τεύχεα μέν οἱ κεῖται ?πὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτεί?ῃ,
Boise calls the dative oi( an ethical dative. Does it not make more sense as a dative of possesion?
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Paul, can you please explain?
Here is my translation of lines 192 - 196
Come tell me about this one, dear child, who is that.
Though he is not as tall as Agamemnon the son of Atreus,
he is broader to look upon in shoulders and chest.
His armour is laying on the rich soil
but he himself, as a ram, is going among the ranks of men, inspecting.
If oi( is a dative of disadvantage then ‘his’ is not in the text but is assumed. That’s possible.
But for a dative of disadvantage to make sense Odysseus would have to be better off with the armour but he laid it down himself. Priam, who was watching, would have seen that.
I can’t make any sense at all of an ethical dative, especially not with an intransitive verb.
Hi Bert,
I don’t understand what you mean; can you flesh it out for me?
Why is use of οἱ in 3.195 any different from its use in 1.104?
Cordially,
Paul
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Hi Bert,
Nice summation of the dative, by the way.
From Monro: “The so-called dativus commodi, ‘ethical dative,’ &c, need not be separated from the general usage. Note however that – The Dative of the Personal Pronoun is very often used where we should have a Possessive agreeing with a Noun in the clause.”
From Goodwin’s “Greek Grammar” (1170), under the discussion of "dative of advantage or disadvantage: “Sometimes this dative has a force which seems to approach that of a possessive genitive.”
Similarly in Smyth, ktl.
I realize that you know all this. I share your frustration with the haziness of this typology of the dative (and other cases). But it is good to remember that these categories are the inventions of grammarians. A\ propos, here is Leonard Palmer: “The categories to which grammarians affix their various labels are nothing more than associational groups or ‘fairy rings’ into which words naturally fall in virtue of their meaning.”
I think it’s safe to say that the dative in our example connotes neither location, nor instrument. Hence it belongs to that larger ‘fairy ring’ called the ‘true dative’ comprising dative of the indirect object, dative of (dis)advantage, ethical dative, dative of possession, ktl.
I am not convinced that one need know much more than this. Context matters.
Cordially,
Paul
Strange as this may seem; I know what you mean.
Thanks Paul.