ἡ δὲ τῆς ἀρετῆς κτῆσις, οἷς ἂν ἀκιβδήλως ταῖς διανοίαις συναυξηθῇ. . . .
Trial translation: The pursuit of virtue/excellence, whenever growth genuinely occurs in such things together with the mental-powers
I’m baffled by the pronoun οἷς, which I translated “such-things”. I won’t type out any more of my argument, which is very amateurish.
οἷς means “for those persons [not things] for whom.” Here οἷς ἂν with the subjunctive συναυξηθῆ marks a general relative clause, “whomever.” οἷς is dative both in the matrix clause and in the subordinate general relative clause.
ταῖς διανοίαις might be translated “the faculty of reason.”
“The acquisition/possession of virtue, for whomever it [i.e., virtue or its acquition] was increased/grew genuinely [maybe ‘organically’?] along with the faculty of reason …”
Many thanks Hylander for the helpful reading. FWIW I did try to make the οἷς be a reference to persons, but I didn´t think of your reading (“for those persons for whom”). That failure sent me down a rabbit hole so strange that I decided to run up the distress signal.
Wouldn’t the verb best be translated by present tense in English? And maybe this is nitpicky but I’d say οἷς is dative only in the relative clause, although (as I look ahead to check) we could supply τούτοις in the main clause if we wanted.
I went back and forth on the English tense for συναυξηθῆ between present, preterite a and present perfect, trying to capture the aorist. I was uncomfortable with the present because it would suggest looking at the verb as process rather than punctual. But present tense does seem more natural in English.
I agree — οἷς implies a correlative τούτοις, though I think Greek typically likes to leave out the correlative in this kind of sentence. I did check the rest of the sentence to make sure that dative was implied in the matrix clause.
Here is my phrase by phrase trial translation. I have two questions. (1) How close is this? (2) Where would a “correlative τούτοις” go? I did not understand that issue at all.
ἡ δὲ τῆς ἀρετῆς κτῆσις, But the pursuit of virtue
οἷς to those persons for whom
ἂν ἀκιβδήλως genuinely
ταῖς διανοίαις συναυξηθῇ, it grows up together with the faculty of reason
μόνη μὲν συγγηράσκει, alone it (pursuit of virtue) grows with age
πλούτου δὲ κρείττων, stronger than riches
χρησιμωτέρα δὲ εὐγενείας ἐστί, it (pursuit of virtue) is more useful than noble birth
τὰ μὲν τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀδύνατα the things impossible for others
δυνατὰ καθιστᾶσα, standing achievable
τὰ δὲ τῷ πλήθει φοβερὰ things fearful to the masses
θαρσαλέως ὑπομένουσα, courageously patiently enduring,
καὶ τὸν μὲν ὄκνον ψόγον, lethargy a flaw (it thinks)
τὸν δὲ πόνον ἔπαινον ἡγουμένη. hard work an honor it considers.
Here is the passage without interruption, for ease of reference.
ἡ δὲ τῆς ἀρετῆς κτῆσις, οἷς ἂν ἀκιβδήλως ταῖς διανοίαις συναυξηθῇ, μόνη μὲν συγγηράσκει, πλούτου δὲ κρείττων, χρησιμωτέρα δὲ εὐγενείας ἐστί, τὰ μὲν τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀδύνατα δυνατὰ καθιστᾶσα, τὰ δὲ τῷ πλήθει φοβερὰ θαρσαλέως ὑπομένουσα, καὶ τὸν μὲν ὄκνον ψόγον, τὸν δὲ πόνον ἔπαινον ἡγουμένη.
τούτοις is the implied/understood correlative of οἷς. It would be dative of reference for all of the good things that begin with μόνη in the sentence. It’s the implied antecedent of the relative pronoun οἷς. [τούτοις] — “for those persons” … οἷς — “for whom …”
Hi Hugh, Your phrase-by-phrase translation is close. However, καθιστᾶσα is transitive—τὰ μὲν τοῖς ἄλλοις ἀδύνατα the object, δυνατὰ predicative, i.e. “making possible the things that for most people are impossible”—note the ἀδύνατα δυνατὰ juxtaposition, and the φοβερὰ θαρσαλέως juxtaposition in the next phrase, followed up by the word-play of τὸν μὲν ὄκνον ψόγον τὸν δὲ πόνον ἔπαινον closing the trio; and before that the double chiastic opposition of πλούτου δὲ κρείττων χρησιμωτέρα δὲ εὐγενείας. There are three μὲν …δὲ pairings. In other words, there is much more going on in the Greek than there is in translation!
As for τούτοις, it would ordinarily go at the beginning of the main clause, i.e. directly before μόνη μὲν, but it would be rather awkward there and there’s no need for it.
Many thanks to Hylander and mwh. The replies have given me helpful suggestions for study. I never regret asking questions here. It’s inspiring to see gurus like Hylander and mwh giving tips to struggling students like me.
One other point worth mentioning: the elaborately balanced μὲν δὲ phrases and antithetical juxtapositions in this sentence that Michael pointed out are characteristic of Isocrates’ style. It’s a style that is associated with the 5th century sophist Gorgias, the subject of Plato’s dialogue of that name. Gorgias pushed it to extremes, and so did Isocrates to some extent, writing in the 4th century. To be perfectly honest, it can get to be tedious after a while, and sometimes antitheses seem contrived just for stylistic effect where there’s no real contrast between the two elements.
Of course I didn’t mean to say τούτοις would ordinarily go at the beginning of the main clause — I meant that ordinarily it would directly follow the relative clause, picking up the relative pronoun, as one might say or ἅπερ ἂν κελεύσω, ταῦτα πάντας δεῖ ποιῆσαι. But of course there’s no real need for the demonstrative pronoun at all.
Also, you’ll have noted that each of the three appended participial phrases ends with the participle, tying everything neatly together: | τὰ μὲν … καθιστᾶσα, | τὰ δὲ … ὑπομένουσα, | καὶ τὸν μὲν … τὸν δὲ … ἡγουμένη (the third one typically longer and more complex than the identically structured first two). The participles themselves are comparatively colorless: it’s the artistically organized words that lead up to them that carry the weight in each case. This is prose written to be admired—though as Hylander says, it can become tiresome and it carries a risk of style over substance.
Thanks to Hylander for those enlightening remarks. FWIW I’m reading Isocrates because of a long-past experience, when I was assigned to teach a course in the history of American education. I wrote a few lectures on education in England on the eve of colonization, as a starting point. While reading up on this, I noticed that Isocrates came up again and again as an author favored by renaissance scholars as reading for pupils. I knew nothing about Isocrates, but I remembered his name, and now seemed like to good time to find out what Isocrates is like.
You might have encountered John Lyly, an Elizabethan writer and playwright whose prose style was apparently modeled, at least indirectly, on Isocrates. His book Euphues written in that style gave rise to the term “euphuism.” It was all the rage for a while, until people got sick of it.