As I can tell by the context, it is a form of αὐτοῖς (ἀλλὰ μισθὸν αἰτοῦσιν, ὡς οὐχὶ αὐτοῖσιν ὠφελίαν ἐσομένην ἐκ τοῦ ἄρχειν ἀλλὰ τοῖς ἀρχομένοις); TLG identifies it as aeolic/epic. Is this correct? And if so, can anything be said about the reasons why Plato used it here?
It means the same thing as αὐτοῖς. However, in Plato it occurs twice in the Republic, and a few times in the Laws. Otherwise it’s almost unique in Attic prose. Maybe copying error?
Thanks, Joel. Very interesting. Didn’t know it’s almost unique; thought I’m missing something elementary.
It’s a common dat pl ending in other dialects and Attic poetry. -οισι for Attic -οις often in Epic, Ionic, Aeolic; also 1st declension ῃσι (Epic, Ionic) or αισι (Aeolic, Drama) for Attic αις. -οισι isn’t regular in Attic prose, but Plato especially—the most poetic of the philosophers—will sometimes use this and similar poetic forms. Features like this give his literary language a poetic veneer. No reason to suspect a textual error.
Thanks a lot!
Phalakre,
That was my first thought, of course, and I only noticed the pattern when I ran a TLG search to get a couple of examples to show Tugodum of how Plato does it elsewhere. I assumed it was like his use of the dual or poetic words from time to time. But in Plato, instead of a random scatter that I would expect, it occurs in a quite concentrated way in these two works, linked more by transmission than by style. (One is middle period, and one is late. They are the two long works from the last two tetralogies, present in Codex Parisinus but not Oxoniensis.) There doesn’t seem to be any internal literary justification in the places it occurs (none that was obvious to me anyway).
Alternation of αὐτοῖς for αὐτοῖσι would be extremely easy for Plato, of course. He could have done it any place that he was feeling his poetic juices and writing down αὐτοῖς. Perhaps that was leveled out of the text elsewhere, but still you’d expect a more random distribution as the final result. So my guess for why we see this only in two works more related by transmission than style would be a single scribe who thought – correctly – that Plato was a poetic sort of guy, you know, and αὐτοῖσιed him up a bit (as is the common scribal procedure for anything felt to be stereotypical about an author).
Would I suggest emending the text? No. But it’s an explanation for the weird concentration here. And maybe the concentration is an illusion. It might be worth a search through the apparatuses for some unfairly demoted αὐτοῖσιs in other parts of Plato in order to justly elevate them back to the level of first class citizens.
There was another unexpected (to me) prose concentration (outside of Herodotus/Hippocrates) of this in a single work of Arrian, the Indica. But that’s just because he’s cribbing it from Megasthenes.
Maybe I should have put more of my initial thinking in the original note to Tugodum, but I was trying to get the kids to bed.
Sorry, I’m not sure we’re talking about the same thing. αυτοισι may occur only a few times between the Rep + Laws, but I was talking about any 2nd (for οισι) or 1st decl noun or adj (for ησι/ασι). Plato will have things like θεοισι, τούτοισι (proparoxy. not oxy.), κτλ. If you want to run searches, you should look at the endings, not just αυτοισι. The Laws generally has more archaic features (e.g. in the νομοι themselves)—I would expect many of the examples to come from there.
Arrian’s Indica is an example of pseudo-Ionism (like the Syrian Goddess), hence the forms you’re finding.
Could the rhythmical flow be a factor do you think? I haven’t investigated..
I looked for dactyls and iambs in the original quote last night and didn’t notice anything, but someone more sensitive to that than me would have to look.
In Plato, θεοισι is only linked to quotes from Homer in Plato, outside of Laws. Outside of Laws – in the TLG at least – τούτοισι occurs once, at Statesman 279E, and I can’t really tell how we’d know it’s not just τουτοισί.
Still, if Laws often contains -οισι, and this is just two cases of αὐτοῖσι in the Republic, I agree that coming across two poetical forms in just the Republic is not something that I should find very unusual.
There might be a way to massage the TLG into the sort of general search you suggest. I’ll look into it this evening.
Prose rhythm could be a factor, I haven’t looked either. Maybe there is an old study somewhere? Speaking of rhythm, I recently read Hutchinson’s newish book, “Plutarch’s Rhythmic Prose” (he also has a few articles on other authors, Greek and Latin). I’m curious what you think of his approach, if you’re familiar? I like a lot of it, but I’m always left doubting how much progress can be made with rhythm. And I’m not competent to judge his quantitative methods. I tend to think it’s more fruitful to focus, like Hutchinson, on imperial authors for finding rhythmic patterns.
Joel: How to tell τούτοισι from the more common τουτουσί? Only context, and editors may disagree.
