Theaetetus 174a

Greek Learning Greek
1

I have trouble parsing this sentence in Plato, Theaetetus 174a.


ὥσπερ καὶ Θαλῆν ἀστρονομοῦντα, ὦ Θεόδωρε, καὶ ἄνω βλέποντα, πεσόντα εἰς φρέαρ, Θρᾷττά τις ἐμμελὴς καὶ χαρίεσσα θεραπαινὶς ἀποσκῶψαι λέγεται ὡς τὰ μὲν ἐν οὐρανῷ προθυμοῖτο εἰδέναι, τὰ δ᾽ ἔμπροσθεν αὐτοῦ καὶ παρὰ πόδας λανθάνοι αὐτόν.

Fowler translates:

Why, take the case of Thales, Theodorus. While he was studying the stars and looking upwards, he fell into a pit, and a neat, witty Thracian servant girl jeered at him, they say, because he was so eager to know the things in the sky that he could not see what was there before him at his very feet.

I understand until ἀποσκῶψαι. Why is this in the infinitive? I would have expected a finite verb. λέγεται (I think) doesn’t usually require an infinitive construction as I would have expected if the verb were active (e.g. λέγουσι). On the other hand, if it were an infinitive construction, the Θρᾷττά τις should have also been accusative.

What am I parsing incorrectly in this sentence?

2

Θρᾷττά τις λέγεται ἀποσκῶψαι

It is an infinitive construction and depends from λέγεται. The subject of λέγεται is the Thracian girl: she is said to have jeered at Thales.

3

In that case I would have thought the Thracian girl should be in accusative case. In Smyth’s grammar (which I had consulted before posting) he gives the example sentence λέγεται Κῦρον νικᾶν (2016) which had confirmed my thought that the infinitive with λέγεται should require an accusative. But since you confirmed that it was an infinitive construction I looked back and found that I missed that elsewhere he also gives sentences like Κῦρος ἠγγέλθη νικῆσαι with nominative substituting for ἠγγέλθη Κῦρον νικῆσαι (1982). So the sentence makes sense now.