ἐπειδὴ οὖν μοι δοκεῖ οὐδεὶς τῶν παρόντων προθύμως ἔχειν πρὸς τὸ πολὺν πίνειν οἶνον, ἴσως ἂν ἐγὼ περὶ τοῦ μεθύσκεσθαι οἷόν ἐστι τἀληθῆ λέγων ἧττον ἂν εἴην ἀηδής. (Plato, Symposium, 176c)
Focusing on this:
μοι δοκεῖ οὐδεὶς τῶν παρόντων προθύμως ἔχειν πρὸς τὸ πολὺν πίνειν οἶνον
Is it correct that the subject of δοκεῖ is the phrase οὐδεὶς τῶν παρόντων προθύμως. Thus the English parallel might be: “To me, nobody here seems to favor heavy wine-drinking.”
δοκεῖ δέ μοι “οὐδεὶς” ἢ “οὐδεὶς τῶν παρόντων” τὸ ὑποκείμενον εἶναι, καὶ συντάσσεσθαι τὸ ἐπίρρημα “προθύμως” καὶ τὸ ῥῆμα “ἔχειν” . τὸ δὲ σημεῖον τοῦ “προθύμως ἔχειν” ταὐτόν ἐστι τοῦ “πρόθυμος εἶναι”.
I hate to be a disappointing pupil, but I can’t (yet) think in Greek words about Greek grammar. But let me describe my problem more fully.
Here is the subject passage again:
μοι δοκεῖ οὐδεὶς τῶν παρόντων προθύμως ἔχειν πρὸς τὸ πολὺν πίνειν οἶνον
At first, I tried to read δοκεῖ as an impersonal verb, but I stumbled over the nominative οὐδεὶς. When I couldn’t find a rule allowing nominative subjects of infinitives, I thought again and decided that perhaps in this sentence δοκεῖ is personal, with its subject being οὐδεὶς.
But, with my unsure grasp of AG grammar, it bothers me to find no on-point example to confirm my second thought. So, after looking for a reasonable amount of time, I decided to run up the distress flag here. I think editing my original post for brevity may left my problem unclearly stated.
Translating myself: It seems to me that “οὐδεὶς” or “οὐδεὶς τῶν παρόντων” is the subject, and the adverb “προθύμως” and the verb “ἔχειν” go together. The meaning of “προθύμως ἔχειν” is the same as “πρόθυμος εἶναι”.
Many thanks for the help, and for the translation. I got a lot of the AG, but couldn’t put together for myself a determinate meaning, mostly because of ignorance of AG grammar vocabulary.
I see your point about “ἔχειν”.
The way that I learned what I have of the ancient grammar vocabulary was reading this Greek Appendix to Clyde’s Greek Syntax.
τὰ δὲ τοῦ λόγου στοιχεῖα λέγονται ὧδε: ἄρθρον, ὄνομα, ἐπίθετον, ἀντωνυμία, ῥῆμα, ἐπίῤῥημα, πρόθεσις, σύνδεσμος, ἐπιφώνημα.
Article, noun, adjective, pronoun, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection.
In his preface, Clyde mentions that he uses Asopios as a guide/inspiration for adopting the ancient terminology for a modern grammatical description. For the ancients ὄνομα meant both noun and adjective, ἄρθρον both article and relative pronoun, and interjections were a type of ἐπίῤῥημα. Unlike Clyde, they also considered μετοχή (participle) as its own part of speech instead of classing it as a type of verb.
Here’s how the parts of speech terms make sense to me anyway:
ἄρθρον - lit. “a joint” was thought of by the ancients in terms its connecting force (to a previous mental conception), and you can see why it might include the relative
ὄνομα - lit. a name or label
ἐπίθετον - an epithet, and so used to mean adjective.
ἀντωνυμία - instead of an ὄνομα
ῥῆμα - the thing being said, hence a verb
ἐπίῤῥημα - something that acts on a ῥῆμα
πρόθεσις - set before
σύνδεσμος - a tying together
ἐπιφώνημα - a word thing at [a point]
μετοχή - two things happening together (ie., a verb and an adjective)
Thank you Joel for the helpful list.