ἕστ’ ἂν γὰρ καθεύδει ὁ καθεύδων, ἐξ ἀνάγκης ὁ ὕπνος αὐτῷ ὑπάρχει.
If the sleeper is sleeping, the sleep necessarily belongs to him.
What is this ἕστ
ἕστ’ looks a lot like ἔστε which has the sense “as long as”… but that rough breathing is odd.
It’s a smooth breathing but still I don’t know what it is. Εστε doesn’t fit
It’s a typo it is smooth
Expressing a hypothetical?
For it would be that the sleeper sleeps, out of the necessity of the sleep belonging to him.
shouldn’t it be subjunctive in this case? Anyhow, it does not look good.
Looking it up, I see this ἔστʼ ἄν frequently, apparently applying to another verb. Picking an example at random:
περιμένετε ἔστ’ ἂν ἐγὼ ἔλθω
I take this as something like: “Wait until it is that I should come.”
It seems like a frequent idiom, but always with another verb.
If καθεύδει is meant to be subjunctive, the sentence might mean something like: “For it is that as long as the sleeper should sleep, from necessity sleep belongs to him.”
you are talking about ἔστ’ ἄν from the conjunction ἔστε. I don’ think it fits the context here.
Oh, it looks like it’s equal to ἕως in Doric? That makes sense for what I saw. There was a “as long as” kind of sense to what I quoted, and the same in this one in Herodotus, that I nearly quoted.
τὴν δὲ ὁμολογίην ἐποιεῦντο τοιήνδε τινά…ἔστ’ ἂν ἡ γῆ αὕτη οὕτως ἔχῃ, μένειν τὸ ὅρκιον κατὰ χώρην
But if it’s a conjunction here, and we adjust ει to ῃ, we get:
ἕστ’ ἂν γὰρ καθεύδῃ ὁ καθεύδων, ἐξ ἀνάγκης ὁ ὕπνος αὐτῷ ὑπάρχει.
“For as long as the sleeper should sleep, from necessity sleep belongs to him.”
Does the context prevent this?
ἔστ’ ἄν = ἕως ἄν as long as. In Classical Greek it would be καθεύδῃ (subjunctive for a present general construction in a temporal clause). As you’ve seen elsewhere in Stephanus, in Byz Gk you can find indicative in such constructions. The meaning is as Joel has it, but no need to alter the text.