Help needed: Diogenes Laertius, Socrates (Greek/Latin)

Greek Learning Greek
1

Hello!

I need a (tiny) bit of help with a line in Diogenes Laertius. It concerns line 32 on page 42 of Firmin Didot’s Greek/Latin edition. I am transcribing the Latin translation of the bit about Socrates because it piqued my interst in connection with a Stoic quote. The problematic line:

Et Melitus quidem apud judices illum accusavit; peroravit
vero accusationem Polyeuctus, ut ait Favorinus in
Omnigena historia: orationem Polycrates sophista scripsit,
ut Hermippus refert, sive, ut quidam volunt, > Anytus
præparavit autem omnia Lycon orator.

Somehow the line ending in “Anytus” seems to be missing something, perhaps only a comma, but I wanted to make sure what I am missing. Perhaps someone knowing both Greek and Latin can help me with this?

Thank you for your help,

Carolus Raeticus

2

Just a comma, I think. The Greek says, “Polycrates the sophist wrote the speech, as Hermippus says, or as some have it, Anytus, and Lycon the orator prepared it all ahead of time.”

EDIT: Sorry, added the rest of the sentence not to be confusing, and trying to get the Latin forms of the names right is not my thing.

3

After Anytus there should be a colon (as in fact the Greek reads ὥς τινες·). There is a new independent clause starting with praeparavit (corresponding to προητοίμηασε).

4

And porphyrios had already caught me quicker than I could correct. Sorry, I would have left the original version there, if I had seen your post. Thank you.

5

Hi all, agreed with the above. Just to add two points—this is not correcting anything in the thread since everyone from the OP and on is clear that praeparauit marks a new clause, just mentioning these points in passing:

  • you can tell from the formal properties of the text alone that praeparauit starts a new clause (point 1 below), but


  • you can’t tell whether the previous clause is punctuated with a colon or comma from the formal properties alone, here or elsewhere (point 2 below): this will always depend on substantive context.
  1. You can tell from the Latin alone, even without looking at the Greek, that praeparauit starts a new clause. autem goes in second position in the clause here, marking (among other things) praeparauit as the first word. autem has one of the most straightforward Latin word order positions. A few useful sources on this:

Spevak 2010 p. 16:

Any constituent whatsoever may occupy the second sentence-position, but in Classical Latin there are only three words for which this position is obligatory: the connective particles > enim > ‘indeed’, > autem > ‘on the other hand’> , and > vero > ‘however’. In Caesar, Sallust and Cicero, these particles are excluded from the initial position in 100% of cases. Exceptionally, they are placed third (> enim > 6%, > autem > 3% > and > vero > 0.5%) > under well-defined conditions, when the author aims to keep together a syntactic unit, > for example: > difficile est enim > ‘for it is hard’ (Cic. > Sulla > 31), > quam multi enim > ‘how many (orators)’ (Cic. > Brut> . 138), > non est autem > ‘but there is no’ (Cic. > Div> . 2.41).

Spevak 2006 pp. 256–57, link: https://blogs.univ-tlse2.fr/olga-spevak/files/2018/10/Enclitiques-2006.pdf:

L’apparition de > enim > à une place ultérieure (cf. Marouzeau, 1949: 86) a été analysée par J. N. Adams (1994a). En se référant à W. S. Watt (1980), il constate que > enim > figure à une place autre que deuxième > lorsqu’il est précédé par un groupe de mots comportant une forme du verbe > esse> . Ce placement traduit un souci de maintenir l’unité syntaxique du groupe.

praeparauit is not a form of esse, and so does not fall within the exception to the rule that autem goes second.

Zooming out from these authors, the rule generally holds (with a few more exceptions):

OLD, autem:

POSITION: regularly placed in the second position in its clause, but occasionally postponed, > when the first two or three words form a closely knit (e.g. prepositional) phrase > …

praeparauit doesn’t fall within any of these broader exceptions, and so autem here marks praeparauit as the first word of the clause.

i.e. this is a formal way you can tell how the clause is structured, in addition to the substantive way of reading the whole text and putting it together in context.

  1. Whether the punctuation is a comma, or a colon etc. is an editorial judgment: autem (like δέ in Greek) can mark simple progression, non-adversative contrastive, adversative etc. (check out its entry in the OLD or another dictionary), and so the editor needs to decide from the context what punctuation fits best in each case.

Cheers, Chad

6

Salvete and… wow (to all of you)!

I didn’t expect such comprehensive answer. Even though it remains unclear, whether the original editor meant a colon or a comma, I will opt for a colon, because looking at other instances of comma or colon at the end of a line in the same book favours that interpretation.

Valete,

Carolus Raeticus