Reading Thucydides 2014

Greek Learning Greek
61

Jason,

It seems that you are missing ἐλπίσας in your rendition, which is important for ironing out the difficulties. With ἐλπίσας plus ἔσεσθαι, we get “hoping/expecting that it would be…”

μέγαν remains as “great” and needn’t be otherwise. He is hoping/expecting that the war will be great but I think that he wishes to focus more on its being, “ἀξιολογώτατον τῶν προγεγενημένων,” especially since that is where he comes in and he is providing a justification for such a role here in the introduction.

Hence: “expecting that it would be great and the most noteworthy of all that had been before it.” Make note of your final participle there and remember it is in the perfect middle and needs to fit with the time of the previous clause.



Cheers,
Eliot

62

Actually, I was taking ἐλπίσας to mean “deemed” rather than “expected.”

From LSJ:
c. pres. inf., deem, suppose that . ., Emp.11.2; ἐλπίζων εἶναι . . ὀλβιώτατος Hdt. 1.30; ἐλπίζων σιτοδείην τε εἶναι ἰσχυρὴν . . καὶ τὸν λεὼν τετρῦσθαι ib. 22; οἰκότα ἐλπίζων ib.27, cf. A.Th.76, Ch.187; βοῦν ἢ λέοντ’ ἤλπιζες ἐντείνειν βρόχοις; E.Andr.720; ἐλπίζει δυνατὸς εἶναι ἄρχειν Pl.R. 573c; ὅστις ἐλπίζει θεοὺς . . χαίρειν ἀπαρχαῖς Trag.Adesp.118.2: sts. of future events, τίς ἂν ἤλπισεν ἁμαρτήσεσθαί τινα τῶν πολιτῶν τοιαύτην ἁμαρτίαν; Lys.31.27; οὐδὲν . . ποιήσειν ἐλπίζων D.4.7.

The 1910 translation on Perseus has:
“and believing that it would be a great war, and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it.”

Benjamin Jowett (1881) on Perseus also has:
“believing that it would be great and memorable above any previous war.”

But the other translation from 1843 on Perseus says:
“with expectation it should prove a great one and most worthy the relation of all that had been before it”

I took ἐλπίσας into account, but I didn’t take it as “hoping” or “expecting.” I figure that he wrote about the war after it had already happened, which means that he wasn’t expecting anything of it, but he deemed or considered it to be great and most noteworthy.

:shrug: That’s how I took it, anyway.

63

Ah, my error, I didn’t note “deemed”. But your section from LSJ says “c. pres. inf.”, whereas this is a future infinitive, addressed in section one of the entry: “freq. with a dependent clause in inf., hope to do, or hope or expect that..,” followed by examples with the future infinitive.

Although Thucydides was writing about a war that had already occurred, his hoping/expecting is in direct relation to his first statement where he says he wrote the war as they warred against each other and not after it was completed. My question is why does he put ἐπολέμηςαν rather than ἐπολέμουv?

Eliot

64

You’re right that he placed the “hoping” with the lining up of the armies (καθισταμένου), so it might just be better understood as “hoped,” but I don’t know. Doesn’t really matter, I guess. :slight_smile:

What is the ὡς clause associated with there, anyway? Is it tied to the previous clause or the following one?

In the 1910 translation above, it seems to be neglected:
“Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, beginning at the moment that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war, and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it.”

The other two somehow tie the phrase into the first clause. Should this mean to us that he was writing the book throughout the war, having started his writing itself (and not just his subject) at the breakout of the war? I would also, then, think that the πολεμέω would appear in the imperfect. Or, do you think it’s an inceptive aorist - “as they began to fight against each other”?

65

I think the phrase ἀρξάμενος εὐθὺς καθισταμένου refers to his writing and, therefore, it seems he started to write at the outset.

As for the ὡς clause, I take it to refer to the prior statement. The 1910 translation seems odd in many respects. For example, it seems to translate τεκμαιρόμενος as “This belief was not without its grounds.” I don’t know what to say about that!

