I’m Slimsne and I’m a second year Greek student. My major was Philosophy, and with a few left over credit points I decided to learn Greek. I’m loving it, although it does try my patience occasionally.
At the risk of getting ignored, I thought why not start off with a question. At the moment I’m trying to grasp some subtleties of emphasis. My tutor has asked me to translate a few sentences into Greek.
The first one is:
Telemachus did not know whether or not these things lay in the laps of the gods.
For which I think I’ve got about 5 different translations. Choice of which verb of knowing, choice of vividness of the secondary verb, choice of word order!
Here’s what I have, I went with γιγνώσκω simply because I couldn’t find any other aorist verbs of knowing. So far I’ve learned οἶδα and ἐπισταμαι as well.
So my question is, how does separating the “in the laps” from “of the gods” affect the ownership-sense of the latter? I’m trying to emphasise that these things are right-there-in-the-laps by using hyperbaton. Have I succeeded?
