I am stuck but perhaps not on ‘καλῶς ἔχουσιν ἀκύροις’. I understand the sentence and can translate it but I am having a hard time explaining the last three words so I am kind of fudging it in my head but the meaning seems clear:
[and] if we do not recognize that a city-state making use of inferior but inviolable laws is stronger than a city-state with good but powerless laws.
I am taking ‘καλῶς ἔχουσιν’ together, with ‘ἔχουσιν’ as a dative plural + adverb; and dative because it is a comparative clause that refers back to ‘νόμοις … χρωμένη’. So then I have this in my head …
“ἢ [νόμοις] καλῶς ἔχουσιν ἀκύροις”
“than a city making use of laws doing well but powerless”
Does this compute? Make sense? Or am I off my rocker here?
I think what is throwing me a little is my commitment to translating “καλῶς ἔχουσιν” as to actually mean “with laws that are good”
ἔχω + an adverb means ‘to be in a certain way or state’ (basically like ‘to be + adj.’ in English). So here, these are laws that are good, yet do not hold authority.
Yes that’s a useful way to look at it, except I wouldn’t say there’s anything elided. ἀκινήτοις and ἀκύροις are predicative. Without them it would mean “a city with worse laws is better than one with good ones,” but those predicative adjectives make it mean “a city with worse laws that are inflexible is better than one with good ones that have no authority.”
“inviolate” and “invalid” as translations of ἀκινήτοις and ἀκύροις captures something of the word-play.