ἔχω + genitive and textual doubt.

Greek Learning Greek
1

Hello all,

In the following sentence, can somebody explain to me the value of the genitive in τῆς αὐτῆς? I think it’s related to ἔχει. And I don’t understand also the referent of πρὸς αὐτὸ - is it σπέρμα or τὸ ἄρρην?

εἰ γὰρ καὶ ὅτι μάλιστα κινήσεως ἀρχὴν ἔχοι τὸ τοῦ θήλεος σπέρμα, πάντως δήπου τῆς αὐτῆς ἔχει τῷ ἄρρενι καὶ δεῖται κεράννυσθαί τε πρὸς αὐτὸ καὶ ὡς ἓν ἐνεργεῖν τοῦ λοιποῦ.

Galen, De usu partium, 4.166.5-6.

Thanks in advance.

2

πρὸς αὐτό refers to the male semen (τὸ ἄρρεν σπέρμα/τὸ τοῦ ἄρρενος σπέρμα).

The gen. τῆς αὐτῆς is a little odd (e.g. in place of τὴν αὐτήν, or perhaps ἔχεται or ἄρχει for ἔχει), but I think might be constructed with the adverb πάντως as in common idioms like εὖ ἔχει φρενῶν. In any case, the sense seems clear (…then the female semen has entirely the same principle of motion as the male semen and requires both to be mixed with the male semen and…).

3

Thank you for your answer.

To me, it also seems odd that πρὸς αὐτό refers to the male semen since it’s not present in the past sentences, and even if you introduce it as implicit, it continues not making much sense with the grammar used, because what is written is "then the female semen has the same principle of motion as the male - τῷ ἄρρενι - there’s nothing that includes the semen here, so I don’t understand why you introduced it and translated the sentence - by “has the same principle of motion as the male semen”.

4

@lerenardduprince Adjective ἄρρενι, not a noun

But I thought that τῆς αὐτῆς referred to κινήσεως, and ἀρχὴν was understood (rather than τῆς αὐτῆς referring back to ἀρχὴν). “Has [an ἀρχή] of the same…”.

5

Hi all, I can reply more fully later (I’m commuting and so can’t type Greek on the phone), but very briefly, I read the text a little differently, and I think it resolves some of the issues raised in the thread.

I haven’t read Galen before, this text or any commentaries or translations, and so I am out on a ledge here and very happy to be corrected - I’m just throwing my first impression into the mix, to be rejected etc. as we all see fit.

Let’s look at the protasis. It has three main parts:

  1. Verb argument
  2. Verb
  3. Subject

I then take the elliptic apodosis (reading it differently to others I think) as switching subject to the male seed. It’s in the same order as the protasis:

  1. (Sorry can’t type Greek) verb argument represented by th=s au)th=s as an anaphoric echo of the verb argument in element 1 in the protasis (and so in same case as the gen. from the protasis by way of attraction - it has the same principle “of motion”), and at the same point in the sentence; Plato uses toiou=tos in a similar way, to “repeat” in a short form way a previous element.
  2. Same verb (different mood of course)
  3. dative phrase here is not an argument of “the same” in element 1, but refers elliptically to the male seed (picking out the contrastive aspect).

Short form: if the seed of the female has a principle of motion, then for the male, it (the seed) has the same (principle of motion).

I could be wrong, but I think above others are taking

  • the subject of the apodosis as the same as that of the protasis, and
  • the head of the dative argument as “the same” (ie as an argument within the predicate) rather than as a reference to the new subject (only identifying the contrastive element, at the same position in the clause as the subject in the protasis).

In the following clause, remember now the male seed is the subject (continuing from the apodosis) and so the prepositional phrase is an anaphoric reference back to the female seed (subject of protasis), not the male as I think it has been taken by others above.

As I said, I’ve not read Galen before and so could be way off: this type of construction reminded me however of Aristotle’s heavy ellipsis of elements already used in previous clauses, and the structure shows you which elements are which.

Edit: Reading it again later, the other way of reading the dative reference to the male (as an argument with th=s au)th=s, with no subject change between the protasis and apodosis) seems more natural if the male seed’s principle of motion has already been treated earlier in the book. I don’t have the context and so will withdraw my comments above and leave it to others to clarify this.

Cheers, Chad