Smyth (1944) helps with the aorist/imperfect question, I think. He says, “In subordinate clauses the action expressed by the aorist may be (a) contemporaneous, (b) antecedent, or (c) subsequent to that set forth by the main verb. The context alone decides in which sense the aorist is to be taken.” He then gives a nice quote from Thucydides 1.138 which has the same sense as the one we are dealing with. So now my question is, after having used Smyth for a while now, did the man ever sleep?

Eliot

66

LOL @ Smyth sleeping!!! Strangely enough, I sleep with Smyth beside me quite often nowadays. :slight_smile:

I looked up the ingressive aorist last night and he gave ἐπολέμησα as one of the ingressives, giving it the meaning “began the war.” (I’d always called this “inceptive,” but he calls it “ingressive” in §1924.) Do you think this ingressive/inceptive aspect is intended here?

67

I hadn’t noted that entry and yes I think it works quite well here, especially in the sense of 1925 b. where he says, “The aorist of these verbs denotes also a simple occurrence of the action as an historical fact.” With that in mind, I don’t think it needs to be “began the war,” but could be as Hobbes translates it: “as they warred…”

68

1:1:3

… ἐκ δὲ τεκμηρίων ὧν ἐπὶ μακρότατον σκοποῦντί μοι πιστεῦσαι ξυμβαίνει οὐ μεγάλα νομίζω γενέσθαι οὔτε κατὰ τοὺς πολέμους οὔτε ἐς τὰ ἄλλα.

The syntax here is marvelous. G. Cooper (vol. 1, 51.92.2.B) joins (construes) the relative ὧν with the participle σκοποῦντί μοι. ἐπὶ μακρότατο limits σκοποῦντί. πιστεῦσαι ξυμβαίνει where ξυμβαίνει indicates that πιστεῦσαι is a consequence following from τεκμηρίων ὧν ἐπὶ μακρότατον σκοποῦντί μοι. This is a first cut. Open to revision.

69

This post may be a little late, but I’d like to join this group.

I started reading the OCT on 8 Jan, and so far I have managed to keep up with one page per day.

My goal is reading and understanding, rather than translation or detailed analysis.

I’m using the following approach:

  1. Read through the whole page at my normal speed, while seeking to understand as much as possible in this first reading.
  2. Go through the page again, but this time if I don’t understand something, I will look up unfamiliar words or grammar as I go along.
  3. Read through the page again at my normal speed.

Dracodon

70

1.2.4
διὰ γὰρ ἀρετὴν γῆς αἵ τε
δυνάμεις τισὶ μείζους ἐγγιγνόμεναι στάσεις ἐνεποίουν ἐξ ὧν
ἐφθείροντο, καὶ ἅμα ὑπὸ ἀλλοφύλων μᾶλλον ἐπεβουλεύοντο.

τισὶ is demoted to a dative, Thucydides seems to have a habit of throwing human participants into oblique cases where one might expect them to be in the foreground. Here the excellence of the land ἀρετὴν γῆς occasions the exaltation of some αἵ τε δυνάμεις τισὶ μείζους ἐγγιγνόμεναι leading to (internal) distention στάσεις ἐνεποίουν which in turn becomes an occasion for other tribes ὑπὸ ἀλλοφύλων to lay plots ἐπεβουλεύοντο against [those who currently hold the more valuable land].

This is all pretty abstract. People are just types of groups who are driven by economic forces to do this or that. Like reading an ancient sociologist.

I have managed to keep up with one page per day.

But how are we going to discuss this for mutual benefit if no one is “on the same page”?
I am willing to skip ahead for discussion, but there hasn’t been much in the way of questions so far.

71

This is precisely why I suggested we give weekly updates so that those ahead could slow down a bit and chew on the finer points of the previous week’s reading. However, it occurs to me now that, as an alternative, we could just put our current position in our signature each time we post so that readjustment of other members can be more immediate. What do you all think? I will put my position just in case this suits others.

