Meaning of εκατερος εκατερον

Greek Learning Greek
1

From M unit 25, exercise I.10
“…των δε δυο υεων εκατερος εκατερον πολλα κακα λεγει…”
His translation: “…of his two sons, each says many bad things about the other…”
I don’t find any translation of εκατερον meaning “the other”. As it is, I would understand “each says many bad things about each”, which implies that he says bad things about the other and about himself . Could it be an idiom?
I would have used “ετερον” (the other of two) instead of εκατερον".
Please comment.
Thanks to all.

2

This is a typical expression and if you think logically about what’s going on it should be clear enough but I agree it is tricky when you first come across it.

The point is that both sons say something bad about the other one. So "each (of two) says many bad things about each (of two). "They dont say bad things about themselves, Each one of the sons could be subject εκατερος and the other would be εκατερον object. So son A says something bad about B and son B says something bad about A. εκατερος εκατερον concisely conveys what in English becomes "each of two says bad things about each of two " which makes little sense but you can see that the Greek is equivalent to one says bad things about the other and vice versa.

Its an example of where The Greek expression is rather different from the way the thought is expressed in English. I hope this hasn’t confused you further.

3

Thank you Seneca. I accept your reply (of course), but that’s like shoving the round peg of the answer in the square hole of my brain. And what about my construction, ekateros (each of two) says something about eteron (the other of two)? That makes perfect sense to me, but maybe that’s the square peg fitting in the square hole? :slight_smile:

4

Here is Socrates showing that the self-reference is specifically ruled out: Οὐκοῦν καὶ ὅτι ἑκάτερον ἑκατέρου μὲν ἕτερον, ἑαυτῷ δὲ ταὐτόν;

Anyway, this seems very similar to ἄλλος ἄλλα, etc. but also a bit different. ἄλλος ἄλλα leaves the “…and another to others” implied, but not expressed. Plato and Aristotle seem to be the only classical source for the ἑκάτερος idiom. I think they would have been familiar with it from their mathematical training. Euclid (later than either, of course) uses it all the time: ἴσαι εἰσὶν ἑκατέρα ἑκατέρᾳ, etc. But in his geometric terminology, self-equality is always a tautology.