Question about Italian Athenaze chapter 21 (τὰ μυστήρια)

Greek Learning Greek
1

The following is a line from ch. 21 of Athenaze, at the beginning:

ἔνδον δ᾿ οὐσῶν γυναικῶν, καὶ λεγουσῶν τούτων παρ᾿ αὐτὰς καθίσαι, γραῖά τις, Ἰάμβη ὀνόματι, σκώψασα, τὴν θεὸν ἐποίησε μειδιᾶσαι.

Can someone work out for me the phrase λεγουσῶν τούτων παρ᾿ αὐτὰς καθίσαι and how the infinitive is functioning there? A stilted gloss would help tremendously!

Thanks!

Jason

2

I think it is this use of λέγω

λ. τινὰ ποιεῖν τι tell, command one to do, A. Ch. 553, S. Ph. 101, X. Cyr. 4.1.22, etc.: so with τινι, S. OC 840, D. 19.150 (no obj. expressed in A. Ag. 925, S. OC 856); λέγε τὸν ἐρωτῶντα ἵνα . . εἴπῃ σοι . . Astramps. Orac. p.1 H.; ὡς ὁ νόμος λέγει D. 22.20; ὁ λέγων μὴ μοιχεύειν Ep.Rom. 2.22.

3

Athenazde Italian version has extra text material, often taken from the corpus. I found the origin text of this sentence and a translation in Perseus. Here is the text in context at line 8.

https://homer.chs.harvard.edu/read/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0548.tlg001.perseus-grc2:1.5.1-1.9.8

I am in Jason’s study group.

Martin

4

Thanks. I was wondering why it wasn’t “παρʼ αὑτὰς”. (It is there.) The Apollodorus context also explains who they are speaking to.

5

Perhaps, then:

ἔνδον δ᾿ οὐσῶν γυναικῶν, καὶ λεγουσῶν τούτων παρ᾿ αὐτὰς καθίσαι, γραῖά τις, Ἰάμβη ὀνόματι, σκώψασα, τὴν θεὸν ἐποίησε μειδιᾶσαι.
“Now while the women were inside, and while these were telling [her] to sit with them, a certain old woman, Iambe by name, having made a joke, made the goddess laugh.”

I think we would make the object explicit in the first clause in English and use a pronoun in the second (“… telling the goddess to sit with them… made her laugh”). Perhaps that’s what was tripping me up.

Yeah?

6

I’m afraid you’re going to have to get used the Greeks leaving words out – it’s part of what makes elegant prose for them. One fun thing in Greek is a relative pronoun that assimilates to the case of a pronoun which has been left out. You find it everywhere. The nice thing about the additional readings in the Italian Athenaze is that they’re based on Greek originals so you can begin to adjust to what you’re going to find in classical authors.

Mark