I think it is important that we stay together for the sake of discussion, otherwise we will lose the beauty of having this be a group activity.


Cheers,
Eliot
1.10.2

72

Well, having taught many a university course, I can attest to the fact that the students are never all on the same page. I guarantee you there are students at top universities right this very minute who are way way behind on their Thucydides reading. Certainly much many more than 6 pages, which is the maxium that one can be behind at this moment! People have other commitments. And the text is long. And there are tortises and hares and all that. For my part, I read about three pages, then decided to order Book I with commentary and notes because I don’t like sitting in front of the computer to use the commentaries, and for Plato and Demosthenes, rightly or wrongly, I liked the convenience of having a lot of the vocabulary in the same text. I looked up so many words in dictionaries last year, I felt like I was on an assembly line. So I am waiting for that book to arrive–hoped it would be here by now. In the meantime, I have been doing a lot of Greek, just not Th. Also, I expect to go much slower in the beginning, but then to speed up gradually, something I should have thought about at the outset. But I am super commited to this for the long long haul. We’ll see who makes it to the end! :smiley:

I like Eliot’s idea of putting our location in the text up, but I am happy to talk about a passage from Book 8. As far as grammar goes, I don’t see how much it matters where we are. I do think we should all try to keep up with the thread also.

But I think it is great how many people have joined and I think this will be a great great thread. Welcome Dracodon! We have probably reached critical mass. If you have 2 people, you have 1 interaction, 3 people, 3 interactions, 4 people, 6 interactions, 5 people, 10 interactions, 6 people, 15 interactions! We seem to have at least 5, so that’s a lot of interactions. (And if you also count three, four and five way interactions, there are 36 possible interactions!) At the current rate, the thread will grow to 700 pages and have 25000 posts.

C S Bartholomew, feel free to organize whatever discussions you want. I have been kicking around ideas for secondary literature. In that case, we can “require” folks to have done the reading by a certain date. Perhaps after we finish Book I, we can read some articles, and we can have presenters give short prepared remarks, then answer questions, say on Thursday nights.

How do folks see the balance between grammar, history, and political theory/philosophy in the thread?

73

I agree with all of this and am equally thrilled that more folks have joined in.

I think it might be nice for many of us to use the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics edition of Book II when we get there. Having used the series in the past (Plato, Herodotus), I can attest that it is a very professionally made series and I, for one, found it outstandingly helpful; it is aimed at helping students to learn to read the particular author and generally excels at doing so. I would be surprised if the Thucydides were any different.

As a side note, what have you taught at university, pster?

Cheers,
Eliot

74

I was just looking at the Hornblower Commentary on Amazon and wondering if we could really find a better companion. If only it weren’t $200 to obtain all three volumes. While fretting about the price, I was able to find some humor. Amazon lists the number of pages for the three volume set as 56053! If you purchase each volume separately, you get about 2200 pages total. What a steal! How sublime and fulfilling it would be to read those “extra” 54000 pages. :laughing:

75

The Hornblower commentary is, frankly, amazing and was a great help during my having to study the Pelop. War. but if you’re not studying the text for a specific reason it can be avoided, as the price may suggest.

There are some Green and Yellows which are good as is the “grammatical commentary”

76

Got my Cameron, Student’s Grammatical Commentary. I was miffed though as I thought it contained the text to Bk. I. But it looks pretty good. He has lots and lots of Smyth numbers and thinks Smyth is great for Th. Maybe I’ll buy a BCP tonight because I still want one self-contained volume; I guess it is just a dressed up Marchant.

77

Pster wrote:

I was miffed though as I thought it contained the text to Bk. I. But it looks pretty good. He has lots and lots of Smyth numbers and thinks Smyth is great for Th. Maybe I’ll buy a BCP tonight because I still want one self-contained volume;

I hear you. I like the old NT commentaries with the greek at the top of the page and notes in a double column at the bottom. Not having the greek text on the page is a major drawback.

