I’m Slimsne and I’m a second year Greek student. My major was Philosophy, and with a few left over credit points I decided to learn Greek. I’m loving it, although it does try my patience occasionally.
At the moment I’m trying to grasp some subtleties of emphasis. My tutor has asked me to translate a few sentences into Greek.
The first one is:
Telemachus did not know whether or not these things lay in the laps of the gods.
For which I think I’ve got about 5 different translations. Choice of which verb of knowing, choice of vividness of the secondary verb, choice of word order!
Here’s what I have, I went with γιγνώσκω simply because I couldn’t find any other aorist verbs of knowing. So far I’ve learned οἶδα and ἐπισταμαι as well.
So my question is, how does separating the “in the laps” from “of the gods” affect the ownership-sense of the latter? I’m trying to emphasise that these things are right-there-in-the-laps by using hyperbaton. Have I succeeded?
I won’t do your homework for you, but these are good things to wonder about. The first thing to ask is what construction you need for “did not know whether or not…” Hint: review indirect questions.
For the past of οἶδα, an irregular verb that only has a perfect stem, you would use the pluperfect—and you should be able to find an aorist or imperfect of επισταμαι.
bedwere is right that you need κέοιτο not κοῖτο for the opt. (the -ει- of κεῖμαι always becomes -ε- in the subjunctive and optative before a vowel, e.g. κέωνται). Optative is good. What other mood could you use?
γούνασι is Epic/Ionic—of course, you’re alluding to the famous Homeric ταυτα θεων εν γουνασι κειται. Your word order is awkward. It would better to stay closer to the order of the original (or try to reformulate the sentiment in Attic idiom, less metaphorically).
would it be possible to have something like εν ταῦτα γουνασι θεων so that these things really were in the lap of the gods? It’s the sort of play that one often sees in Latin poetry.
I’m using Keller and Russell’s learn to read Greek, and their vocab notes for κεῖμαι don’t even mention that. Strange.
To answer your question, κεῖμαι could remain as a retained indicative in an indirect question, which would be nice I suppose since K&R say that it is rare in attic in the optative.
Is this a bit better? You don’t have to worry about doing my homework for me it’s already been submitted, with the κεῖμαι error nonetheless. Anyway. Here it is.
I was trying to suggest that the word order could mimic the thought which was expressed. So you have an abstract “these things are in the laps of the gods” but you you actually use the word order to concretely place “these things” physically “in the laps of the gods”. so
εν ταῦτα γόνασι θεων. (I hope that’s the attic form!)
It was late last night so rather than go to bed I wondered about this possibility. Like most things, in the morning it doesn’t seem as witty as I thought.
would it be possible to have something like εν ταῦτα γουνασι θεων so that these things really were in the lap of the gods? It’s the sort of play that one often sees in Latin poetry.
You’re thinking like Ovid Such playful hyperbaton would be at home in Hellenistic poetry (especially Callimachus), a tradition Latin poets both write themselves into and transform.
