Plato, Apology, 20a-20b

Greek Learning Greek
1

Context: Socrates, in his defense explaining his method of asking questions:

‘ὦ Καλλία,’ ἦν δ᾽ ἐγώ, ‘εἰ μέν σου τὼ ὑεῖ πώλω ἢ μόσχω ἐγενέσθην, εἴχομεν ἂν αὐτοῖν ἐπιστάτην λαβεῖν καὶ μισθώσασθαι ὃς [20β] ἔμελλεν αὐτὼ καλώ τε κἀγαθὼ ποιήσειν τὴν προσήκουσαν ἀρετήν, ἦν δ᾽ ἂν οὗτος ἢ τῶν ἱππικῶν τις ἢ τῶν γεωργικῶν:

Translation: “O Callias,” I said, “If your two sons had been born two colts or two calves, we could get and pay an expert trainer who would train them in the excellence proper to each, and that trainer would be someone [knowledgeable] of horses or of farming.”

I had a lot of trouble with this passage:

ἦν δ᾽ ἂν οὗτος ἢ τῶν ἱππικῶν τις ἢ τῶν γεωργικῶν. . . .

  1. Is οὗτος the subject of ἦν?
  2. is ἐπιστάτην the antecedent of οὗτος?
  3. what is the grammatical rationale of the pronoun τις? Is its antecedent also ἐπιστάτην?

I had trouble also with the parallel of “having to do with horses” and “having to do with farming”, since one relates to horses, and the other to management of a farm. The way I resolved this was to speculate that in Plato’s day, it was taken for granted that a good farmer knew how to break young steers to the yoke and to plowing, but that the training of horses was a craft distinct from farming.

2

Others will answer your questions better. I won’t even answer all of them!

  1. I think so, it’s a subjunctive/optative phrase. Someone else will be better explaining it to you!

  2. I don’t think so, I would (very badly) translate ’ εἴχομεν ἂν αὐτοῖν ἐπιστάτην λαβεῖν’ as ‘we would be able to get for them an education,’ καὶ μισθώσασθαι ὃς ‘and hire [someone] who…’
    If οὗτος refers to anything/ anyone it is ‘ὃς’, who would be an implied subject.

  3. τις refers to τῶν ἱππικῶν - ‘someone of the ones who know about horses’

The only answer I am happy with is number 3 - for the rest wiser heads will need to weigh in.

3
  1. Not actually subjunctive/optative. 2) ἐπιστάτης is not an education. You can look at the formation for the meaning: “He who stands over”. 3) I agree with Andriko. “τῶν ἱππικῶν τις” is complete in itself.
4

listen to jeidsath - he clearly shows how right I was to think I would be wrong!

Confusing ‘epistase’ for ‘epistame’ is a nasty habit of mine.

5

Hi Hugh,
I haven’t read any Plato yet, but in the interest of learning myself, these are my answers to your three questions:

  1. Yes
  2. Yes
  3. I think τις is a predicate nominative linked to οὗτος, which in turn has ἐπιστάτην as its antecedent.
    The overall structure, I think, is that of a present contrafactual (unreal) condition, where there is the protasis: “‘εἰ μέν σου τὼ ὑεῖ πώλω ἢ μόσχω ἐγενέσθην” and 2 apodoses (1)εἴχομεν ἂν αὐτοῖν ἐπιστάτην λαβεῖν καὶ μισθώσασθαι ὃς [20β] ἔμελλεν αὐτὼ καλώ τε κἀγαθὼ ποιήσειν τὴν προσήκουσαν ἀρετήν, and (2)ἦν δ᾽ ἂν οὗτος ἢ τῶν ἱππικῶν τις ἢ τῶν γεωργικῶν:

Hope you are well!

6

I repeat the troublesome passage:


ἦν δ᾽ ἂν οὗτος ἢ τῶν ἱππικῶν τις ἢ τῶν γεωργικῶν. . . .

Thanks to Joel, Andriko, and Aetos for their help.

I have now looked at Geoffrey Steadman’s note (p. 12) on the troublesome passage. Steadman inserts an implied τις in parentheses, like this:

ἦν δ᾽ ἂν οὗτος ἢ τῶν ἱππικῶν τις ἢ τῶν γεωργικῶν(τις)

https://geoffreysteadman.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/plato.apology.01aug20.pdf

That was helpful to me. And like Aetos, I want to have the meaning of ἐπιστάτην implicated the in the pronouns in the troublesome passage.