Isocrates 3.4--a second effort

Specific Text Questions
1

Here is 3.4.

ἀλλὰ γὰρ οὐ δίκαιον, οὔτ᾽ εἴ τινες τοὺς ἀπαντῶντας τύπτουσι, τῆς ῥώμης κατηγορεῖν, οὔτε διὰ τοὺς ἀποκτείνοντας οὓς οὐ δεῖ τὴν ἀνδρίαν λοιδορεῖν, οὔθ᾽ ὅλως τὴν τῶν ἀνθρώπων πονηρίαν ἐπὶ τὰ πράγματα μεταφέρειν, ἀλλ᾽ αὐτοὺς ἐκείνους ψέγειν, ὅσοι τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς κακῶς χρῶνται καὶ τοῖς ὠφελεῖν δυναμένοις, τούτοις βλάπτειν τοὺς συμπολιτευομένους ἐπιχειροῦσι.

Now I want to focus on this:

οὔτε διὰ τοὺς ἀποκτείνοντας οὓς οὐ δεῖ τὴν ἀνδρίαν λοιδορεῖν

Here is my suggested free translation:

We shouldn’t condemn manly courage just because bad men are bold to commit murder.

I don’t understand what work the relative pronoun οὓς is doing. I want its antecedent to be ἀποκτείνοντας, but I can’t give a rationale for this.

2

διὰ τοὺς ἀποκτείνοντας οὓς οὐ δεῖ is “because of people who kill (those) whom (they) shouldn’t.” οὓς οὐ δεῖ serves as the object of ἀποκτείνοντας. δεῖ is impersonal (so it has no expressed subject), and ἀποκτείνειν is understood with it, just as “kill” in understood after “shouldn’t” (οὐ δεῖ) in my translation.

You see how the sentence is constructed: οὔτε … οὔτε “neither … nor” duplicating (but not canceling) the initial negative of οὐ δίκαιον.

— As to your newer query, about copying text from Perseus, you could copy-and-paste into a Word document (or whatever you use for word-processing), and transfer that into your textkit query.

3

Many thanks mwh for that commentary. After reading it, I saw that I was even more confused than I had imagined! Very helpful. I had misunderstood οὓς οὐ δεῖ, and you set me straight.