who may tell why the glorious Apollo is angered so much
whether he finds fault on account of a vow or on account of a hecatomb
if perhaps having partaken of the fat of unblemished lambs and goats,
he is willing to avert destruction from us".
Having said this, he sat down, and in their midst arose
Calchas son of Thestor, of the seers by far the best,
I think the first line is okay (??)
In the second line I translated εἴ…εἴ[face=Arial] as whether… or. I don’t know how to reconcile this with [/face] τ’…θ’ It can’t be -whether the one or the other- and -both the one and the other-.
The third and forth I think are okay too.
The fifth line I would translate the same it the first four words were not there, so why are they there?
Can some one translate these lines for me including all those little words that are so hard to translate? Maybe then I will understand the meaning of them a little better.
An additional question about this;
It was my understanding that the time of a participle is relative to the time of the main verb in the sentence. If this is true then in line 67ἀντιάσας occurred before βούλεται. No problem.
But what about in line 68 where both εἰπων and ἕζετο are aorist.
Was he in the process of sitting down as he spoke? Not likely. Or is there no time significance in the participle at all but just aspect?[face=Arial][/face]
Your translation sounds fine to me, but why not ‘Phoebus Apollo’ in line 64?
In answer to your other query, I think that the aorist participle is used precisely because it suggests that the action has been completed. As you say, it is a question of aspect. The aorist participle is used because it regards the action as a single completed event.
εἴ τε … εἴ τε is how Homer typically says ‘either .. or’.
According to Denniston ἦ τοι literally meant ‘Verily, I tell you.’ But he goes on to say that that τοι has probably lost some of its vividness. Hence you typically see ἦ τοι translated simply as ‘truly’, ‘surely’, ‘indeed’.
ὅ γε = ‘even he’. So a literal, albeit awkward, rendering to incorporate those 4 words might be:
“Truly even he thus having spoken was sitting down..”
I didn’t realize ei and te belonged together so I was trying to translate ei…ei and te…te seperately
The same with ἦ τοιI tried to work with them without seeing them as a unit.
Sometimes. First, this tense/aspect change works for participles, infinitives, imperatives, subjunctives and optatives. Only in the indicative is the aorist really a tense, and even that isn’t always clear.
I think I can safely say that a future participle marks an action in the future relative to the tense of the main verb, and that a present participle is contemporary with the main verb.
ἔφη στρατηγεῖν - “he said that he was in command” or, bad English, “he said that he is in command”
ἔφη στρατηγήσειν “he said that he would be in command.” Here English uses “would” to indicate a future relative to the past.
The aorist indicates a point action, which can signify that the act is already done, so the aspect sense logically implies a tense at least part of the time:
ταῦτα εἰπὼν ἦλθεν “after saying this, he went.”
ταῦτα λέγων ἦλθεν “while saying this he went.”
Have I made this clearer or muddled it up more? Pharr hides some of this in sections 1072-1084, 1107, 1108.
First, this tense/aspect change works for participles, infinitives, imperatives, subjunctives and optatives. Only in the indicative is the aorist really a tense, and even that isn’t always clear.