Χαίρετε πάντες. Here is my new exercise. I will be very thankful for your corrections, comments and advice. I have one particular question about 10: I wonder if two options are possible here. ἐπαινῶ.
The Greeks used to ask Apollo at Delphi for advice on difficult matters.
οἱ Ἕλληνες Ἀπόλλωνι συνεβουλεύοντο περὶ χαλεπῶν πραγμάτων.
The Persian (Subst.) kingdom was all the time ravaged by the Scythians.
ἡ τῶν Περσῶν βασιλεία ὑπὸ Σκυθῶν ἀεὶ κατελύετο.
The Spartans fought the most bravely of all the Greeks.
οἱ Σπαρτιάται ἀνδρειότερον πάντων τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐμάχοντο.
Ambassadors were sent by the Athenians and other Greeks to the kings of Persia during the war.
ἐν πολέμῳ οἱ πρέσβεις ὑπὸ Ἀθηναίων καὶ ἀλλῶν Ἑλλήνων πρὸς βασιλέας τῶν Περσῶν ἀπεπέμποντο.
Advising oneself is harder than advising others.
βουλεύεσθαι χαλεπότερόν ἐστιν ἢ (ἀλλοῖς) βουλεύειν.
Boys should be brought up well, so that they do not serve their passions afterwards.
οἱ παῖδες εὖ παιδεύεσθων ἵνα μὴ δουλεύωσι ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις.
The enemy did not fight, but fled to the mountains as quickly as possible.
οἱ πολέμιοι οὐκ ἐμάχοντο, ἀλλλὰ εἰς ὄρη τάχιστον ἐξέφευγον.
(8) The Greek (Subst.) army remained for many days by the river, because it was hindered in crossing (Gen.).
ἡ τῶν Ἑλλήνων στρατιὰ πολλάς ἡμέρας περὶ ποταμῷ ἔμενενεν, ἐκωλύοντο γὰρ τῆς διαβάσεως.
When our generals were conferring (Dat. part.) on the battle, many messengers announced to them the fleeing of the enemy army.
τῶν στρατηγῶν ἡμετέρων περὶ τῆς μάχης συνεβουλευομένων, πολλοὶ ἄγγελοι (κήρυκες) ἐμήνυον φυγὴν ἐναντίας στρατιάς.
Fighting bravely, the 300 Spartans were struck by the arrows of countless Persians.
ἀνδρείως μαχόμενοι τριακόσιοι Σπαρτιάται ἐτοξεύοντο ὑπὸ μυρίων Περσῶν.
ἀνδρείως μαχομένων τριακοσίων Σπαρτιάτων, ἐτοξεύοντο ὑπὸ μυρίων Περσῶν.
Apollo told the Athenians, who had asked him for advice, to flee to the islands.
ὁ Ἀπόλλων τοὺς Ἀθηναίους συμβουλευόμενους ἐκέλευε έκφεύγειν εἰς νήσους.
The Persian (Subst.) army was long held back in Thermopylae by Leonidas alone with 300 Spartans.
μόνος ὁ Λεωνίδας σὺν τριακόσιοις Σπαρτιάταις μεγάλον χρόνον στρατιᾶς τῶν Περσῶν ἐν Θερμοπύλαις ἐκώλυε.
Whoever prevents another one from telling the truth (adj. n. pl.) himself deserves to be called a liar.
ὅς ἄλλον κωλύει ἀληθέα λέγειν, αὐτὸς ἀξιός ἐστι ψευδής ὀνομάζεσθαι.
One thing that I noticed regarding accentuation which is tripping you up.
The second α in Σπαρτιάτης, that is, the accented α, is long. This means that the nominative plural will be properispomenon, Σπαρτιᾶται, in Attic.
(The way that you have it, Σπαρτιάται, would be correctly accented καθαρεύουσα, however, so you will see that a lot if searching the internet, for example)
Hi katalogon, thank you very much for noticing this accentuation issue! I will correct it in my manuscript version. By the way, what do you think, are both participium conjunctum and genitivus absolutus possible in this sentence?
Fighting bravely, the 300 Spartans were struck by the arrows of countless Persians.
ἀνδρείως μαχόμενοι τριακόσιοι Σπαρτιάται ἐτοξεύοντο ὑπὸ μυρίων Περσῶν.
ἀνδρείως μαχομένων τριακοσίων Σπαρτιάτων, ἐτοξεύοντο ὑπὸ μυρίων Περσῶν.
Also, I’d have put the main verb in the aorist rather than the imperfect, as it’s just presented (in English) as something that happened (i.e. it started then finished, without interruption) rather than something that was ongoing… In an extended narrative this might be different, but as it’s an isolated sentence the aorist seems more appropriate… That said, I don’t really trust my instincts when it comes to aspect in Greek
I didn’t think about that, but after you’ve pointed it out it seems very convincing.
As for
It is also taken into account. Thank you! In my case it is an advice for the future, as I haven’t studied aorist yet, it will be later in this textbook. In other words, imperfectum is the only past tense I know so far
That said, I don’t really trust my instincts when it comes to aspect in Greek
I’ve been struggling with this recently, as I’ve found the imperfect/aorist distinction to be difficult to map into English at times. I found this in Goodwin (Moods & Tenses), section 56 that I thought was a decent explanation involving duration:
The imperfect in the example is: ἐβασίλευε δέκα ἔτη
I have removed the aorist, since it has not yet been covered, and adjusted the extract a little.
“No amount of duration in an act, therefore, can make the aorist an improper form to express it, provided it is stated as a single past event viewed as a whole.
Thus ‘he reigned ten years’ using the aorist means ‘he had a reign of ten years’ (which is viewed as a single past event),
while ‘he reigned ten years’ using the imperfect might refer to the same reign in the sense ‘he was reigning during ten years’”
I think it’s always going to be tricky with English because we don’t really have a distinction between imperfective and perfective aspect - the continuous forms sometimes capture this, but usually don’t.
I also speak Spanish, which does have such a distinction when talking about the past, but it doesn’t map onto the Greek in all cases, and for the difference with imperatives and infinitives there’s no equivalent really.
Getting back to the exercises, in number 3 I think the superlative adverb is called for rather than the comparative - as it stands, it says that the Spartans fought more bravely than all the Greeks (which would only make sense if the Spartans weren’t Greek). So it would be ἀνδρειότατα.
Likewise, in number 7 the “as … as possible” structure is expressed with the superlative adverb form after ὡς. So we’d have ὡς τάχιστα (this form is in the Athenaze 1 vocabulary, at least in the edition I have).
Bear in mind that I can’t say for sure that what you’ve written is wrong - I’m just saying what I’d have put!
I also speak Spanish, which does have such a distinction when talking about the past, but it doesn’t map onto the Greek in all cases, and for the difference with imperatives and infinitives there’s no equivalent really.
Interesting! It also seems that the comparison with perfective\ imperfective verbs in Slavic languages might be helpful. Particularly, the katalogon’s example could be rendered in Russian as “он царствовал 7 лет” (past action which was happening during the certain time, corresponds to imperfectum) - “он процарствовал 7 лет” (past action which was happening and came to an end within that time, corresponds to aorist). However, I’m not sure to what extant my interpretation is legitimate. Of course, there are a lot differences and subtleties, so that the correspondence is far from being perfect.
Apart from that, I’m very thankful for your corrections to the exercise and for the explanations! I think you are right. I’ve updated my manuscript version. Thank you!
