Hello! I am a new student of ancient Greek, going through C. W. E. Peckett’s and A. R. Munday’s Thrasymachus in order to learn the basics of the language. This book is fun, since it’s something like a puzzle—you’re just supposed to read the Greek and figure it out; but I’m on my own and not in a classroom setting, and so I don’t have a teacher I can pester to see if my guesswork is correct. I was hoping I might be able to pester you all with the things that weren’t clear to me from the first chapter of the text, if you don’t mind
The back-of-the-book dictionary says that “εἰς” is followed by the accusative, yet the chapter says “εἰς Ἅιδου” in a number of places; but isn’t “Ἅιδου” genitive? My tentative translation of assumes that it’s an abbreviation, something like “into [the house] of Hades,” but is it something else?
The book introduces the ferryman of the dead, Charon, as follows: “Χάρων: (ἐρέττει.) ὦ ὄποπ, ὦ ὄποπ, ὦ ὄποπ.” “ὄποπ” is not in the dictionary! I am therefore guessing that “ὦ ὄποπ” is onomatopoeic for the exertion of rowing, but is that correct?
Hermes describes Charon to Thrasymachus by saying, “ὁ Χάρων τῷ πλοίῳ φέρει τοὺς νεκροὺς εἰς Ἅιδου.” I would tentatively translate this as, “Charon carries the dead into Hades in his boat.” What confuses me here is “τῷ πλοίῳ:” this is dative, so an indirect object, but it doesn’t seem to follow conventions of indirect objects familiar to me in English. Is “with” or “using” a common use of the dative case in Greek, or is my tentative translation incorrect? (Or, perhaps, do I just not understand indirect objects even in English? )
The text uses both “ἀλλὰ” and “δὲ” to mean “but,” but it is not clear to me from context why one would prefer one to the other. Is it arbitrary, or are these two words used for different reasons?
When Thrasymachus explains to Charon that he doesn’t have an obol to give, but still expects to be ferrid across the Acheron anyway, Charon replies, “οἴμοι, τί λέγεις;” By the dictionary in the book, this is “Oh dear me! who? you speak,” which isn’t very helpful. Does this mean “What are you saying!?” or “Who do you think you are to say so!?” or is it something else entirely?
On εἰς Ἅιδου you are quite right, it’s short for “to [the house] of Hades.”
On ὦ ὄποπ too you are quite right.
Not all datives are indirect objects, and this one is more or less equivalent to “with” as you suggest (as e.g “I hit him with a stick”), specifying the means or instrument, a common use of the bare dative.
The difference between ἀλλὰ and δὲ is certainly not arbitrary. I don’t have the book so I can’t comment on the usage here, but δέ is a fairly all-purpose sentence connective, while ἀλλά is often contrasted with a preceding negative, “not A but(αλλα) Β.” But it has several other uses.
τί is not “who?” (τίς;) but “what?” (neuter). τί λέγεις; is “what are you saying?” or “what do you mean?”
All good questions, Jay. No doubt everything will become clearer as you read further.
The “ὦ ὄποπ, ὦ ὄποπ, ὦ ὄποπ” is a line of Charon’s in Aristophanes’ Frogs. (Line 208).
The scholium says: ἐλατικὸν ἐπίφθεγμα. ναυτικῶς οὖν κελεύων, ταῦτα λέγει.
“A rowing refrain. So he says this, nautically making time for rowing.”
At least in the conception of the scholiast, it’s a timing chant, rather than the sound of oars striking water. Search youtube videos for dragon boat drummers for an idea of how these chants work.
Thanks for the encouragement all, and thanks for the reference/commentary to Frogs! It’s cute that it’s a direct quote, sort of like an easter egg; I imagine the authors have worked a number of similar things throughout the book.
Despite naming this thread “Thrasymachus, ch. 1,” I figure I should keep putting my questions in here while I continue on, rather than spam the forum with a new thread for each chapter.
I found chapter 2 comparatively straightforward, so my questions are more nitpicky, just to make sure I’m not missing anything.
As Hermes takes Thrasymachus into the underworld, Hades’ monster-dog Kerberos barks at them and says, “ἀνθρώπων ὀσμή.” I had two questions about this one:
This doesn’t look like a sentence; it’s just a noun phrase, right?
Does “ἀνθρώπων” just refer to multiple individual humans, or can it refer to humanity as a whole? (That is, is Kerberos noting the odor of multiple individuals, or is he noting the odor of humans in general?) I ask since Hermes is certainly not “ἄνθρωπος”—rather “θεός”—and the book made a big point of it in the first chapter, making the naive reading (e.g. “the scent of two humans”) seem unlikely to me.
All considered, my tentative translation was, “Human-scent.” but I wanted to sanity check it, since that seemed odd.
I’ve seen words contracted using an apostrophe before (e.g. “ἀλλ᾿ ἀεὶ” or “χαῖρ᾿, ὦ Θηρασύμαχε.”), but this chapter gave me what I think is a contraction without an apostrophe: “κἀγαθοὺς.” That’s just “καὶ ἀγαθοὺς,” right? If so, why would they write “κἀγαθοὺς” instead of, say, “k᾿ ἀγαθοὺς”?
