διὰ μάχης ἐλθεῖν

Greek Learning Greek
1

In Verae Historiae 1.36 I read:

ἄριστα ἂν ἔχοι διὰ μάχης ἐλθεῖν αὐτοῖς, ἅτε οὖσιν ἀνόπλοις αὐτούς ὡπλισμένους

The use of the preposition seemed odd to me (an intermediate learner) and I found the phrase word for word in Smyth 1685.d

Two questions:

  • I don’t understand Smyth’s reference to the source. Is it Thucydides?


  • Is this ordinary Greek, or is Lucian poking fun by dressing up his language?
2

I haven’t looked up Smyth, but T. will be Thucydides, and the phrase looks Thucydidean enough, though far from unique to him.

It’s ordinary Greek, in the sense that it’s regular Attic Greek, which Lucian adopts. “It would be best to engage them in battle.”

3

Thanks!

Smyth cites one example T., and the examples following are just numbers. I guess this is a kind of ibid.

4

Not ibid. but id. I expect :slight_smile:—same author, different passage.

Smyth’s reference system is fairly transparent, and surely he provides a list of abbreviations? Same goes for the indispensable LSJ and its shorter (and older) incarnations. Space is always at a premium in such works, but I think you’ll come to appreciate the neatness.

5

In the Russian orthography used before 1917, every word ending in a consonant had a sign added, ь or ъ, to show whether the consonant was palatalized or not. Then they dropped the final ъ and let the absence of a sign show that the consonant was not palatalized.

The story is that the change made War and Peace shorter by ten pages.

6

Ha! Not enough.