That’s exactly what I did mean. Just take a look at the quotation in question. The section is “περὶ ὑφαντικὴν”. (!! back to that.) After a very long and involved buildup from the very first principles, ἔστι τοίνυν πάντα ἡμῖν ὁπόσα δημιουργοῦμεν καὶ κτώμεθα…he finally gets around to τουτοισι δὴ…τὸ μὲν ὄνομα ἱμάτια ἐκαλέσαμεν. I would have assumed τουτοισί there, representing the excited conclusion, but maybe he was going for a poetic effect. The language there does seem to be a slightly elevated register.
I did the first version of the search you recommended, though just for the οισι ending, Very very little outside of Leges and quotations from poets. I’ll post actual results in the evening.
Forgive me for interrupting Joel’s string of posts but I should answer phalakros’ enquiry.
I haven’t yet spent enough time with Hutchinson’s Plutarch book, but I think it’s truly excellent, and exactly what’s needed (though I’m sure it won’t be put to as much use as it should be, any more than his Appian book has been). Michael Reeve paved the way with the novelists, and no doubt Hutchinson was helped along by Peter Parsons. It was high time someone with Hutchinson’s sensibilities and expertise went so far beyond clausular patterns. It’s a properly integrated approach he takes, and it stands to enlighten anyone who spends even a little time with the book.
—So I highly recommend it to anyone interested in ancient Greek. Too often people just want to translate, or read merely to follow the sense, and miss the things that really call for attention and make the Greek worth reading.
Plato of course is not imperial prose (not that Hutchinson confines himself to imperial prose, he’s wonderfully comprehensive) and his writing can’t be rhythmically analyzed in anything like so methodical a way. It can’t even be analyzed as straightforwardly as the Attic orators (avoidance of three successive light syllables, hiatus, etc.). Plato’s Greek is much more flexible and variable but he is patently sensitive to the sound as well as the register of what he writes. He’s a natural stylist.
I can’t say with any confidence just why the ionic/poetic αυτοισιν is used here. It’s an extremely difficult question, and I’m afraid I’ve lost most of my feel for Plato. But the reading should not be queried. The suggestion that it’s a copying error is surely not tenable.
Plato, except Leges, Epigrammata, Spuria, Epistulae. Quotations from the poets removed.
A number of these occur in what I’d call “high register” passages, where Plato is paying special attention to his language. All but a couple have manuscript variants, but as it’s a bit more than just the Republic and Laws, the manuscript variation towards the more normal forms does look it is scribal like it is leveling in the other direction.
Phaedo 109 b4 πολλοῖσι
Phaedrus 240 b5 ἡδίστοισιν
Timaeus 72 e1 τούτοισιν
Politicus 262 a1 διπλασίοισι (ΞΕ)
Politicus 279 e4 τούτοισι (ΞΕ)
Politicus 291 b1 τοιούτοισιν (ΞΕ)
Politicus 304 e12 ἑπομένοισιν (ΝΕ. ΣΩ.)
Respublica 330 b6 τούτοισιν
Respublica 345 e7 αὐτοῖσιν
Respublica 388 d6 σμικροῖσιν
Respublica 560 e1 μεγάλοισι
Respublica 564 c5 αὐτοῖσι
Leges 40+
-ησι (none outside quotations)
-ησιν (not searched)
-ασι (not searched)
-ασιν (not searched)
Ion 535 d3
ὃς ἂν κεκοσμημένος ἐσθῆτι ποικίλῃ καὶ χρυσοῖσι στεφάνοις κλάῃ τ’ ἐν θυσίαις καὶ ἑορταῖς,
But see Herodotus 1.111
κεκοσμημένον χρυσῷ τε καὶ ἐσθῆτι ποικίλῃ
Hi all, just a quick note that the distribution of the Ionic dative plural throughout Plato’s works has been studied for a while now in the context of trying to establish the chronology of Plato’s dialogues, e.g. it is one of over 40 factors tabulated and considered by Ritter as (together) marking Plato’s later style: see e.g. pp. 60 and 65–6 in Brandwood (ed.) 1990, The chronology of Plato’s dialogues. Rijksbaron considers the Ionic dative along with other factors in arguing that the Ion should be dated later than is customary (p. 8 in Rijksbaron’s 2007 edition of the Ion with commentary).
I agree with Michael that it would be extremely hard to pick out why Plato used it in each case, although I have seen it argued that the Ionic dative can mark emphasis, e.g. Thesleff 2009, Platonic patterns, n. 229.
Cheers, Chad
He has missed the quote from – allusion to? shared reference? it’s fairly tight though, as these things go – Herodotus here, unfortunately, though that doesn’t really affect the discussion much, and the references are very useful.
