Thucydides comments on the immensity of the war under study.
κίνησις γὰρ αὕτη μεγίστη δὴ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἐγένετο καὶ μέρει τινὶ τῶν βαρβάρων, ὡς δὲ εἰπεῖν καὶ ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἀνθρώπων. [3] τὰ γὰρ πρὸ αὐτῶν καὶ τὰ ἔτι παλαίτερα σαφῶς μὲν εὑρεῖν διὰ χρόνου πλῆθος ἀδύνατα ἦν, ἐκ δὲ τεκμηρίων ὧν ἐπὶ μακρότατον σκοποῦντί μοι πιστεῦσαι ξυμβαίνει οὐ μεγάλα νομίζω γενέσθαι οὔτε κατὰ τοὺς πολέμους οὔτε ἐς τὰ ἄλλα.
I select the last clause, of whose grammar I am uncertain.
ἐκ δὲ τεκμηρίων ὧν ἐπὶ μακρότατον σκοποῦντί μοι πιστεῦσαι ξυμβαίνει οὐ μεγάλα νομίζω γενέσθαι οὔτε κατὰ τοὺς πολέμους οὔτε ἐς τὰ ἄλλα.
Here are my grammatical comments on the last clause, with translationese to show my present understanding of the grammar.
ἐκ δὲ τεκμηρίων : from the evidence
ὧν: which [ instance of attraction to the case of the antecedent?]
ἐπὶ μακρότατον σκοποῦντί: with [ my ]thorough examination [The participle agrees with μοι, which follows]
μοι πιστεῦσαι ξυμβαίνει: it happens to me [μοι] to trust
οὐ μεγάλα νομίζω γενέσθαι: I think nothing great has happened
οὔτε κατὰ τοὺς πολέμους οὔτε ἐς τὰ ἄλλα: neither wars nor other [kinds of events]
What about μεγάλα? It seems grammatically to be positive, rather than comparative. However, the meaning seems to need comparative. Am I confused here?
You have this mostly right.
οὐ μεγάλα is predicative, neuter plural, modifying and agreeing with τὰ πρὸ αὐτῶν καὶ τὰ ἔτι παλαίτερα, something like “the things [that happened] before them [i.e., the events of the Peloponnesian War] and still earlier.”
The referent of αὐτῶν is a little vague, – there’s no plural noun it refers back to – but it’s clear he means the events of the Peloponnesian War. Using a neuter pronoun like this, without a grammatical referent but with a somewhat vague referent understood, seems typically Thucydidean. He’s often difficult to pigeonhole into the strict rules of syntax – deliberately so, it seems, a feature not a bug.
The noun phrase τὰ πρὸ αὐτῶν καὶ τὰ ἔτι παλαίτερα is the subject of the ἢν clause and the subject of the infinitive γένεσθαι, the “indirect statement” in the οὐ νομίζω clause.
These two clauses are connected by μὲν . . . δὲ, and share τὰ πρὸ αὐτῶν καὶ τὰ ἔτι παλαίτερα as a common element. μὲν . . . δὲ here might be translated as “but”.
The νομίζω clause in full would thus be τὰ πρὸ αὐτῶν καὶ τὰ ἔτι παλαίτερα οὐ μεγάλα νομίζω γενεσθαι . . .
Thucydides writes that the things that happened before the Peloponnesian War and earlier are difficult to determine clearly on account of the time depth, but from the reliable evidence he was able to collect, he thinks they weren’t μεγάλα, “great”, or maybe better “important” or “impressive”, with respect to wars or in other respects. No comparative is needed.
Hope this helps.
Many thanks Bill; very helpful.
Very coincidentally, I finally gave Thucydides a good start on Friday, as I happened across a PDF of him that I had stuck on my Kindle some time ago, making it to 1.6 before I was called on to read unicorn stories (The Little White Horse, much recommended for any little girls out there) to my kids.
τὰ γὰρ πρὸ αὐτῶν καὶ τὰ ἔτι παλαίτερα … οὐ μεγάλα νομίζω γενέσθαι made me think, at first, that this was a direct attack/comment on the truth of the Homer story. (And was he describing his state of mind at the beginning of the war, in his period of great hopes, or his opinion now?) But as I continued to read, Trojan War revisionism didn’t seem to be at all the main topic that he had in mind here, and when he did get to the Trojan War, he seemed mostly concerned with understanding the events in their proper context rather than any sort of debunking exercise.
That “ες τὰ ἄλλα”, and his concern with the non-warfare parts of society/greatness (taken up immediately with a discussion of human social development, cities, land productivity) was surprising.
His language is proving fairly difficult for me so far, requiring lots of re-reading and guesswork, though things seem to have gotten easier starting around 1.4 and a switch to somewhat more events-based description (maybe they’ll stay that way for a bit?).