I have a question about Thucydides 6.12.1. that I hope someone can help me with. In this passage, Nicias is urging the Athenians to reconsider their decision to help the Egesteans. At one point Thucydides has Nicias say:
… οἷς τό τε ψεύσασθαι καλῶς χρήσιμον καὶ τῷ τοῦ πέλας κινδύνῳ… (my rough translation is: “to whom [i.e., to the Egesteans] lying convincingly is useful, and who leave the danger to others”).
Can anyone help me understand the dative τῷ … κινδύνῳ? Is it the object of some unexpressed verb? Or a particular use of the dative, perhaps related to the circumstantial dative (Smyth 1527)? Or perhaps we should understand a participle, such as ὄντι (IE: καὶ τῷ τοῦ πέλας κινδύνῳ ὄντι… “and with danger being for others…”)?
I think τωι του πελας κινδυνωι belongs with αυτους λογους μονον παρασχομενους, something like “they themselves putting up nothing but words to [match] the risks undertaken by someone else”.
και picks up from τε and joins the infinitives ψευσασθαι and η χαριν μη αξιαν ειδεναι η . . . ξυναπολεσθαι, “for whom it is useful to lie convincingly . . . and either to be insufficiently grateful if successful or to bring down their allies along with themselves if they somehow stumble.”
The punctuation in the Oxford edition isn’t consistent with my reading, however. I would put a comma after και and remove the comma after κινδυνωι. However, I suppose you might also join τωι του πελας κινδυνωι with the following infinitives: “at someone else’s risk . . . either to . . . or . . .”.
But I think it’s more logical to connect τωι του πελας κινδυνωι with λογους μονον παρασχομενους, rather than the infinitives. The antithesis τωι του πελας κινδυνωι and αυτους λογους μονον seems more natural and very Thucydidean to me. But what do I know?
Update: Alberti agrees with the Oxford punctuation, so I’m probably wrong, as usual. Rereading this, I’m less certain of my analysis. The antithesis is there however you read it, and perhaps it doesn’t really matter.
Thanks for taking time to look at this passage. I hadn’t even considered that the τῷ τοῦ πέλας κινδύνῳ might fit with αὐτοὺς λόγους μόνον… etc. That’s a definitely a plausible idea, and does indeed seem like a typically Thucydidean passage. As you note, however, the punctuation doesn’t fit that interpretation (though I’m sure Thucydides didn’t use commas, so perhaps one could argue for your reading after all). I’m still a bit perplexed by the Greek here, though the general sense of it is clear enough. Nonetheless, I appreciate the suggestion, and the time you put into considering my question.
The translations I’ve looked at have added a verb to τῷ τοῦ πέλας κινδύνῳ (e.g., the Egesteans “leave the danger to others”), so clearly there’s a need for some clarification when translating this bit into English, which makes me think that others, far more skilled in Greek than I am, have had to stop and think about this passage too.
καὶ μὴ ὑπὲρ ἀνδρῶν φυγάδων τῶνδε ἐπικουρίας δεομένων, οἷς τό τε ψεύσασθαι καλῶς χρήσιμόν [ἐστι] καὶ τὸν τοῦ πέλας κίνδυνον…
…for whom both lying well and the current threat is useful…
But attracted into τῷ τοῦ πέλας κινδύνῳ by the next phrase, which then takes it as an indirect object, αὐτοὺς λόγους μόνον παρασχομένους, “themselves only having contributed words [to help with the threat]”
No. This has nothing to do with attraction. Attraction occurs when relative pronouns are “attracted” into the case of their antecedent in the main clause.
This is really quite straightforward, once you read the whole sentence and don’t stop after κινδύνῳ. The comma after κινδύνῳ is a little misleading .
