Context: On trial for assault with intention to kill, the defendant declares that in truth he is the injured party, and not the accuser Simon. This naturally gives rise to the question, why the defendant hasn’t brought charges himself against Simon. Having already described the sordid origins of the conflict between him and Simon, the defendant explains that he wanted no public attention to his plight.
Trial translation, somewhat free:
I therefore, gentlemen of the court, although I have been much abused [by Simon], nevertheless shame over my misfortunes, which I have already described, kept me quiet, and I preferred not bringing charges in the courts, to looking like a fool in the eyes of fellow citizens, for, while accurate knowledge [πρέποντα] of this man’s misconduct would be the punishment of it, on the other hand many would ridicule my sufferings, especially those given to resentment of anybody in the city eager to be a solid citizen.
I am unsure about this phrase: πρέποντα ἔσται τὰ πεπραγμένα
εἰδὼς is the participle for οἶδα, meaning “knowing”.
πρέποντα + dat. is “appropriate to”
Examples:
οἷα γυναικὶ ταλασιουργῷ πρέποντά ἐστιν εἰπεῖν περὶ ἐρίων ἐργασίας
what is appropriate for a wool-working woman to speak about wool work
τὰ βασίλεια πρέποντα μὲν τῷ τῆς ἀρχῆς μεγέθει, πρέποντα δὲ τῷ περὶ τὰ ἱερὰ κόσμῳ
The palace is appropriate to the breadth of the rule, and appropriate to the beauty of the temples
So
τῇ τούτου πονηρίᾳ πρέποντα ἔσται τὰ πεπραγμένα
the results will be appropriate for this one’s knavery
I glossed τὰ πεπραγμένα as “the results”. But does τὰ πεπραγμένα refer to the hypothetical court proceedings or the original events? I think that he is probably saying that he was sure he would have won, not that “the outcome of what happened will have been punishment enough”.
Aha! This is what I missed. Now I will read the sentence again.
Here’s how I went wrong. I skimmed the LSJ looking for a good definition, but I overlooked this one. When I checked my work against the LCL , its translation made no sense to me, and I was “at a loss”. I ought to have re-read the lexicon article with the LCL translation in mind; this is my usual practice when baffled.
So, my reading was the result of brute force, and not of knowledge of the πρέποντα+dat. gloss.
This is a big problem for me: failing to spot in a long lexicon article a good meaning for a Greek word that puzzles me. But often the LCL tanslation helps me find one.
For me coming at this, I have seen πρέπει a bunch of times before, and am used to its meaning “fitting”, which I learned long ago from the Loeb side-by-side translations, back when I still used them as my primary way to pick up words. What it meant here was clear enough to me. The dative fits easily into “fitting to something”, and the fact that it’s a participle here isn’t hard to adjust for. (I edited my post slightly: it’s never impersonal as a participle, only as the finite form.)
IMO, the best dictionary for picking up Greek is Morwood’s pocket dictionary. Here, the entry is:
πρέπω be conspicuous, distinguished or seen; be manifest; resemble πρέπει + dat. it is fitting for, it suits or becomes
That’s everything we need for this at least. (I always forget the base meaning of “to be conspicuous”, but I would hope that changes once I read more tragedy.)