I haven’t yet spent enough time with Hutchinson’s Plutarch book, but I think it’s truly excellent, and exactly what’s needed (though I’m sure it won’t be put to as much use as it should be, any more than his Appian book has been). Michael Reeve paved the way with the novelists, and no doubt Hutchinson was helped along by Peter Parsons. It was high time someone with Hutchinson’s sensibilities and expertise went so far beyond clausular patterns. It’s a properly integrated approach he takes, and it stands to enlighten anyone who spends even a little time with the book.
—So I highly recommend it to anyone interested in ancient Greek. Too often people just want to translate, or read merely to follow the sense, and miss the things that really call for attention and make the Greek worth reading.
mwh: Thanks for your reply. I agree that Hutchinson’s book and the Appian article are excellent, especially his ability to incorporate rhythmic analysis into good literary readings —activities too often kept apart. I thoroughly enjoy researching rhythm and meter, but unfortunately such things aren’t really valued in the Classics job market, at least in the US. I’d like to work in this area more someday.
A few initial observations on his general approach:
(1) Can we really be confident in the four “Hegesian” clauses he identifies as rhythmic (α. double cretic/mol + cret; β. ditrochee; γ. cret + spond; δ. hypodochmius)? It’s significant that he doesn’t count the ending - - - - (plus resolutions) as rhythmic. This disqualifies molossus/choriamb + spondee (- - - - -/- u u - - -), previously seen as favored clausulae in Plutarch. I suppose this doesn’t really matter for the quantitative work (i.e. distinguishing rhythmic from non-rhythmic texts), where, as he says, austerity is best. But it does influence his literary analyses.
(2) He argues, here and in the Appian piece, that hiatus can be permitted within or immediately after a rhythmic close and that editors should adjust their textual decisions accordingly. It’s an interesting argument, but there’s not enough to really convince me in his short discussion. I haven’t read Reeve’s piece on hiatus in the novelists yet. Maybe that has more?
(3) I wonder if there are historical developments in rhythmic style that could be identified more precisely. For example, I’ve seen it suggested that 2nd-3rd Atticists prefer clausulae with final cretics (like α) against more “Hellenistic rhythms” (β-γ). Accentual patterns like Meyer’s law would also need to be incorporated into a diachronic approach. It’s striking that Heliodorus is so unrhythmic in Hutchinson’s system (contrast Chariton, the most rhythmic text of all). Could accentual rhythm be at play (and could that in turn help with dating)?
mwh wrote:
I’m afraid I’ve lost most of my feel for Plato
Michael - I look forward to your reply to phalakros, a very informative dialog, thank you both. But at the risk of diverting it, I’d love to hear more specifically what that above quote means!
Phalakros, thanks for the follow-up (though we’re now many miles off topic! Will Joel rein us in?).
I’m no statistician, and can’t control the algorithms, but Hutchinson seems to know what he’s about, and I find his entire treatment enlightening, and most of it obviously right. I’m not going to attempt a detailed critique.
Have you seen a recent (post-Hutchinson) Leiden dissertation by an S.Ooms, directed by my friend Ineke Sluiter, one of the few people to tackle this sort of thing? http://hdl.handle.net/1887/79945. It deals inter alia with the ancient judgments on Hegesias’ style (uniformly negative or at best non-committal), incl. its rhythmical properties. I must say that I find Agatharchides’ criticisms impossible to disagree with, and Cicero however biassed makes valid points. But we really need some sizable samples selected without the prejudice that colors all ancient criticism, and modern too.
As you’ll know, Asianism (neutralized as “Hellenistic rhythms”?) is always a term of disparagement, used to attack anyone not sufficiently “Attic” (itself a rather mobile label, as we’ve seen with Xenophon).
I don’t think accentual rhythm really comes into play with Heliodorus. I could be wrong, but he seems to steer clear of rhythmization in general. But the way he shapes both his language and his narrative is truly thrilling.
Randy, I simply meant that I can longer read Plato with the assurance I had when I immersed myself in him. The same goes for Thucydides—and most everything else, in either language. Of course, lack of assurance may be a good thing.
Will Joel rein us in?
Who me? I just keep the servers running and delete illegal links. Everything else I say is personal.
But personally, I would be enormously skeptical of any mathematical approach to evaluating the rhythm of an author in the English language through stress and syllable patterns, as opposed to one that relied on the ear and perceptive reading. If someone approached it as a data science problem, throwing his marked up prose texts into Sagemaker, I wouldn’t trust anything that came out of a small dataset not to simply indicate the individual quirks of his input authors. And as that sort of thing tends to be a straightforward path to a dissertation, one tends to see a lot of it coming out of the natural language guys.
lack of assurance may be a good thing
I only know that, as I age, I have a lot less of it!
I’m currently immersed in Aristotle (the Categories and De interpretatione, specifically), so I thought you might have meant you were turning more Aristotelian, less, Platonism, but I see that’s not the case.