“ἦ και μετ’ αυτου μητερ ἂν τλαιης κτανεῖν;”(I didn’t bother too much with the accents)
The given translation from Cambridge Grammar is “Would you truly dare to kill your mother together with him?”
1-Is “ἦ και” a set phrase of some sort here? I have no idea how to make sense of it.Is there a special usage of και here?
2-What would this sentence mean if ἂν were to be taken out?
You should probably get yourself a lexicon. A very good one is Liddell and Scott’s Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, aka the Middle Liddell.
ἦ and καί are words that convey attitude and lend particular strength to an utterance. You can look them up, and observe how they’re used. The force of ἦ usually extends over the whole utterance, while emphatic καί tends to be more restricted.. Here, where the ἦ marks a quasi-incredulous question, we could translate “Would you actually …” but the Greek is much less tame.
The ἄν goes with the optative (τλαίης) and is necessary to the sense (“would”). Optative without ἄν is completely different, expresses a wish (true “optative”), would be nonsensical here.
What diff. would it make if the καί here was taken out?
it would weaken the question and blunt its point.
The lexicon mwh mentions is freely available in the form of an Android App called Greek Reference: Ancient Greek, by the way. It works if you’re offline, as well - very handy on flights.
I’m not sure that καί has the force of incredulity or quasi-incredulity here. It goes with μητέρα, and works functionally. Examples of this sort of thing, which is common:
Σι. παπαῖ· τὸν αὐτὸν δαίμον’ ἐξαντλεῖς ἐμοί.
Οδ. ἦ καὶ σὺ δεῦρο πρὸς βίαν ἀπεστάλης;
“Did you also…?”
Κυ. ἄριστόν ἐστιν εὖ παρεσκευασμένον;
…
Κυ. ἦ καὶ γάλακτός εἰσι κρατῆρες πλέωι;
“Are the bowls also full of milk?”
Here in Electra, the incredulity comes from ἦ … ἂν τλαίης, but the καὶ μητέρα is function, not color, and is in fact the thing he’s asking: You’d kill your mother also? (“even your mother”, as bedwere implies, is the same.) And so Electra interprets the question, as about the mother specifically, not her resolve for the more general deed:
Ορ. ἦ καὶ μετ’ αὐτοῦ μητέρ’ ἂν τλαίης κτανεῖν;
Ηλ. ταὐτῶι γε πελέκει τῶι πατὴρ ἀπώλετο.
…
Ηλ. θάνοιμι μητρὸς αἷμ’ ἐπισφάξασ’ ἐμῆς.
“With the very cleaver that popped off pops!”
“I just wanna exit having cut ma’s throat!”
Oh dear. Some misunderstanding here. Joel has apparently misread what I wrote. I did not at all suggest that και had the force of incredulity. And of course it works functionally. All particles do.
καί here means either “also” (non-emphatic) or “even” (emphatic). Reader’s choice. That’s all it’s doing.
It does not tie to ἦ like another particle might(ie., μήν) Should it be struck from the sentence, the “also” goes away, or the “even”.
The Cambridge Grammar’s translation of “Would you truly…” (Michael “Would you actually…”) is lacking. The “truly” comes from “ἦ … ἂν τλαίης”. To translate the καί, they need something like “even your mother” or “also your mother”.
Joel tacitly corrects his misreading. I have no serious disagreement with what he says now, though it’s decidedly simplistic.
I did not mean to “tacitly” correct anything. I meant not to engage. But since you repeat your jab, I will say that it does look in your first post like you are explicating the CG translation, and even restate it, answering the question about “ἦ καί”. We now know that you saw the error, but just didn’t tell us, and wrote a number of vague generalities, and told the poster to get a dictionary.
I would be interested to know if the CG translation is really quoted correctly here.
It is quoted correctly, yes. They use the passage to illustrate the use of forms of αὐτός after prepositions.