A. I’ve tried to translate the sentence marked in black and failed:
What I got is: “he said the the danger dangers great, he himself is un-guarded, and that the enemy plots against him death”.
Several questions:
I know of the infinitive cum accusative rule, I just fail to see how κίνδυνον μέγαν κινδυνεύειν makes any sense.
does the indirect discourse ends before the sentence, or does it continue all along?
τοὺς ἐχθροὺς θάνατον αὐτῷ ἐπιβουλεύειν = I understand ἐπιβουλεύειν takes the dative αὐτῷ. Does it also take an accusative θάνατον?
B. why does the οὕτω (underlined in red) is in dative? is it because because it happened to him? And right after that, why is τύραννος in nominative? isn’t is the object of γίγνεται?
C. ἀλλα τε πολλὰ καὶ καλὰ ἠργάζετο - what does this mean? “he did many beautiful others”? How does it connect with the paragraph?
D. is τούτων (underlined in blue) genitive partitive?
Thanks a lot for helping. I’m putting into this all I’ve got, but I keep coming short-handed.
It seems that κίνδυνον μέγαν κινδυνεύειν refers to the Athenians being in great danger, so the people is κινδυνεύειν as the verb κινδυεύω means “to be in danger” so literally the context means: “He said the people of the Athenians to be endangered a great danger”.
Since in the last clause of the sentence we have accusatives - τοὺς δ’ ἐχθροὺς θάνατον and the infinitive telling us what Pesistratus is saying the ἐχθροί are doing - ἐπιβουλεύειν - the accusative+infinite construction is until the end of the sentence.
I suppose it does take the accusative because they are plotting θάνατος - direct object that should happen to him - αὐτῷ - being the indirect object of the ἐπιβουλεύειν.
B. I believe the οὕτω (an alternate spelling of οὕτως) isn’t dative but rather an adverb - “thus”. So the sentence is saying “Thus Pesistratus became tyrant of the Athenians.”
C. I concur. It seems to be saying, “and he worked many and beautiful other” with “things” being implied, so this clause is saying that Pesistratus did also lots of cool things while being tyrant.
φησι κινδυνον μεγαν κινδυνευειν – In Greek, if the subject of a verb in indirect discourse is not stated, it’s understood to be identical to the subject of the verb of speaking. So the understood subject of φησι κινδυνον μεγαν κινδυνευειν is Peisistratus, not the Athenian people: he said he was in great danger, for he was unarmed but his enemies were plotting to kill him (θανατον επιβουλευειν).
As ειναι and επιβουλευειν are infinitives and not finite forms of the verbs, we know that these verbs continue the indirect discourse and are part of what P. said. Indirect discourse can be continued with infinitives this way over long stretches–many pages. Whole speeches can be translated into indirect discourse with infinitives and accusative subjects.
Also, note that a pronoun referring to the subject of the verb of speaking – here αυτοσ – is nominative even if the pronoun is part of the indirect speech.
αλλα τε πολλα και καλα ηργαζετο και τοισ θεοισ μεγαλουσ ναουσ κατεσκευαζε – This is a Greek idiom that can be translated “especially” or “in particular”: “he did many splendid [things; “other” is not expressed in English, but αλλα is part of the Greek idiom], and, in particular, he built great temples to the gods.” Note that in Greek you have to say πολλα και καλα, where in English you would say “many splendid things” without the conjunction “and”.
τουτων δε α σωζεται – “of these [things], those which have been preserved/continue to be in existence [α σωζεται] are admired even now/to this day.” The relative pronoun means “those which”. No need for an additional demonstrative pronoun to serve as antecedent to α.
