Working my way through Eleanor Dickey’s “Greek Prose Composition” currently and one of the sentences she has for analysis in chapter 2 is from Plato’s Republic, 330a:
I am trying to figure out what the “δὲ” is doing in “χαλεπῶς δὲ τὸ γῆρας”. I understand that the whole passage means something like “To those not already rich, old age they bear (with) difficulty…” but I cannot for the life of me figure out what purpose that particle serves. It doesn’t seem to be paired with “μέν” anywhere else, it’s right in the middle of the clause so it’s not linking to a previous sentence. Does δὲ have some other function that I’m just not aware of?
I’m not sure you’ve construed this correctly. φέρουσιν is not the finite verb (“they bear”) but the participle, governed by τοῖς, in parallel with μὴ πλουσίοις.
Even so, we might have expected μὴ πλουσίοις and χαλεπῶς τὸ γῆρας φέρουσιν to be linked by καί, not by δέ, so your question is still a good one. The answer will be that some contrast is required between the two conditions (poverty and finding old age hard to bear), since according to the argument they don’t simply go hand in hand, so καί would not be appropriate.
I see what you mean about the participle, that actually is very helpful for parsing the sentence. So to make sure I’m understanding it correctly, the article τοῖς goes with φέρουσιν, which is the dative plural form of the participle. Then it would be something like “to those taking old age hard, who are not already rich”?
This actually makes a lot more sense in context of the passage where the speaker is drawing a contrast between the poor yet reasonable man who finds it difficult to endure poverty and old age together, versus the unreasonable man who cannot attain contentment through earning wealth. So the “δέ”is linking the “not already rich” and the “man who bears old age with difficulty” but in a weaker way that later allows the speaker to sort of split the two apart for a further argument. Am I getting that about right?
Yes that’s it, only (to be picky) it’s not “already” rich, and I wouldn’t say that δέ is “weaker.” But clearly you now understand the syntax and how it fits the argument.