With the aid of my trusty copy of Betant’s Lexicon Thucydideum, I’ve tracked the ἀκμάζοντας νεότητι πολλῇ passage down to ii.20.2 (not ii.20.4). The complete edition by Classen-Steup, on an earlier version of which Morris’ edition of Book I is based, gives the citation correctly.
Your other query is trickier. I wonder if Morris means ii.2.2, which is cited in Classen-Steup:
’ … for the Athenians were to support him against the Chalcidians with as many ships, and as large an army, as possible.’
In other words, I have taken ὡς πλείστῃ as applying to ναυσί as well as to στρατιᾷ.
While most other translators agree with me regarding ὅσα in ii.92.4, nearly all seem to take ὡς πλείστῃ in ii.95.3 as applying just to στρατιᾷ, and not to ναυσί, and so they translate along the lines " … with ships, and with as large an army as possible". Of recent translators, only Walter Blanco shares my interpretation.
Have any of you encountered this idiom in other contexts where expressions like ὅσα and ὡς πλείστῃ follow two words, and, while grammatically agreeing with the nearer of the two, seem to apply to both? Are there any helpful references to this idiom in grammatical texts with which you may be familiar? And do you have a view as to whether my proposal to take ὡς πλείστῃ with ναυσί as well as with στρατιᾷ is reasonable?
Apologies for troubling you, and many thanks for your help.
It seems they share a similar construction, conjoining a couple of nouns
and being followed a relative which in the first sentence is attracted to the case of the latter noun,
but still referring to both, and in the second sentence the adjective is attracted in much
the same way. I don’t see why your translation of the 2nd sentence is not the predominant one.
[addendum]Then again, the second sentence conjoins a plural noun with a singular, so this might be the
reason it was translated as referring only to the latter, but the grammatically singular noun is collective
in meaning, so your translation is still more suited here.[/addendum]
Nate - many thanks for your very helpful comments.
As you say, the two examples at ii.92.4 and ii.95.3 share a similar construction, and I therefore found it odd that most translators were apparently not spotting the parallel, and were treating them differently. Perhaps the fact that ὡς πλείστῃ is singular has deterred translators from taking it with ναυσί as well as with στρατιᾷ, but I don’t think that is an overwhelming objection.
In the light of your remarks I’m inclined to leave my translation as it is; any other views would, of course, be welcome!
Thanks guys. Sorry I haven’t responded to your generous help. I have just been buried under a mountain of things. On a brighter note, I have created 3000 virtual notecards for the vocabulary from Book I. I am going to try and master Book I inside and out, up and down. After that I will see how I want to handle the other seven books.
No problem, pster. The notecards sound impressive!
Last Friday I attended a performance of Sophocles’ Antigone at the National Theatre in London. (It was a double treat for me, since the actor who played Creon, Christopher Eccleston, formerly played the lead role in my favourite TV series, Doctor Who.) The relevance of this here is that the following day I started re-reading the Mytilenian Debate in Book iii of Thucydides, and was immediately struck by parallels between some of the remarks in the speech by Cleon and those made by Creon in Sophocles’ play. At first glance, there wouldn’t seem to be much in common between the Athenian demagogue amd the Theban King, but, as depicted by Thucydides and Sophocles, they both argue in favour of the primacy of the state, and the need to obey even unjust laws. I suppose the closeness of the two names makes the comparison even more intriguing; anyway, I’ll definitely be giving this further thought and study when time permits.
Charles D. Morris referenced Thuc. 76.15 in which he’d also used a neut. predicate for Chaeronea,
and C.E. Graves adds 1.63 for Olynthus, and 1.138 for Lampsacus. Both of them don’t really give
a reason for it.
As to the number of the predicate and verb, I’m not sure.
It seems that in most other places, a pl. verb and predicate are used when the city name is
used with the article, but without it, the city name is treated as singular.
In Herodotus 8.61.1 for instance, we have pl. verb when referring to Athens:
ταῦτα δέ οἱ προέφερε ὅτι ἡλώκεσάν τε καὶ κατείχοντο αἱ Ἀθῆναι.
Thanks guys. Those Smyth pages help. But, as so often happens to me, answers lead to new questions. I don’t understand the very last Smyth example at 949a. There, it seems that we have a predicate adjective rather than a predicate noun. There is no article, so why construe/translate agathon as a substantive? And more importantly, this is an example where there is attraction to the gender of the predicate noun rather than attraction to the number! Or have I missed something?
And another thing that bothers me is that I have the Cameron commentary on Book I and he is Smyth happy. More than half of it consists of referring one to the relevant Smyth number. But he just ignores this whole potential double Smyth item. Not sure about you Chad, but Nate and I obviously had trouble with it, so why would Cameron’s student commentary not think it noteworthy?
hi pster, on the cameron commentary, as i mentioned in an earlier post (see (B) here: http://discourse.textkit.com/t/methods-for-learning-greek/10207/1) commentaries to me are like autobiographies of the weaknesses of the people who write them, or their students in the case of teachers. as to why cameron left out any commentary on this point, i.e. as to why cameron or cameron’s students didn’t notice any difficulty here, i can’t say because i don’t know this commentary, but this omission does remind me a lot of other commentaries that are oriented towards helping people translate out of grk into their native language - in these types of commentaries, lots of help is given for constructions that the reader might find too difficult to disentangle for translation purposes, but not for other difficulties that don’t impede translation.
a clause like καὶ ὅτι μὲν Μυκῆναι μικρὸν ἦν might be very easy to translate - as to why the adjective and verb don’t agree with the subject, a translator might simply be able to ignore.
for people who don’t study grk just to produce translations however, but who follow the river to its source, you should take a look at the level of commentary in fraenkel’s famous commentary on aeschylus’ agamemnon. this is definitely not just aimed at the translator, each difficulty is pursued to its end.
