In the Teichnoscopia in book 3, lines 153-4 describe the elders on the wall:
τοῖοι ἄρα Τρώων ἡγήτορες ἧντ’ ἐπι πύργωι.
οἷ δ’ ὡς οὖν εἴδονθ’ Ἑλένην ἐπί πύργον ἰοῦσαν,
My rough translation:
such indeed were the Trojan leaders seated on the tower.
As they were seeing Helen coming onto the tower,
I don’t understand the elision in ‘εἴδονθ’. I would have expected the participle to be εἴδοντες. What am I missing?
Mark
Eidonto. Finite verb
Hmm. I don’t really see what’s the problem. Isn’t it simply εἴδοντο ”As they saw Helene…”.
Thank you! Yes, indeed. Don’t know why I thought it was a participle.
A small point perhaps worth noting: οἱ δ’ … is literally “and they, when they saw Helen, ….” That’s to say, the οἱ begins the main clause (continued in the next line), not the subordinate clause. In English we’d be more likely to say “And when they saw Helen,” but Greek, as usual, is more particular, and subordinates the temporal clause when the subject is the same.