Here is my trial translation, which I’m not happy with:
[There is] one right way [for] every complimentary address, in speech to explain in detail what sort of person happens to be responsible for what sort of things, about whom the speech is [made].
I need a commentary on this sentence, especially on the following:
παντὸς ἐπαίνου περὶ παντός
λόγῳ
οἷος οἵων αἴτιος
ὢν: what is it doing?
What is the subject of τυγχάνει
λόγῳ: have I caught the meaning of this dative?
Well Hugh you seem to have it, except (a very minor point) your translation ignores περὶ παντός, which gratuitously expands παντὸς ἐπαίνου, “any eulogy on anyone” (taking παντός as masculine as the context suggests, though in principle it’s not delimited so).
The final phrase περὶ οὗ ἂν ὁ λόγος ᾖ effectively defines the subject of τυγχάνει, lit. “(what sort of person [the person]) about whom the speech is happens (to be).”
But τυγχάνει with the participle (ὢν) means not so much “happens to be” as “actually is.”
οἷος οἵων is a typically Greek two-in-one kind of construction, as I think you recognize, like e.g. τίς πόθεν εἶ “who are you and where are you from?”: so here οἷος οἵων αἴτιος ὢν τυγχάνει “what sort of person he is and what sort of things he’s responsible for,” though literally it’s “being what sort of person (οἷος ὢν) for what sort of things he’s actually responsible (οἵων αἴτιος ὢν τυγχάνει).”
And λόγῳ διελθεῖν to go through "in speech,” just as you say, the speech (ὁ λόγος) of course being a verbal artifact.
Hope that helps—not that you seemed to need much help.
Many thanks Michael for the remarks. I could see what the sentence had to mean, in a general way, and in a general way I could find English words for the meanings, but I needed help on how the Greek produced the meanings. Your commentary actually gives me a lot to work on.
Thanks also for the comment on gender (“taking παντός as masculine”). Very helpful. I was wondering about that, but I already had enough questions for one message.
10 different levels of difficulty?! And I see one of them has δεῖ δεῖξαι ὅτι ὁ θεὸς ἐστιν αἴτιος οἵων ἔργων, περὶ οὗ θεοῦ ὁ λόγος ἔστιν, which defies both grammar and sense.
The sense seems clear enough: “It has to be shown that the god is the reason for such works, of which god the speech is about.” Michael will have to be explicit about the grammar principles that he sees violated here. I don’t think that I see anything in Markos’ sentence that I couldn’t find a Koine example of.
Oh dear. I refuse to get sidetracked by Markos’ decalogue (I didn’t realize it was his), and I refuse to argue with Joel. I’ll just note that Plato’s sentence does not mention god, and that it uses οἷος quite differently. (It does not mean “such.”)