τε . . . και joins the infinitives ψεύσασθα and the disjunctive pair ἢ . . . εἰδέναι ἢ . . . ξυναπολέσαι. Otherwise. if καὶ somehow joined ψεύσασθαι and τῷ τοῦ πέλας κινδύνῳ, the disjunctive infinitives would be left dangling. τῷ τοῦ πέλας κινδύνῳ is a complement of either ἢ . . . εἰδέναι ἢ . . . ξυναπολέσα or, as I suggested, maybe wrongly, just αὐτοὺς λόγους μόνον παρασχομένους.
It really doesn’t matter – the point is that the Egesteans are asking others to undergo risk while themselves putting up nothing more than words. If you want to put a label on this use of the dative, I would say "dative of manner"or “dative of circumstance,” but that’s simply just the free use of the dative.
Isn’t it just an indirect object with λόγους μόνον παρασχομένους? Not much of a stretch for Thucydides.
I agree entirely with Hylander’s analysis of the structure. I see no alternative, and I see no real difficulty. It’s meticulously put together.
οἷς (1) τό τε ψεύσασθαι καλῶς χρήσιμον
(2) καὶ (τῷ τοῦ πέλας κινδύνῳ αὐτοὺς λόγους μόνον παρασχομένους)
(i) ἢ κατορθώσαντας χάριν μὴ ἀξίαν εἰδέναι
(ii) ἢ πταίσαντάς που τοὺς φίλους ξυναπολέσαι.
As far as I can see, the only way to justify the comma is by construing τῷ τοῦ πέλας κινδύνῳ not with λόγους μόνον παρασχομένους but with κατορθώσαντας (“if they succeed against the danger”??), which would surely be wrong. I guess the intention was simply to separate it from αὐτοὺς λόγους μόνον παρασχομένους but that’s unnecessary and the opposite of helpful. Hinc illae lacrimae.
Yeah, I see now, I couldn’t how the τε … και worked, and was reading the final infinitives as results (from χρησιμον) but obviously the the η…η is subordinate to the και, and the παρασχομένους is not a past event, but instead the three aorist participles are in the same timeframe completed in relation to the infinitive events.
I don’t have access to Stein, but Classen-Steup punctuates the same as the OCT and Alberti without comment (except to suggest that χρησιμον is not quite apposite to the disjunctive infinitives and that maybe a word dropped out). So I guess the comma after κινδυνωι is traditional though misleading.
But, as Darth noted, punctuation is of course up for grabs since it doesn’t go back to the original text. I should have been more confident in rejecting the comma, but Alberti, Stuart Jones and Enoch Powell knew Greek in general and Thucydides in particular much better than I, and they apparently saw no reason to remove the misleading comma. I’m glad to see that someone who, unlike me, knows what he’s talking about agrees with me.
I remember reading something characteristically acrimonious by Housman pointing out the dangers of accepting uncritically the punctuation found in printed editions of ancient texts.
Well, I’m glad I wasn’t completely crazy with the χρησιμον and the infinitives, but it does read more coherently if they are connected to the articular by that τε … και
Hylander—Bill, You are much too modest. You always know what you’re talking about. I have to say what a pleasure it is for me to have you participating here. It takes me back to the days when we struggled our way through Thucydides with John W. and we all knew what we were talking about.
I think Kenney in The Classical Text has something on editors’ practice of using a predecessor’s text as the basis of their own, and the dangers of that. Perhaps our unwanted comma is another such case. Once in, it’s not easy to get it out again.
Thank you for your kind words and encouragement, Michael. I’ve contributed my share of stupidity to this site, but I can always count on you to set me straight, and I’m in awe of the breadth and depth of your knowledge as well as your judgment. You certainly know Thucydides backwards and forwards, as the list of Oxyrhynchus papyrus fragments in third volume of Alberti’s edition attests.
Thank you for your comments on this passage. The more I look at it, the more I see the logic of taking τῷ κινδύνῳ as an indirect object with λόγους μόνον παρασχομένους. I really appreciate the time all of you have put into considering and explaining this passage.