Aischylos, Seven Against Thebes 4:
εἰ μὲν γὰρ εὖ πράξαιμεν, αἰτία θεοῦ
This little snippet appears in the exercises/readings section of Hansen and Quinn’s Greek: An Intensive Course Unit 7. This is the chapter that just introduced the optative of wish construction introduced by the particles εἰ γὰρ. Yet the second clause doesn’t seem to make sense if you translate the first half as “If only we would fare well” or “May we fare well” or “I wish we would fare well.”
I wrestled with this sentence for a long time, trying to make sense of what appears to be an optative of wish construction, as taught in this very chapter, but couldn’t make sense of that second half.
With the help of the internet, I came up with this reading, understanding the sentence as a future less vivid conditional sentence: “For if we should fare well, the responsibility is god’s.” Does this sound like a reasonable interpretation?
I think it is downright dirty and nasty to include this sentence in an early chapter of a beginner textbook without any notes or help. The “εἰ γὰρ” in the context of this chapter’s grammar lesson would suggest the optative of wish, “I wish we would do well,” but then it is difficult to make sense of “αἰτία θεοῦ.” Evidently what we are supposed to somehow figure out is that this sentence is a kind of compressed future less vivid conditional, (εἰ + opt, opt + ἀν), wherein the verb of the second clause is implicit and so is the ἀν. (I suppose if we were to actually insert a verb on the page, it would be an optative form of εἰμι, whatever that is). I finally solved this by googling the entire phrase for help, and I found a Greek/English parallel translation from the Loeb classics, which you can find if you search yourselves (would post the link, but I’m still trying to get approved as a member on this board)
The missing ἀν never shows up in our sentence, but the very next sentence in context is a parallel construction that makes the grammar more explicit, using an εἰ + opt protasis (and no γὰρ) and the clear and real follow-through of another optative verb and the explicit appearance of ἀν.
It would be hard to pull a dirtier or nastier trick than this on beginning Greek learners. A sentence containing εἰ γὰρ right after a lesson teaching the optative of wish, with a compressed apodosis containting an implied optative plus an invisible ἀν, and the whole thing lifted out of context so that the contrasting parallel of the μεν… δε construction is robbed of its second half where the grammar is made more explicit. Agh! This is cruel!
I have found this level of obfuscated befuddlement to be entirely characteristic of the epigrammatic “readings” at the end of each chapter of H&Q, which are such ridiculously dense and labyrinthine one-liners as to be about the most difficult thing one could conceive to put before new Greek students, especially the auto-didact, and I can discern no higher purpose than the crushing of the neophyte’s spirit. O Hansen and Quinn, as wicked dew as e’er my mother brushed with raven’s feathers from unwholesome fen drop on you both!
In any case, I am reading this as a future less vivid conditional sentence, which just so happens to have γὰρ plopped in it, but in its standard conjunction/explanatory usage as “for” rather than an optative of wish as εἰ γὰρ. The ἀν of the apodosis would appear to be missing or implicit, but in the wider context of the passage, shows up later in the following lines of a parallel construction within a μεν… δε contrast. The Loeb classics English translation backs up my appraisal by rendering this a “If x should, then y would” type of sentence. Does anybody else have a different explanation to offer? I am not one well versed in the optative, nor especially in the dense syntax of Greek theater/poetry. Am I reading this right?