Translating sentences

Greek Learning Greek
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  1. Ζεύς ἐστιν αἰθήρ, Ζεὺς δὲ γῆ, Ζεὺς δ᾿ οὐρανός,
    Ζεύς τοι τά πάντα χὤ τι τῶνδ᾿ ὑπέρτερον.
    [Αἰσχύλος]

I don’t understand the second line - "Zeus is more avobe all… " what is χὤ? What is the role of τοι? What is τῶνδ᾿? I’ve looked those words in perseus, yet I can’t understand how they all connect together.

  1. χωρὶς τό τ᾽ εἰπεῖν πολλὰ καὶ τὰ καίρια.
    [Σοφοκλῆς, Οἰδίπους ἐπι Κολωνῷ 808]
    I’ve got “separately, saying is many and in time”. However the translation (by Sir Richard Jebb) is “Words may be many, and yet not to the point.”
    a)Where does he get the “and yet not” - where is the negation in the sentence?
    b) How does χωρὶς translate here?
    c) Why is πολλὰ plural, is it not the predicate, and thus must match εἰπεῖν in gender and number?

Thank you very much for all the help you’re giving, I might just be able to finish this course.

Help with a line from Euripides' Alcestis
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χωρὶς τό τ᾽ εἰπεῖν πολλὰ καὶ τὰ καίρια.

The basic meaning of τὰ καίρια here is “those things that are appropriate to the occasion,” i.e., in Jebb’s translation, “to the point.”

πολλὰ and τὰ καίρια are direct objects of the articular infinitive τό εἰπεῖν (which is understood to be repeated with τὰ καίρια). “Many things” and “the appropriate things.”

“Saying many things is apart/different from saying the appropriate/right things.”

“Speaking at length is different from speaking to the point.”

Jebb’s translation, which seems to be an English iambic pentameter, is quite loose. He extracts a negative from χωρὶς, “apart from”, “different from,” i.e., “not the same as.” L-J’s translation hews more closely to the Greek.

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In the next line Oedipus echoes Creon’s words sarcastically:

ὡς δὴ σὺ βραχέα, ταῦτα δ᾽ ἐν καιρῷ λέγεις.

LJ uses the same idiom as Jebb did in the preceding line to translate ἐν καιρῷ: “So you speak briefly but to the point.”

Jebb: “As if yours, indeed, were few, but on the mark.”

So Jebb and LJ are essentially in agreement here.

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Τhe LSJ has three nice examples of this usage:

χωρὶς τό τ᾽ εἶναι καὶ τὸ μὴ νομίζεται E.Alc. 528
χωρὶς τό τ᾽ εἰπεῖν πολλὰ καὶ τὰ καίρια S.OC808
χωρὶς ᾤμην εἶναι τὸ συνεῖναί τε ἀλλήλοις διαλεγομένους καὶ τὸ δημηγορεῖν Pl.Prt.336b.

And I’m not sure that ἐν καιρῷ is such a precise echo of τὰ καίρια. The former is definitely “to the point” or similar, but I feel like τὰ καίρια, accusative plural with the article, may be “at the right time(s).”

χωρὶς τό τ᾽ εἰπεῖν πολλὰ καὶ τὸ τὰ καίρια εἰπεῖν νομίζω

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And I’m not sure that ἐν καιρῷ is such a precise echo of τὰ καίρια. The former is definitely “to the point” or similar, but I feel like τὰ καίρια, accusative plural with the article, may be “at the right time(s).”

Coming in the very next line ἐν καιρῷ is a sarcastic riposte deliberately echoing Creon’s τὰ καίρια, and the thrust is essentially the same, just as βραχέα parallels τό τ᾽ εἰπεῖν πολλὰ. The underlying idea of τὰ καίρια [εἰπεῖν] well as ἐν καιρῷ λέγεις is “saying what is fitting/appropriate to the occasion/circumstances,” “saying the right thing,” “speaking to the point/on the mark.”

Cr: Babbling on and on and saying something that is to the point are two different things.
Oed: As if you’re speaking concisely and to the point!

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opportune = what is fitting/appropriate to the occasion/circumstances, i.e., to the point.

Buckley’s translation is essentially the same as Jebb and Lloyd-Jones.

