I’m not sure about the role of the aorist middle participles here:
ἔδοξεν οὖν αὐτοῖς συσκευασαμένοις ἃ εἶχον καὶ ἐξοπλισαμένοις ἰέναι (to go) εἰς τὸ πρόσθεν.
Betts, Gavin; Henry, Alan. Complete Ancient Greek: A Comprehensive Guide to Reading and Understanding Ancient Greek, with Original Texts (Complete Language Courses) (p. 243). John Murray Press. Kindle Edition.
I found this translation online and it sounds logical:
So they decided to pack up what they had and put on their full (ἐξ-)armour and move forwards.
But why is the aorist partiiple used? Does it have a pluperfect sense?:
It seemed like a good idea to those having packed up their things and put on their full armour to move forward.
or
It seemed like a good idea to move forward to those who had packed up their things and put on their full armour.
Or is it just like a future intention in the past?:(they decided to pack up?):
I just started learning Greek participles a couple weeks ago and am completely flabbergasted.
The translation online is how we’d naturally put it in English. But Greek uses participles were we often use “verb X and verb Y…”
He packed up what he had and armored up and moved forwards.
συσκευασάμενος ἃ εἶχε καὶ ἐξοπλισάμενος ἦλθε εἰς τὸ πρόσθεν
Or more surprisingly (for English speakers):
Pack up what you have and armor up and move forwards!
συσκευασάμενος ἃ εἶχες καὶ ἐξοπλισάμενος ἐλθέ εἰς τὸ πρόσθεν
The thinking difference goes a bit deeper than mere idiom though. The mental conception is slightly different in the Greek, with the participles serving almost as assumed antecedents to the real fulcrum of the action, expressed as a verb rather than participle. They really are saying “having packed up what he had and having armored up, he moved forwards,” and it has consequences on the picture of the action going on their heads.
Thanks a lot Joel and Tico!
What’s strange about the dative construction is that the aorist construction implies that they do not get the idea of moving ahead until after they had already packed up and put on their armor, but they probably wouldn’t do those things until after they had decided to move forward
Since in Greek the word/sentence order is more flexible, you could easily understand:
It seemed good to them to go forward after having packed what they had and after armoring up.
Yes, the participles apply not to ἔδοξεν but to ἰέναι. What they decided was having packed up to go forward, i.e. to pack up and (then) go forward. This is a typical use of aorist participle.
(In Joel’s made-up sentence he didn’t mean ἃ εἶχες for “what you have” but ἃ ἔχεις.)
I’ll add in something because I notice that the OP has said “I just started learning Greek participles a couple weeks ago.”
In sorting out the original confusion of the aorist participle and its temporal relation to the main verb (pluperfect or future tense was mentioned), it might be useful to emphasize that the “tense” of a participle conveys a distinction in verbal aspect rather than in time.
So it is possible for an aorist participle to refer to action subsequent to that of the main verb.
In this case, the main verb is ἔδοξεν, and the subject is “they”.
per mwh:
They decided to pack up and go forward.
The action of packing up is subsequent to the action of the main verb (ἔδοξεν), and is in the aorist “tense” because the action will be completed before moving on to the next action (ἰέναι).
The action of packing up wil be antecedent to the action of “going”, as mwh stated.
Thanks to all for the very helpful explanations. Í’ve studied quite a few languages but ancient Greek definitely has more arcane grammatical subtleties than any other I’ve ever encountered. Thanks to your insights, I think I’m finally starting to wrap my head around the idea of the “perfective aspect independent of time”, but it’s very tricky.