Greetings all Greeklings,
I assume διπλῶς ὁρῶσιν οἱ μαθόντες γράμματα means something like "Those learning to read see double (or maybe “twice as much”) but I don’t understand why the subjunctive is used.
It is actually the third person plural indicative active of ὁράω. It contracts to ὁρῶσιν like the subjunctive.
And it’s actually not “those learning” but “those having learnt”—aorist not present.
An iambic trimeter, in need of context and elucidation..
Akh, hakh, thanks a lot, bedwere and mwh. It’s just a coincidence that the present indicative coincides with the present subjunctive. Attic Greek would be so much easier without the &^ contractions. And I should have noticed that the participle was aorist because of the missing infix and “an” extension.
That said, I’m still not sure what it means. Something like “Spiegel-Leser wissen mehr” (Spiegel readers know more), or those who have learned to read have greater insight (or tend to be “four-eyes” due to eye-strain).
LSJ gives several examples of “διπλόος” being used comparatively, “twice as much,” as you said first. The literate see twice as much. But maybe it refers to the fact that we see both the letters and the images brought into our minds by the letters.
There’s no more context to it. It was just one of the many gnomic quotes attributed to Menander in the Byzantine lists.
It’s given context by the πιναξ Κεβητος (Cebes as in Plato), a dialogue describing an allegorical painting.
This and your previous two (ψευδόμενοι … and τιμώμενοι …) are again sententious iambic trimeters, with non-tragic meter. These things were collected and force-fed to schoolboys throughout antiquity.
Well, the copybook headings are out of favor just now as we make our prostrations to more fashionable gods, of course.
But it has no context in that it’s one of a bunch of these, all “quoted” (and probably made up most of the time) from Menander’s plays without any context in an alphabetical list.
If you think something from Cebes’ Tablet gives you some insight into what is meant, you should quote it. I can think of a at least one discussion from Plato that we can bring in too.
“It’s given context by the πιναξ Κεβητος (Cebes as in Plato), a dialogue describing an allegorical painting.”
That would make sense if γράμματα could mean letters/literature, i.e. literary types could see both the painting and the allegorical meaning alluded to.
I think these are all one-liners from Menander, although my textbook gives no specific references. Like Joel, I don’t see where the reference to Cebes/Plato comes in, but I’m no classical scholar (yet),
Yes well Joel I did say it’s in need of context. And there were hundreds of these monostich sylloges, as you probably know. But in a purported description of an actual painting there is an implicit visual counterpart to the verbal motto (cf. the Daphnis and Chloe proem), whatever we might care to think it means. I don’t think there’s much philosophical depth to it myself, and I certainly wouldn’t go grubbing around in Plato, but “seeing doubly” is apt enough in a context of intelligible text (made up of words made up of letters on a writing tablet) coupled with a picture.
“in a purported description of an actual painting there is an implicit visual counterpart to the verbal motto”
So you were just saying that someone explained a picture once in Greek literature? Of course, there’s no motto on Cebes’ tablet. It’s a picture of some enclosures, which are then interpreted symbolically in the dialogue. It has nothing to do with this Menander line, as near as I can tell.
The bit of Plato I was thinking of was from Theaetetus, where he talks about merely looking at the letters or listening to a foreign language as perception distinct from understanding the speech or written words.
ΣΩ. Ἦ οὖν ὁμολογήσομεν, ἃ τῷ ὁρᾶν αἰσθανόμεθα ἢ τῷ ἀκούειν, πάντα ταῦτα ἅμα καὶ ἐπίστασθαι; οἷον τῶν βαρβάρων πρὶν μαθεῖν τὴν φωνὴν πότερον οὐ φήσομεν ἀκούειν ὅταν φθέγγωνται, ἢ ἀκούειν τε καὶ ἐπίστασθαι ἃ λέγουσι; καὶ αὖ γράμματα μὴ ἐπιστάμενοι, βλέποντες εἰς αὐτὰ πότερον οὐχ ὁρᾶν ἢ ἐπίστασθαι εἴπερ ὁρῶμεν διισχυριούμεθα;
ΘΕΑΙ. Αὐτό γε, ὦ Σώκρατες, τοῦτο αὐτῶν, ὅπερ ὁρῶμέν τε καὶ ἀκούομεν, ἐπίστασθαι φήσομεν· τῶν μὲν γὰρ τὸ σχῆμα καὶ τὸ χρῶμα ὁρᾶν τε καὶ ἐπίστασθαι, τῶν δὲ τὴν ὀξύτητα καὶ βαρύτητα ἀκούειν τε ἅμα καὶ εἰδέναι· ἃ δὲ οἵ τε γραμματισταὶ περὶ αὐτῶν καὶ οἱ ἑρμηνῆς διδάσκουσιν, οὔτε αἰσθάνεσθαι τῷ ὁρᾶν ἢ ἀκούειν οὔτε ἐπίστασθαι.
In the Theaetetus model, a reader might διπλῶς ὁρᾶι the letters, seeing 1) the shape and color without literacy, and 2) perceive what they actually say with literacy.