off as rude. Also, I can adjust anything that I’m doing here, though it has been fun to attack these pieces without a dictionary, and really think through them.

I’ll try to stick a bit closer to the Greek syntax in the next exercise. But I appreciate the comments even where they confirm what I already thought. And of course the ones where I’ve misunderstood something.

“the [formerly] one-eyed man” – why formerly?

I think this reveals what may be my biggest mistake in this exercise: “γενομένης δὲ ταύτης τῆς ἀπειλῆς”

I thought this meant that the threat was carried about. But from your comment it just means that the threat was made? The story works better if he is asking the city to make the law to protect him rather than for revenge.

These are the same Lokroi as in Pindar, right? I noticed them by chance on the map this afternoon, on the boot heel of Italy. It was Epizephyrian Locris on the map, and Ζεφύριοι Λοκροί in Pindar. This seems like a suitably far away place for Demosthenes’ unlikely story. But is that to distinguish them from other Λοκροί?

17

Don’t try doing these exercises without a dictionary if you want others to correct you. You make too many mistakes, and it takes more time and effort to correct you.

As for your biggest mistake, it was the last sentence of the excerpt. You got the syntax completely wrong. It’s not a difficult sentence, but you didn’t pay attention to the verb-forms, which you should have recognized.

Again, if you’re not absolutely sure of a noun- or verb-form, look it up. Don’t expect others to do your work for you. Yes, these are supposed to be sight-translations, but it’s just not fair to those who undertake to correct you – who are not getting paid for their time and efforts, after all – to present the results of a half-baked translation for correction when you could do more work on your own. I don’t see how sight-translation is of much use to you, either. You’ll learn more by looking up words in the dictionary and grammatical forms than by having someone else tell you what they are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locris

18

Joel, I think you’re doing quite well with these in general. The passages are fun. As for receiving comments on Textkit, would it make sense for you to produce two versions, your unseen translation like you’ve done (no resources) plus a self-corrected version (after consulting a lexicon, grammars, maybe a translation if you’re stumped)? That way, the forum discussion could focus on any outstanding difficulties or interesting features of the passage (e.g., the πρευμενοῦς issue from the Hekabe). You’ll get the benefits of unseen translation—forcing yourself to work out vocabulary and syntax without constantly relying on a dictionary or grammar, reading a broad selection of Greek literature, improving your ability to figure out the sense of a passage based on context—without being overly dependent on help from others.

19

Joel, you have a tendency to disregard noun and verb forms. This is not a problem where the meaning of the Greek is obvious, but where you need to understand how the Greek fits together in order to get at the meaning, you sometimes miss the mark.

The last sentence in your translation of the passage from Demosthenes is an example. You actually know that λέγονται is passive because you translated λέγεται as passive earlier, and you know all the other Greek words, too. But it looks as if you simply looked at the Greek words and strung together English words with the same meanings, without thinking about the forms of the words or how they fit together.

I think you need to work on this. Translating at sight, without looking up words you don’t know and without focusing on noun and verb forms and syntax, doesn’t seem to be the best way to do so. If you want to continue posting your translation efforts, it would be helpful to put in more effort into trying to get everything right before you post them. You will learn more Greek that way, and you will move in the direction of not needing to translate to understand the Greek.

20

I appreciate the advice. And I’ll attempt future unseens as dikaiopolis has recommended. First draft without any resources, and then a final draft after correcting what I can.

You and mwh keep mentioning this, but please remember that I picked up what Greek I have in a rather different manner from both of you. I don’t translate at all as I read. Nor do I look ahead and pick sentences apart. I really don’t. For the above, I simply read through several times until everything made sense to me, and then I wrote down what I understood. Obviously I have problems with accuracy that I wouldn’t have if I were practiced at working it all out with a pencil. But my accuracy issues have been getting better, and I find that these attempts at literal translation are showing me exactly what I need to work on.

I’ve started going through Burnet’s “Greek Rudiments” textbook, doing all the exercises. I feel like this will shore up the areas were I’m weak in more traditional skills. My accidence remains weak in a few specific areas, espeically at sight-reading speed. Also, I confess that still I don’t have much of a feel at all for the middle forms of verbs.