εἰ δή τις ὑμῶν οὕτως ἔχει—οὐκ ἀξιῶ μὲν γὰρ ἔγωγε, εἰ δ’ οὖν—ἐπιεικῆ ἄν μοι δοκῶ πρὸς τοῦτον
λέγειν λέγων ὅτι …
I am wondering whether my parsing of the part in bold is correct. I take
ἐπιεικῆ to be neuter plural with adverbial force, qualifying λέγειν;
ἄν with λέγειν to be the apodosis of the future less vivid condition;
λέγων to be the protasis of the future less vivid condition.
So, a translation might be: “I think (it seems to me) that I would be speaking reasonably to (against) him, if I should say: …”
I would have thought that that ἐπιεικῆ is accusative plural object of λέγειν.
Am not sure… I would expect it, in such a case, to go with the article.
I was wrong. It’s not plural. It’s singular masculine. sc. λόγον
Perhaps you’re right. Do you believe the adverbial neuter here is implausible?
See Smyth on the Cognate Accusative beginning at 1563.
επιεικη is neut.pl., as you first thought, Tugodum. You can think of it as adverbial if you must, but that’s just a concession to English syntactical usage. Better to think of it as the adjective that it is. Cf. ἀληθῆ λέγεις.
As to the presumed condition: ἄν … λέγειν is only potentially an apodosis, and λέγων is only potentially a protasis. I don’t think you help yourself by using the “future less vivid” label. The only actual condition here is εἰ δή τις ὑμῶν οὕτως ἔχει (the protasis), and the verb of the main clause (the apodosis) is δοκῶ indic. You can imagine an embedded επιεικη αν λεγοιμι ει λεγοιμι if you must, but that would hardly be Greek.
Thanks, mwh! The analogy with ἀληθῆ λέγεις, which I take to mean “you are right” (or, more literally, “you are speaking rightly”) is actually what I had in mind; hence my thinking of this usage as adverbial. [quote]I don’t think you help yourself by using the “future less vivid” label.[quote]I was just trying to answer a question in my mind, namely: what exactly is ἄν doing here. Can you suggest a better straightforward answer to it?
επιεικη is neut.pl., as you first thought, Tugodum. You can think of it as adverbial if you must, but that’s just a concession to English syntactical usage.
Most of the time the cognate accusative is neuter plural, but not always. A search on TLG brought up way too many instances of “λόγον τινὰ ἐπιεικῆ λέγειν” and equivalents for me to think that it’s not exerting any pressure on this phrase. See this example from Galen talking about what it is reasonable to say can cure fever:
…τάχα δόξει λόγον τινὰ ἐπιεικῆ λέγειν· ἐπιεικῆ δὲ εἶπον,…
This isn’t always the case, but I could find very few examples of the neuter plural usage (such as ἔλεγες ἐπιεικῆ καὶ ἀληθῆ from Protagoras).
Tugodum, I’m not sure you quite followed the thrust of my post. αληθη in αληθη λεγεις is not adverbial, and nor is επιεικη in επιεικη λεγειν. Learning to read Greek without reference to English usage will help you see this.
As to αν, you were right to construe it with λεγειν, but nothing in the Greek makes it “the apodosis of the future less vivid condition.” αν is serving its usual function as a modal particle, that’s all; and the infinitive could represent ἔλεγον just as well as λέγοιμι. As to λεγων, we’re free to invest it with conditional force if we like, but we don’t have to; as far as the Greek goes it’s simply a participle.
Joel, Don’t you see that you’re wrong?
mwh, I really wish to understand this. When I said its force is “adverbial”, I only meant that it qualifies a verb. Is this meaning itself incorrect, or just calling it “adverbial” is?
I understand that αν is as a modal particle but my question was (and is) about its semantic force in this particular sentence.
I thought that, with (assumed) ἔλεγον, the force of αν would be to make λεγειν counterfactual, which the context does not allow, as it seems. Am I wrong in this?
Joel, Don’t you see that you’re wrong?
I post here so that I can be corrected. What I understand is that it’s clearly a cognate accusative. And therefore normally plural, as per Smyth 1573. And that was my first assumption as well. However, after looking more carefully at the Smyth 1573 exceptions (“common phrases in prose”), I decided to be careful and double-check the TLG to see that ἐπιεικῆ λέγειν λόγον wasn’t a set phrase. But it appears to be. So I corrected myself in the “sc. λόγον” post.
I can be wrong about all of this, and probably am. But you’ll have to tell me whether it’s my understanding of cognate/internal accusative that is wrong, or of this phrase, or what.
Smyth 1573 is not clear to me.
“Usually an adjective, pronoun, or pronominal adjective is treated as a neuter substantive. Cp. ““μεγάλ᾽ ἁμαρτάνειν” to commit grave errors” D. 5.5… The singular adjective is used in certain common phrases in prose, but is mainly poetical; the plural is ordinarily used in prose.” If Smyth is right in translating it as an object, rather than a qualifier, of the verb, how can it possibly by “ordinarily plural”? Is it such a rare case that one commits just one “grave error”? I was taught to translate such a construction as “to error greatly”.
Well, to get away from my distraction, look at this from Charmides (I ran across it by chance this morning in reading):
Καὶ ἐπιεικῶς, ἦν δ᾿ ἐγώ, ἀληθῆ ἀπήγγελται.
If ἀληθῆ were a simple adverb here, I think that it would would have a conjunction after ἐπιεικῶς. You would probably translate it as an adverb in English, but that doesn’t actually tell you what’s going on in the Greek.
Am not sure why a conjunction would be necessary if ἐπιεικῶς means “probably.” (I do not insist on this reading as I haven’t checked the context.)
I do not understand this statement. Does not the way I translate it tell exactly what, in my view, is going on in the Greek semantically? Of course I know that grammatically ἀληθῆ is not an adverb, no doubt about that.
Here it does not mean “probably.” Instead, Socrates is confirming that the reports of the battle at Potidaea were mostly accurate.
As far as “err greatly” and “commit grave errors,” there is massive overlap in their semantic domains. In D. 5.5 there is clearly no difference. I don’t see how the question of which Smyth should have preferred there for his gloss is particularly enlightening.
Yes, there is overlap but, also, a difference. One can “error greatly” by committing just one error. In this case, it would be plainly wrong to read the plural adjective as a substantive object of the verb.
“this case” – Socrates or Demosthenes?