Context: It may be the case that the soul after many repeated rebirths into new bodies, finally dies and and is completely destroyed.
Perseus puts it into this English: “Now if this is the case, anyone who feels confident about death has a foolish confidence. . . .”
I’m having trouble seeing how the datives and the negatives work. In particular, what negative force does “μὴ οὐκ” have here? Negatives in AG are giving me a lot of trouble. I feel that understanding how they work here would be an advance for me.
Literally “It belongs to no-one to have confidence in death, having confidence not stupidly.” i.e. (more or less) It’s stupid to have confidence in death. The participial phrase θαρροῦντι μὴ οὐκ ἀνοήτως is tantamount to “unless his confidence is stupid.” The negation of the main verb (οὐδενὶ προσήκει) causes the negative with the participle to be doubled (μὴ ου) rather than simply being μή as it would otherwise be. §2750 is the relevant section in Smyth. *
θαρρεῖν θάνατον is something of an odd expression in itself (virtually negative, as if it were “to not fear death”). The whole argument is rather convoluted, but the continuation (ὃς ἂν μὴ ἔχῃ etc., “[no-one …] who can’t prove that …”) importantly qualifies the initial statement. It’s easy to get lost in Greek negatives!
PS Or better (if it makes any difference) to take θάνατον θαρρoῦντι together, and μὴ οὐκ ἀνοήτως with the infinitive. Yes, that’s better.
Many thanks to mwh and jeidsath for their contributions. I’ll need to read through them carefully, and think, because negation is a hard subject for me.
Yes, that’s in line with what I said. But in that positive form the bare participle would best have something to agree with, e.g. τινί, the counterpart of ουδενί in the negative form. (There the μη ου is “sympathetic." See Smyth 2739-50.)