Plato Rep. 5.454.

Greek Learning Greek
1

τὸ μὴ τὴν αὐτὴν φύσιν ὅτι οὐ τῶν αὐτῶν δεῖ ἐπιτηδευμάτων τυγχάνειν πάνυ ἀνδρείως τε καὶ ἐριστικῶς κατὰ τὸ ὄνομα διώκομεν

Hi everybody,
I have problem understanding how negations work in this sentence. My intuition is that μὴ refers to τὴν αὐτὴν φύσιν (but then wouldn’t it take the form of τὴν μὴ αὐτὴν φύσιν?) and οὐ refers to δεῖ. However, from what I found in Smyth i.ex. it would be more correct if μὴ referred to τυγχάνειν (what about the οὐ in this case?). What do you think?

Best wishes,

2

Without cheating, I’d say τὸ μὴ διώκομεν τὴν αὐτὴν φύσιν κ.τ.λ.

3

Ok, so if I understand it correctly, τὸ μὴ τὴν αὐτὴν φύσιν is a direct object of διώκομεν and τὸ μὴ refers to τὴν αὐτὴν φύσιν ?

4

I’d translate it as:
the fact that we do not follow nature itself.

5

I looked up the context, which I hope isn’t cheating, and it is a discussion where they have agreed that ἄλλην φύσιν ἄλλο δεῖν ἐπιτηδεύειν in reference to men and women. And the more immediate context has been the διώκειν τοῦ λεχθέντος τὴν ἐναντίωσιν, whether by ἔριδι or διαλέκτῳ, hence the verb here.

Burnet writes <μὴ> and says that it’s from “Ven. 184”, but missing everywhere else. Slings banishes it to the apparatus as a suggestion of “Bessarion” and mentions τὴν ἄλλην φύσιν has also been suggested by “Baiter”.

So my understanding is that “τὸ <μὴ> τὴν αὐτὴν φύσιν ὅτι οὐ τῶν αὐτῶν δεῖ ἐπιτηδευμάτων τυγχάνειν” is simply the summary of the proposition, and the rest is poetic description of how they are chasing after it.

6

Thank you for your answers!