This chapter uses ἀγαθός (“good”) and καλός (“beautiful, good”) to describe the kinds of people who get to go to Elysium, but I’m not sure what distinguishes those two. Searching online, it seems like ἀγαθός is more like “good” in the sense we might mean it in English (e.g. noble, of high morals), while καλός really does mean “beautiful” after all, but perhaps in the wider sense is more like “fine” or “of high quality.” Is that right? (Or do sexy people just get to go to Elysium regardless of how they act? ) Is there any decent tools for getting the more subtle sense of a word than a dictionary can provide, or am I just limited to guesswork until I get to the point of being able to read a lot and see how these words are used in practice?
I don’t have the book so I can’t really say but ἀνθρώπων ὀσμή should just mean “smell/scent of people” (a whiff of humans?), referring presumably to Thrasymachus (hardly to Hermes). Hippolytus on his deathbed in Euripides’ play intuits the presence of Artemis from her divine scent: ὦ θεῖον ὀσμῆς πνεῦμα.
Final short vowels are routinely “elided”, as with ἀλλ᾿ ἀεὶ. But κἀγαθοὺς for καὶ ἀγαθοὺς is a different phenomenon known as crasis/κρᾶσις (“mixing”), denoting the coalescence of two vowels into a single long one. This happens a lot with και, e.g. κἀγώ for καὶ ἐγώ. It’s systematically effectuated in verse texts, less so (and not enough) in prose ones.
καλοὶ κἀγαθοί is a combo conventionally used of the upper classes (usually by themselves). It’s something of a snob term.
I’m onto chapter 3; the stated material (contracted verbs) isn’t giving me much trouble, but the book is throwing quite a lot of new or unusual sentence constructions at me, and I’m having a bit of trouble with them! So this is more like the questions from the first half of chapter 3, rather than the whole thing…
When Aiakos tells Thrasymachus of how nobody in the Isles of the Blessed needs to labor, Thrasymachus responds, “θαυμάσια δὴ λέγεις οὐδὲ πιστεύω.” This sentence seems a little weird, since θαυμάσια is an adjective and so there’s no word for it to attach to, right? So do I take it as a noun (“You speak of such wonders that I don’t believe [you]!”) or an adverb (“You speak so wonderously that I don’t believe [you]!”) or something else?
When Hektor meets Aiakos, he greets him and says, “πῶς ἔχεις;” By the vocabulary, that’s “You have how?” which makes no sense. Is he saying, “How are you?” Or perhaps he is asking about Thrasymachus, “Who do you have?”
When Aiakos is explaining to Hektor what he’s up to, he says, “δηλῶ τῷ παιδὶ τὰ ἐν ταῖς τῶν ὀλβίων νήσοις.” The “τὰ ἐν […]” is new, is he treating the prepositional phrase as if it’s the object of the sentence (e.g. “I am showing the boy the inside of the Isles of the Blessed.”)? Or is it something else?
Hektor offers to help teach Thrasymachus and says, “ἐπώτα, ὦ παῖ· τί ἐθέλεις;” Literally, I think this is, “Ask, boy: what do you want?” or perhaps a more free translation would simply be, “Ask me anything, boy.”
Thrasymachus asks Hektor what the Blessed do, and Hektor replies, “οὐδὲν ἄλλο ποιοῦμεν ἢ δειπνοῦμεν.” This is a very strange sentence based on what I’ve seen so far and I’m having a hard time parsing it. Is it “We neither do nor eat anything?”
What case and gender is “θαυμάσια” and is it singular or plural? If you don’t know how adverbs can be formed look at p 197.
“πῶς ἔχεις;” “how are you” seems right to me, an idiomatic expression.
“δηλῶ τῷ παιδὶ τὰ ἐν ταῖς τῶν ὀλβίων νήσοις.” what do you understand by “τὰ”? It is a neuter plural so cant be taken with anything thats follows, its a direct object of δηλῶ - I think that’s the key to completing your understanding.
I was a bit foxed by this but you mean ἐρώτα not “ἐπώτα” and your translation is fine.
What is the subject in Thrasymachus’ question? The verb is ποιεῖτε what person is that? So it cant be what do the “blessed do”. Moreover “the blessed” is in what case? ἐν ταῖςτῶν ὀλβίωννήσοις. the first verb in the answer is not the same as the verb in the question..the contractions are different. Perhaps you dont know that “οὐδὲν ἄλλο " is nothing other (than)”
I am happy to offer more explicit help but I think you should be able to work it out from here.
θαυμάσια is an adjective, but contra Seneca, the plural neuter form is often a substantive, and that is clearly the case here. You speak marvels, not you speak marvelously.
ἔχειν can work with an adv. as so: καλῶς ἔχω I am well, κακῶς ἔχω I am poorly, The question version is πῶς ἔχεις, and can be answered with καλῶς or κακῶς or so on.
