Self Intro and Request for Help

Textkit Community Open Board
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My Name is Mick Hughes and I am a French and Latin graduate (Manchester, UK)who retired from teaching some time ago. One of my retirement “projects” was to try and learn a little ancient Greek. I’ve been using Peter Jones’ book( I am about half way through), and have hit a snag: on page 112 there is a quotation from a poem by Anacreon:
( I’ll have to use Ariel as the message board won’t let me change the font to “Symbol”):
" h gh melaina pinei,
pinei ta dendrea d’auten,"
The translation is given as “The black earth drinks it, the trees drink it”. I can’t see why in the second line the verb is 3rd person singular whilst the subject seems to be a neuter nominative plural. The only thing I could come up with is that “gh” in the first line is still the subject of pinei and that dendrea is a neuter plural accusative.
I would be very grateful for any assistance.
Thanks, MH



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Welcome to Textkit.

The poem is
ἡ γῆ μέλαινα πίνει,
πίνει δένδρεα δ᾿ αὐτήν.

Frequently a neuter plural takes 3rd person singular. I am sure this will be in your textbook which I don’t have to hand but there was another thread recently where this came up.

See here http://discourse.textkit.com/t/mastronarde-unit-22-sentences-for-reading-number-2/16706/1

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Hi, Mick. Just to back up what seneca2008 has said, the information you require is contained in Chapter 9, Neutered! Section 9b, of the Peter Jones’ book (June 1998).

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To Seneca2008 and Wilberfloss,
Thank you both for taking the time to reply. It was very kind. I have checked back and found the relevant passage in CH 9.
Thanks again, Mick H