кто кого

Greek Learning Greek
1

This gave me some trouble. ἡ τίσιν οὖν τί ἀποδιδοῦσα ὀφειλόμενον καὶ προσῆκον τέχνη ἰατρικὴ καλεῖται; (Pl. Resp. 332c)

It reminded me of Stalin’s famous “who, whom” question (Весь вопрос — кто кого опередит?), which English seems to be bad at. Here is how I’ve tried to unpack it in my head (I’d welcome corrections).

τίσιν ἀποδιδῶσιν ὀφειλόμενον καὶ προσῆκον ἡ τέχνη ἰατρική;
σώμασιν ἀποδιδῶσιν ὀφειλόμενον καὶ προσῆκον ἡ τέχνη ἰατρική.

τί ἀποδιδῶσιν ἡ τέχνη ἰατρικὴ;
ἀποδιδῶσιν φάρμακα τε καὶ σιτία καὶ ποτά ἡ τέχνη ἰατρική.

τί ἐστι ὀφειλόμενον καὶ προσῆκον;
φάρμακα τε καὶ σιτία καὶ ποτά εἰσιν ὀφειλόμενα καὶ προσῆκα.
(εἰσιν rather than εἰστιν for a multiple neuter plurals? – I don’t know which is correct.)

EDIT:
τῷ σώματι → σώμασιν because τίσι is expecting a plural response.

2

I would unpack it like this:
η is an article.
τεχνη is its head noun.
All the words in between are attributes to τεχνη.
ιατρικη is in predicatice position. ιατρικη καλειται “is called medicine”.
The sentence structure, as it is, is impossible to render in English. I think. This is as near as I can get to the idea. Perhaps I got it wrong though. ..
“The art that is called medicine, what necessary and fitting things does it give and to whom?”

Wrote this on my iPhone on my way to work. I guess you can see that…

3

You can’t translate this literally into English, of course.

But your effort to disentangle it isn’t quite right. S. not asking directly what useful and appropriate stuff the art of medicine gives to what, but rather by virtue of giving what useful and appropriate stuff to what it’s called medicine.

It’s not the double interrogative words themselves that are the problem here. We can do this in English: when I walk my energetic 100 lb. malamute, people say to me all the time “Who’s walking who?” (never “whom” of course). The problem is that the interrogative words are packed into the participial phrase, and the participial phrase is, as often in Greek, a key point of the sentence, rather than subordinate.

To translate this you have to resort to something like:

“By virtue of giving back what useful/owed and appropriate stuff to what things is the healing tekhne called ‘healing’?”

Maybe you could make an assumption that is implicitly built into the Greek explicit:

“A certain tekhne is called ‘medical’ because it gives useful and appropriate stuff to something. By virtue of giving what to what is this tekhne called ‘medical’?”

τίσιν ἀποδιδῶσιν ὀφειλόμενον καὶ προσῆκον ἡ τέχνη ἰατρική; – this doesn’t quite get there (and ἀποδιδῶσιν should be ἀποδίδωσιν). Above all, you need καλεῖται–that’s the real question–and, as Paul noted, ἰατρικὴ is predicative.

The only way to simplify the Greek into two sentences is to change τί in one to τι and drop τίσιν in the other.

ἡ οὖν τί ἀποδιδοῦσα ὀφειλόμενον καὶ προσῆκον τέχνη ἰατρικὴ καλεῖται;

ἡ τίσιν οὖν ἀποδιδοῦσά τι ὀφειλόμενον καὶ προσῆκον τέχνη ἰατρικὴ καλεῖται;

(There’s a separate problem with ἀποδιδοῦσα, which means “give back,” not “give”. Socrates is using this word to echo the quote from Simonides, while creating an misleading analogy equating dikaiosune with a techne.)

4

Thank you Qimmik and Paul. In my head, I was letting the ἠ be resolved by ἀποδιδοῦσα instead of by τέχνη, which tripped me up when I got to the end of the sentence. Polemarchus’s response makes prefect sense now:

ἡ σώμασιν φάρμακά τε καὶ σιτία καὶ ποτά. The ἡ is being resolved by an unspoken τέχνη, not ἀποδιδοῦσα.