The article can, in fact, take a prepositional phrase. τὰ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς the things in heaven
Punctuated like that, with the stop, understanding a break there would be natural. Greek would normally consider that an indirect question following ἐρώτα. “Be asking what you want, boy.”
Yes, Thrasymachus is referring to the Blessed when he uses the 2nd person plural (you all), and Hector is answering for the the Blessed (us) when he answers. οὐδὲν ἄλλο is nothing else, οὐδὲν ἄλλο … ἢ … is “nothing other … than …”
1, θαυμάσια δὴ λέγεις οὐδὲ πιστεύω: Yes, neuter plural adjectives are often used like this, ”Amazing things you’re saying”
οὐδὲ πιστεύω “and I don’t believe [it/you/them].”
2. πῶς ἔχεις; Yes it’s ”How are you?”—an idiomatic use of intransitive ἔχω, common with adverbs (καλῶς ἔχω “I’m fine,” κακῶς ἔχω “I’m in a bad way”). “Who do you have?” would be τίνα ἔχεις;
3. δηλῶ τῷ παιδὶ τὰ ἐν ταῖς τῶν ὀλβίων νήσοις: “… the [things] in the isles of the blest.” If there were a noun or adjective with τὰ it would come after the prepositional phrase (i.e. after νήσοις).
4. Yes.
5. οὐδὲν ἄλλο ποιοῦμεν ἢ δειπνοῦμεν: οὐδὲν is “nothing,” οὐδὲν ἄλλο is “nothing other,” “nothing else,” and ἢ is “than”. So “we do nothing other than dine,” “all we do is feast.”
Hopes this helps, Jay. Do ask follow-up questions if you have any.
PS. I see seneca beat me to it, but I’ll post this anyway.
PPS And now I see Joel’s.
Re. 1+3: Ah! So if a direct object is implied but not stated, we can assume a generic one? E.g. θαυμάσια alone indicates “wonderful [things]”, or τὰ ἐν ταῖς τῶν ὀλβίων νήσοις indicates “the [things] in the Isles of the Blessed”? (I suppose this is like how if we see just a verb we can assume an implied subject of the sentence?)
Re. 4:
Oops! Yes, that’s a typo. It’s funny, the hardest thing about the Greek alphabet for me is that ρ says “r” not “p”… I always have to make two passes at it!
Re. 5: Wait, οὐδέν is “nothing” and ἤ is “than?” That’s the crux of my problem right there. I had thought οὐδέν was “and not,” but looking again, nope, that’s οὐδέ. After you all mentioned it, I looked again and couldn’t find οὐδέν in the dictionary, but eventually realized that it’s the neuter of οὐδείς (“no-one”). Similarly misleadingly, the dictionary in the book gives ἤ as “or” and so that was what I was working from; even digging now I can’t find any reference to “than” except the reverse dictionary (which indeed says “ἤ”), so I’m not sure how I would have ever found this unless you all had mentioned it. (Bizarrely, the reverse dictionary doesn’t even list “or!”)
I wonder if the book’s dictionary is simply lacking (and I should get a dedicated one) or if using the dictionary is a skill of it’s own which I haven’t yet grasped.
It’s a bit of a preview of the next section, where the usage is explained in the referenced grammar, under “comparison”.
If you want a real challenge, you can do what I did, and at the same time as going through Thrasymachus, go through W.H.D. Rouse’s “Greek Boy at Home” with no outside dictionary, but instead using its mostly Greek to Greek dictionary in the back. It’s an acquirable skill to be able to pick up vocabulary and grammar through reading.
Aha! Thank you for the hint, that section is exactly what I needed.
Fascinating! I’ve ordered a copy and we’ll see what I can make of it. You may have just signed yourself up for a lot more dopey beginner’s questions, though.
(1) “or”, or if repeated, ἢ … ἢ … “either … or …” (e.g. ἢ ἐγὼ ἢ σύ either you or I). Negative οὔτε …. οὔτε … neither .. nor ….
(2) “than” with comparatives (ἐκείνη σοφωτέρα ἢ ἐγώ she’s smarter than I am) or ἄλλος (ουδεὶς ἄλλος ἢ θεός τις no-one other than a god, none but a god)
ουδείς no-one, ουδέν nothing.
εἵς μία ἕν (masc.fem.neut. nom.sing.) “one” (the numeral).
As Joel says, you can pick up grammar and vocabulary through reading. For most people though that’s not enough—hence the Thrasymachus book, and many others, and my notes here. Either way, the more Greek you read the better.
Incidentally, belated thanks to paveln for the Internet Archive Thrasymachus.
If you are buying Greek Boy, I recommend Rouse’s original edition, if you don’t mind PDFs, or reprinting it yourself. There’s a new version there that is very different, and an OCR version by Mahoney that’s probably good enough, but it cuts the introduction and pictures and some macrons.
)
) Is there any decent tools for getting the more subtle sense of a word than a dictionary can provide, or am I just limited to guesswork until I get to the point of being able to read a lot and see how these words are used in practice?