Trial translation: The difficulty, your honors, is not to begin the accusation, but to bring an end to the speech: such is the magnitude and the number of their crimes, that it’s impossible even for lying to make them seem worse than the actual facts; on the other hand, one wishing to stick to the truth must either run short of time or sink from exhaustion.
Some grammar issues:
παύσασθαι λέγοντι: why the dative object?
τοιαῦτα αὐτοῖς τὸ μέγεθος καὶ τοσαῦτα τὸ πλῆθος: I request a grammatical commentary on this phrase
εἴργασται: singular because of two neuter subjects?
How does the trial translation stray too far from the Greek meaning?
Answering in haste – λέγοντι agrees with μοι, so Lysias is referring to himself ceasing to speak.
In your second question, αὐτοῖς refers to both E. and his colleagues (even though only E. is on trial). L. goes back and forth between sing. and pl. a lot in this speech.. τὸ μέγεθος and τὸ πλῆθος are accusatives of respect. Does that help with the grammar?
αὐτοῖς is dative of agent with this perfect passive verb. I believe Mastronarde deals with this usage somewhere, but I haven’t got my copy to hand at the moment. Apologies for rushing.
Answering in haste – λέγοντι agrees with μοι, so Lysias is referring to himself ceasing to speak.
In your second question, αὐτοῖς refers to both E. and his colleagues (even though only E. is on trial). L. goes back and forth between sing. and pl. a lot in this speech.. τὸ μέγεθος and τὸ πλῆθος are accusatives of respect. Does that help with the grammar?
“λέγοντι agrees with μοι”: Very helpful, I had overlooked that possibility.
“τὸ μέγεθος and τὸ πλῆθος are accusatives of respect”: also very helpful.
εἴργασται: This is 3rd person singular, perfect, middle/passive. This gave me a lot of trouble grammatically, even though I believe I had a fairly good English understanding of the passage. How to explain the grammar of the verb?
εἴργασται agrees with the understood neuter plural subject ἔργα or similar, which itself is modified by both τοιαῦτα τὸ μέγεθος and τοσαῦτα τὸ πλῆθος (so great, so many). Neuter adjectives and demonstratives unaccompanied by nouns are often used this way to get across the concept of ‘things’, as in Latin.
I asked this:
3. εἴργασται: This is 3rd person singular, perfect, middle/passive. This gave me a lot of trouble grammatically, even though I believe I had a fairly good English understanding of the passage. How to explain the grammar of the verb?
truks replies:
No worries.
εἴργασται agrees with the understood neuter plural subject ἔργα or similar, which itself is modified by both τοιαῦτα τὸ μέγεθος and τοσαῦτα τὸ πλῆθος (so great, so many). Neuter adjectives and demonstratives unaccompanied by nouns are often used this way to get across the concept of ‘things’, as in Latin.
Many thanks to truks for the patient replies to my questions.