The “by virtue of” part of your response seems correct when I read the sentence fast, Qimmik, but I’m having trouble grasping why. Are these constructions correct?

τὴν τί ποιοῦσα γυνὴν καλὴν καλεῖ;
What does the woman do that he calls her fair?

and in contrast

τί ποιεῖν δὲ τὴν γυνὴν καλὴν καλεῖ;
And what does she do, the woman that he calls fair?

It was too tempting not to add the δὲ to that, but it has nothing to do with the construction. Could I do the second sentence somehow with a participle instead of the infinitive?

5

The “by virtue of” part of your response seems correct when I read the sentence fast, Qimmik, but I’m having trouble grasping why.

“By virtue of” is simply a way of strengthening the force of the participle in the English translation. It’s not needed in the Greek. You could translate “by giving” or “in giving”, but it would not be as effective as “by virtue of”, which seems to me the exact expression called for here. Without something like these alternatives you would lose the force of the participle as the central question. The Greek participle can do this alone; in English you need words to make clear the relationship of the participle to the main verb. The tautology that the medical tekhne is called “medical” is not not the focus of the sentence, even though καλεῖται is the main verb.

Your proposed sentences have several mistakes (should be gunaika, among other things); unfortunately I don’t have time to fix them right now.

6

Thanks, I should have caught that one. If anyone else would like to fix the other errors, I would appreciate it.

τὴν τί ποιοῦσα γυναῖκα καλὴν καλεῖ;
τί ποιεῖν τὴν γυναῖκα καλὴν καλεῖ;

7

τὴν τί ποιοῦσαν γυναῖκα καλὴν καλεῖ; I suppose this might be said in Greek, but it seems as strange in Greek as it does in English. Plato’s sentence seems more natural because it’s a question about a definition in the context of a Socratic question-and-answer session. The more convoluted structure focuses on attributes that are essential to the term iatrike.


τί ποιεῖν τὴν γυναῖκα καλὴν καλεῖ; This would have to be τί ποιεῖ he gune hen καλὴν καλεῖ; or he gune hup’ autou kale kaloumene.

8

And of course piled-up interrogatives are common in Greek tragedy, witness the classic fragment of Euripides’ Eriphyle:
" … wherefore seeking whom
Whence by what way how purposed art thou come
To this well-nightingaled vicinity?"

http://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/housman.html

9

ἡ σώμασιν φάρμακά τε καὶ σιτία καὶ ποτά. The ἡ is being resolved by an unspoken τέχνη, not ἀποδιδοῦσα.

I would say the unspoken words are ἀποδιδοῦσα τέχνη. This is the key to the interrogation that follows: each tekhne is described as apodidousa something opheilomenon or at least prosekon to something. S. disingenuously slides prosekon in with opheilomenon because his next analogy, the tekhne of cuisine, doesn’t give anything that is owed back to something else (having already blurred the distinction between ἀποδιδοῦσα and διδοῦσα). Then the question is what does dikaiosune give to what. But part of the problem is that Socrates’ analogies seem illogical and don’t really hold up.

10

@mwh,

Very funny. That deserves to be (“back-”)translated into Greek (if someone hasn’t already).

@Qimmik,

Thank you for all of the explanation. I often miss the meaning of participles when it’s anything other than “is doing this while the main verb phrase happens.” I think that I need to spend some time memorizing example sentences (perhaps from the section in Smyth).

As far as the argument goes, I can’t comment much. I haven’t read much Plato yet in the Greek, and this is as far as I’ve gotten in the Republic. I’ve read the Republic in English several times, in different translations, and my opinion of the analogies was very similar to yours at one point, but my respect for Plato has grown as I get older. All I can say is that Socrates is best understood as engaged in seeking for a mental model of justice that matches up with our commonsense understanding of the qualities of justice. Though perhaps you are right. I’d like to be fluent before I make any final judgements.