Hi, pster - sorry for the late reply. I’ve been on holiday - in the course of which I attended a most excellent lecture on Thucydides!
I think you’re right about μικρὸν - Poppo’s full commentary records a suggestion by Haack that some such word as πόλισμα should be understood with it from what follows.
The singular verb seems to be an example of agreement with the predicate - as Smyth (949a) notes, there’s another one at Thucydides IV.102.3:
Μυκῆναι μικρὸν ἦν seems to be different than the examples in Smyth, in that the predicate and
copulative verb stand immediately after it, with no intervening words that might lead to such a
change in gender and number.
I would be more inclined to explain it as an example of Chad’s earlier reference from Smyth §§1048-49.
I would also like someone to check the tentative pattern of the city/state name without the article
being treated as singular (change in gender here attributed to the above reference).
What do you mean by reading but not translating? Are you passively translating Thucydides’ Greek into your native language while you read silently or aloud? Or are you simply reading left to right with the Greek, perhaps not understanding everything?
I usually do the former (I never set out to write literal or perfect translations whenever I read), but I was curious by your statement that you were going to read and not translate. If your process is more geared toward the latter, could you elaborate?
My query relates to the use of ἅμα here. The possibilities seem to be:
(i) meaning ‘immediately’, i.e. as soon as the Corcyraeans saw the Peloponnesian fleet approaching, they immediately started to make ready sixty ships. This is the interpretation in Dale’s translation; however, on the basis of parallel instances Thucydides would in my view have used εὐθὺς if he had meant to say that, so I am sceptical of this option;
(ii) meaning ‘all at the same time’, i.e. the Corcyraeans were trying to get all sixty ships ready at the same time. This is the interpretation in Lattimore’s translation;
(iii) meaning ‘at the same time’, i.e. while the Corcyraeans were still getting the ships ready, at the same time they were sending them out individually as soon as they were crewed. At present I’m inclining to this view.
Since none of the commentaries I’ve consulted offers any help on this point, I’d welcome your thoughts on it, and which of the options above (or any others you can think of) you favour.
Incidentally, there is another instance of ἅμα in the continuation of the passage quoted above:
Here the meaning seems clear: πάσαις ἅμα means that the Athenians advised the Corcyraeans to sail out after them with all their ships at the same time (rather than sending them out individually).
Hi, John. What exactly is the difference between the three options?
Do you read (ii) as meaning they started making all sixty ships ready at the same time,
and they also sent them all at the same time?
How does τὰς αἰεὶ πληρουμένας, each as they were manned, fit into this reading?
I don’t quite understand the nuance between (i) & (iii). Perhaps you could clarify a bit.
EDIT: I don’t know whether or not this is relevant to this particular quote, but
perhaps this is an instance of parataxis mentioned in Smyth 2876.
Perhaps the best way to explain the three options would be to translate each of them, and then comment:
(i) ‘The people, in a state of great confusion, and alarmed both by the events in the city and by the approach of the ships, immediately began making ready sixty ships and kept sending each of them out against the enemy as soon as it was manned, …’ Here ἅμα just refers to the fact that the Corcyraean people started getting their own ships ready as soon as they saw the hostile fleet approaching;
(ii) ‘The people, in a state of great confusion, and alarmed both by the events in the city and by the approach of the ships, began making ready sixty ships all at the same time, and kept sending each of them out against the enemy as soon as it was manned, …’ Here ἅμα just indicates that they were trying to get all of the ships ready at once - its influence doesn’t extend to the next clause, about their sending the ships out one at a time as soon as each was manned;
(iii) ‘The people, in a state of great confusion, and alarmed both by the events in the city and by the approach of the ships, began making ready sixty ships and at the same time kept sending each of them out against the enemy as soon as it was manned, …’ - Here ἅμα serves to indicate that, while still getting some of the ships ready, they were at the same time sending out individually the ones that were manned.
As I said before, I don’t think (i) is terribly likely, since, as I recall, Thucydides elsewhere uses εὐθὺς, not ἅμα, when he wishes to denote action being taken as an immediate response to something. My problem with (ii) is that I don’t see why he would draw attention to the fact that the ships were being prepared all at the same time - I don’t think he does so elsewhere. That leaves (iii), which seems to me to make more sense, in that it would be highlighting the fact that they were sending some ships out while still (at the same time) getting others ready. At least, that’s my best shot so far …
Thanks for the reference to Smyth - I’m not quite sure whether it applies here, since I’d assumed that the καὶ three words after ἅμα responds to the τε immediately before it, rather than here being equivalent to ‘as’ - but I may be wrong!
Anyway, please let me know what you think. I hope this makes things a bit clearer, but feel free to say if it doesn’t!