C. Stirling Bartholomew

78

Cyrus Gordon says that if you take the trouble to understand and memorise the grammar and vocabulary in the first twenty pages of a book in another language, then you will be able to read the rest of the book with scarcely any need of a dictionary.

So I am thinking that towards the end of January I will go back and review the first twenty or so pages - and make sure I have committed to memory all the grammar and words new to me.

Thanks Pster for starting up this reading group. I bought the OCT Thucydides in a second-hand book shop some time ago but kept getting sidetracked by Homer and Aristophanes. This thread provided the little push I needed to get me started on the Histories.

79

It is funny you should mention this, because I was thinking basically the same thing this last week. I was struggling with another text in another language, but finally got some old verb and old pronoun forms straight, and now everything is moving forward at a decent and ever increasing pace.

And I started Thucydides in earnest and I have been studying some of the quintessentially Thucydidean devices, such as the substantive neuter participle and prolepsis, in hope that there will be a good return later on the time invested now. So basically, I am taking the first 20 pages–broadly understood–very slowly to make sure that I understand everything. I’ll post some questions and comments soon.

80

In 1.23.3 he says that eclipses happened more frequently during the Peloponnesian War. I don’t know about that. Here’s a list of all eclipses visible in Greece during the period. Dates are astronomical, so for BCE subtract one more. In other words -0477 = 478 BCE.

Annular eclipses would not have been particularly noticeable unless you were really looking for them or you were in the eclipse path. Even then, the sky gets a little darker and the temperature falls a few degrees but that’s it. And it’s over fairly quickly. Only the ones in -0487 and -0477 would have been really apparent in Greece and those precede the period we’re interested in. Although both might have been connected with the Persian attacks on Greece a few years earlier. Yet they were annular.

The total eclipse which passed through Greece in -0401 would have been spectacular. But after the war.

Here’s the list:

Annular -0487 Sep 01 Thessalia, northern Anatolia
Perhaps noticeable in Athens

Annualar -0477 Feb 17 Pelopenessos, Attika, Dardanelles, Crimea,
Noticeable, but not work stopping

Total -0462 Apr 30 Tarantum, Albania, Makedonia, northern Anatolia
Perhaps noticeable, but before the war.

Annular -0430 08 03 through Romania, central Anatolia, into northern Iraq, may have been visible to interested parties in Greece, but not at all very darkening.

Annular in -0403 Sep 03, northern Romania, Crimea, Casipan Sea, same as above

Total eclipse -0401 Jan 18, Rome, Tarantum, Peloponnesos, Attika, Rhodos, south of Cyprus, Lebanon, Babylon.
Spectacularly visible. And definitely a work stopper. But after the war.

This is not to my mind an outrageous, or possibly even noticeable, increase in eclipse frequency. But of interest may be the two annulars which bracket the war. I don’t know.

For reference: Those of you in the U.S. may remember the annular eclipse of +1994 May 10. It went through southern NM, the TX panhandle, up into central Illinois, over Lake Erie, the Adirondaks, and out through Northern New England and Nova Scotia. Or maybe, even if you were old enough, you don’t remember it. That’s the kind of impression most annulars give. I remember it only because I took my dog and telescope and camera to Champaign Illinois to observe it. It was fun but the dog was unimpressed. Didn’t even give a poop. It was not particularly noticeable from Madison, only a couple of hundred miles north.

There’s a total eclipse passing through Cairo Illinois on +2017 Aug 21. I’m waiting on that one.

In another thread someone was mentioning an eclipse for +2012 May 20. Not far off. The California/Oregon boundary to Lubbock Texas. It will be - annular. Interestingly, it’s in the same Saros cycle as the one in +1994.


Source: Fred Espenak’s atlas of solar eclipse paths, NASA.