Plato, Crito 49b1

Greek Learning Greek
1

Hi all,
Apologies but I have another Crito query,

ὅπερ καὶ ἄρτι ἐλέγετο ἢ πᾶσαι ἡμῖν ἐκεῖναι αἱ πρόσθεν ὁμολογίαι ἐν ταῖσδε ταῖς ὀλίγαις ἡμέραις ἐκκεχυμέναι εἰσίν, καὶ πάλαι, ὦ Κρίτων, ἄρα τηλικοίδε γέροντες ἄνδρες πρὸς ἀλλήλους σπουδῇ διαλεγόμενοι ἐλάθομεν ἡμᾶς αὐτοὺς παίδων οὐδὲν διαφέροντες;

Is ἡμᾶς αὐτοὺς merely clarifying or emphasising who ἀλλήλους is referring to i.e. it might be treated as an accusative of respect? From my dictionary searches for λανθάνω and διαφέρω there doesn’t seem to be a role for it as an accusative object for these verbs. Steadman says ‘ἡμᾶς…διαφέροντες: that we…differ; ind. discourse’ but this doesn’t make sense to me as they don’t even agree! After λανθάνω it makes sense to see the accompanying nominative participle διαφέροντες. My own rule of thumb is when I can’t see a proper home for an accusative and it’s not adverbial I often treat it as an accusative of respect…
So … ‘we failed to notice, with respect to ourselves, we differ not at all from children’

2

πρὸς ἀλλήλους σπουδῇ διαλεγόμενοι is a participial phrase modifying the subject “talking earnestly/seriously to one another”.

ἐλάθομεν ἡμᾶς αὐτοὺς – “we failed to notice ourselves”, not with indirect discourse, but rather with a supplementary participle: παίδων οὐδὲν διαφέροντες, “being no different than children”, “we failed to notice ourselves being no different than children,” i.e., “we didn’t realize that we were being no different than children”.

The supplementary participle, διαφέροντες, is nominative, agreeing with the subject.

No apologies needed.

3

From my dictionary searches for λανθάνω and διαφέρω there doesn’t seem to be a role for it as an accusative object for these verbs.

λανθάνω does take an accusative object, the person who the subject eludes. See LSJ A.1.: “c. acc. pers. only, escape his notice…”

4

The object of ἐλάθομεν is accusative: ἡμᾶς αὐτοὺς. But the supplementary participle διαφέροντες is nominative, agreeing with the subject.

Here’s an example of the same construction from Phaedo 76d:

οὐδαμῶς, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἀλλὰ ἔλαθον ἐμαυτὸν οὐδὲν εἰπών.

“I failed to notice myself saying nothing.”

“I didn’t realize I was talking nonsense.”

I collected a few more examples of this idiom in Plato using the Perseus search function (until I got tired of it):

Euthydemus 295a: εἰ γάρ τοι λέληθα ἐμαυτὸν σοφὸς ὤν, σὺ δὲ τοῦτο ἐπιδείξεις ὡς πάντα ἐπίσταμαι καὶ ἀεί, τί μεῖζον ἕρμαιον αὐτοῦ ἂν εὕροιμι ἐν παντὶ τῷ βίῳ;

Alcibiades I 172d: κινδυνεύω δὲ καὶ πάλαι λεληθέναι ἐμαυτὸν αἴσχιστα ἔχων.

Alcibiades II 138b: ὅπως μὴ λήσεται αὑτὸν εὐχόμενος μεγάλα κακά, δοκῶν δ᾽ ἀγαθά,

Alcibiades II 143a: ὁπότε, ὡς ἔοικε, λελήθαμεν ἡμᾶς αὐτοὺς διὰ ταύτην καὶ πράττοντες καὶ τό γε ἔσχατον εὐχόμενοι ἡμῖν αὐτοῖς τὰ κάκιστα.

Philebus 43b: καὶ οὔτ᾽ αὐξανόμενοι λανθάνομεν ἡμᾶς αὐτοὺς οὔτε τι τῶν τοιούτων οὐδὲν πάσχοντες,

5

Or an example from the LSJ with object different from the subject: “ἄλλον τινὰ λήθω μαρνάμενος I am unseen by others while fighting, i.e. I fight unseen by them”

6

Yes, the supplementary participle with λανθάνω agrees with the subject, even when the direct object is reflexive, as in the idiom at Crito 49b.

7

Hylander, you are concerning me somewhat. Did you notice your repetition during this thread?

The supplementary participle, διαφέροντες, is nominative, agreeing with the subject.



But the supplementary participle διαφέροντες is nominative, agreeing with the subject.



Yes, the supplementary participle with λανθάνω agrees with the subject, even when the direct object is reflexive, as in the idiom at Crito 49b.

8

Thanks both, appreciated.

9

I was poking fun the other day. I was aware that the above was meant as the usual filibustering, and not a moment of forgetfulness. Misguided filibustering, as I hadn’t disagreed with anything that Hylander said. But three times calls the devil, so I might as well jump into it fully: the standard English crib equivalence here does miss the color of the Greek expressions. The Greek idiom, unlike the English, draws its flavor from the thing hid being agent in its own concealment.

As is often true in Greek, changing the Greek action to an English substantive can help bring this out:

“arguing so earnestly our childishness hid itself from us”

the other examples (I haven’t looked up the context, so there’ll be some errors):

“my bullshitting kept me from seeing I was doing it”

“being so intelligent that I didn’t even know it”

“my horrible ugliness has blanked itself from my memory”

“so that asking for terrible things considering them good doesn’t misdirect us about what we’re doing”

“doing so because of that and requesting the very worst for ourselves cancelled itself out of our memories”

“and neither does our growth escape us, nor anything of the sort that we experience”

The English expression by contrast is anemic, the action is no sort of agent, and tends to be deployed more indifferently: “I failed to notice myself putting on mismatched socks this morning.”

Hylander’s insistence on understanding this as something entirely explained by the magic words “supplementary participle” simply masks what’s going on here. In fact, it’s a much more colorful expression, one explained by λανθάνω taking a direct object (the original poster was very much on the right track about this), the quoted Homeric usage, and by the nature of Greek participles. But it’s exactly the sort of thing a person can blind himself to by glancing at English every few sentences as he reads Greek.

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