ἀκούσατε δή μοι τὰ συμβεβηκότα, ἵνα εἰδῆτε ὅτι οὐδ᾽ ἂν ἑνὶ ὑπεικάθοιμι
παρὰ τὸ δίκαιον δείσας θάνατον, μὴ ὑπείκων δὲ ἀλλὰ κἂν ἀπολοίμην.
What does this participle stand for and how does it fit with the main clause?
Thanks.
To be honest, with the ἀλλὰ I don’t think it makes sense as it stands – the text is probably corrupt here (see the note here about the manuscripts, and if you search, you’ll find various amendments, like
μὴ ὑπείκων δὲ ἅμα κἂν ἀπολοίμην
With this one, the δέ signals a new clause (inside the ὅτι-clause) and the participle goes with ἀπολοίμην, something like “know that … but [that] at the same time in not yielding I would even perish.”
If the ἀλλά is there, though, I don’t see how to make sense of it.
Thank you, modus. W.Tyler in his commentary chose the version of two ἅμα throwing the first at the participle:
and as soon as I did not yield, just so soon I should perish.
I wondered why we also have δὲ here and if it should be translated, but you explained it clearly.
Only thing I don’t understand is why was the participle negated with μή?
Because of the general meaning of the participle – οὐ would indicate some specific fact, but with the optative the whole sentence has the idea of “whenever” or “in any circumstance”.
Yep, μή is used with participles when the participle has conditional or general force (just as after εἰ).
I think οὐδ᾽ and μὴ…δὲ (= μηδέ) are correlative conjunctions.
How would you understand the sentence? (It’s just that I’m not clear on what you mean here.)
I took the οὐδ’ … ἑνί as being the emphatic form of οὐδείς.
Ah, I see now. I didn’t know that οὐδ’ ἑνί was simply an emphatic version of οὐδενί, without any conjunctive force in the word οὐδέ, but I looked it up and it appears you are correct.
I had figured it was closer to something like Latin nec cuiquam, but that’s clearly not the case in other passages where οὐδ’ ἑνί is used, e.g. Symposion 213d.