11

I’m not sure I’m on solid ground here, but I think that the way this question is framed is characteristic of a teacher asking a student a question designed to elicit an answer, in other words, the Socratic method (but not necessarily limited to Socrates or Plato), or some other sort of unusual context (an interrogation, perhaps). I don’t think this question would occur in casual, everyday speech or in most other written contexts. That’s why I suggested that your example, τὴν τί ποιοῦσαν γυναῖκα καλὴν καλεῖ; seems as odd in Greek as in English. Perhaps mwh could correct me if I’m wrong about this.

I don’t think it would be worth your time memorizing examples from Smyth. What you really need to do is to read more and more Greek. Plato, Lysias, Demosthenes, Isocrates, not to speak of Xenophon, are good authors to read to acquire fluency in reading Attic Greek prose. Plato of course is one of the supreme masters, but Demosthenes is, too. Lysias is somewhat simpler, I think, and Isocrates is mannered. Demosthenes writes more complex but very idiomatic Greek. Thucydides’s speeches are very difficult (and deliberately so)–even the ancient Greeks had trouble understanding him–but the narrative passages are less difficult. Herodotus, though he didn’t write Attic Greek, is also very idiomatic and you can absorb a lot of idiomatic Greek from him.

12

τὴν τί ποιοῦσαν γυναῖκα καλὴν καλεῖ; follows from η τι ποιουσα γυνη καλη καλειται; which basically replicates the Platonic construction. It’s perfectly correct but certainly unusual, scarcely conceivable outside of a dialectic context such as Qimmik outlines. The answer would be e.g. την (την) σιγην εχουσαν (sc. γυναικα καλην καλει), which is far more normal. I wouldn’t say it’s quite as odd in Greek as in English, given Greek’s propensity for incorporating interrogatives within participial phrases, e.g. τι βουλομενος τουτο ποιεις; But to embed the question within article-noun, that’s a step or several beyond.

13

What you really need to do is to read more and more Greek. Plato, Lysias, Demosthenes, Isocrates, not to speak of Xenophon, are good authors to read to acquire fluency in reading Attic Greek prose. Plato of course is one of the supreme masters, but Demosthenes is, too. Lysias is somewhat simpler, I think, and Isocrates is mannered. Demosthenes writes more complex but very idiomatic Greek. Thucydides’s speeches are very difficult (and deliberately so)–even the ancient Greeks had trouble understanding him–but the narrative passages are less difficult. Herodotus, though he didn’t write Attic Greek, is also very idiomatic and you can absorb a lot of idiomatic Greek from him.

That is very useful. I had not started on Herodotus because I had been concentrating so much on Attic, but his style and content seem perfect for my level. W.H.D. Rouse, in Greek Boy, had a couple of long sections stolen from Herodotus that were a lot of fun. Every time I’ve looked into Demosthenes, I find him slow going, but I will give Lysias a try now that you suggest him.

Now that I’m picking up the meter of Greek poetry, I’m finding that the Iliad has gotten tremendously sticky, memory-wise and I am beginning to be able to recite back long chunks of it. I had hoped to find something similar in Attic verse, but I wasn’t sure if there was anything similarly easy and rhythmic. I have read that some people memorize Sophocles?

14

Socrates is using this word to echo the quote from Simonides, while creating an misleading analogy equating dikaiosune with a techne.

I shouldn’t have had to ask the question if I had been a more attentive reader. Here is the definition of justice under discussion:

τὸ τὰ ὀφειλόμενα ἑκάστῳ ἀποδιδόναι δίκαιόν ἐστι (Σιμονίδης)

Socrates question is a direct reply:

Ὦ Σιμωνίδη, ἡ τίσιν οὖν τί ἀποδιδοῦσα ὀφειλόμενον καὶ προσῆκον τέχνη ἰατρικὴ καλεῖται;

So “If the giving of what is owed to each is justice…then the art of giving what to whom is medicine?”