To understand what τὰ καίρια means here, you have to read the line in context. Unless you recognize that τὰ καίρια and ἐν καιρῷ are essentially the same thing, the exchange between Creon and Oedipus is nonsense. And they’re not talking about the right moment to speak–that would make no sense in context–but rather about the right thing to say in the circumstances, i.e., speaking to the point, as both Jebb and Lloyd-Jones recognized.

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χωρὶς τό τ᾽ εἰπεῖν πολλὰ καὶ τὰ καίρια.

The τε … και puts το ειπειν πολλα and (το ειπειν) τα καιρια in tandem. These two things are χωρίς, “apart” from each other. (MarkAntony misunderstood the syntax.)

χωρις is an adverb (unlike πολλα and καιρια, which are adjectives). If it were used prepositionally it would take genitive, but the syntax here is different: lit. “Apart (are) both speaking πολλα and (speaking) τα καιρια,” i.e. “Talking a lot and to the point are two separate things.”

PS. I now notice there’s a textual point here too, which nicely illustrates issues discussed (off-topic, to please Paul) just a couple of days ago at http://discourse.textkit.com/t/anabasis-1-9-16-singular-becomes-plural/14254/1 The OP’s text, which we’ve all been following, gave τὰ καίρια, and that is the reading of all the surviving manuscripts of the play. But the Suda—a 10th-cent. lexicon drawing on earlier sources—quotes the line with τὸ καίρια, and that gives better syntax, since it puts two articular infinitives in parallel, just as in the passages quoted by jeidsath: το (ειπειν) καιρια balancing το ειπειν πολλα. With τα καιρια, we have to understand not only ειπειν, which is unexceptionable, but το ειπειν, which is not. And the article of τα καιρια serves no good purpose here; without it, καιρια balances πολλα. So το καιρια stands to be the right reading, and this is a case where the manuscripts of the play (the “direct tradition”) are all wrong.

The corruption is easily explained, the utrum in alterum question easily answered. το καιρια, with no infinitive on the immediate scene, would inevitably have become τα καιρια (the lectio facilior, therefore).

Errors that have permeated the medieval tradition can be exposed as such either by older manuscripts, esp. papyri, or by the “indirect” tradition, such as quotations in other authors, as here with the Suda. (Only one papyrus with fragments of this play has yet come to light, and it is missing here, so we can’t know whether it had τα or το.) For most passages, however, there are neither papyri nor indirect sources available to us, so it’s more than likely that there are hidden corruptions in the transmitted text of Sophocles and of other authors. That’s where conjectural emendation (aka “tampering with the text”) comes into play. If all sources had τα καιρια here, probably no-one would have questioned it and proposed το καιρια instead. But they probably should have.

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I’m ashamed to say that it escaped my notice that Lloyd-Jones’ Loeb edition reads τὸ, and so does his and N.G. Wilson’s OCT, and the issue is specifically discussed in their companion to the OCT, Sophoclea. τὸ is so obviously right, now that mwh points it out.

I’ve used the phrase “tampering with the text” elsewhere. I think it was West’s emendation of κλυθι μοι κλυθι μου, which mwh convinced me was not only right but also supported by the evidence of a papyrus. Maybe mwh was directing his comment at me, but I’m certainly not an opponent of conjecture per se (insofar as I’m competent to even think about textual issues, which isn’t very far). (But of course, like everything else, it can get out of hand.)

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Now I’ll have to read what they say (or rather what Ll-J says) in Sophoclea, and hope it doesn’t conflict too badly with what I said. But as you say it’s pretty obvious that το is right, once you set the two readings side by side. (I expect there are diehards who won’t acknowledge it, even so.) But it was only when I went to the OCT to look up the passage (and to my shame looked for it first in the other Oedipus!) that I found the variant reading. I’d had a vague sense of something bothering me, but I’d dismissed it. And would anyone have suggested το without the Suda? It’s a troubling thought.

It’s not only Hylander who’s used the phrase “tampering with the text,” but it’s true I had him in mind—but only as a jest inter nos. Very few are so bold as to venture conjectures in Homer, and quite right too.

MarkAntony, We all make mistakes, but χωρὶς τό τ᾽ εἰπεῖν πολλὰ καὶ τὸ καίρια is a line you might take to heart. The construction is “A τε και B (are) apart.”

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Possibly Martin West might have? But he didn’t happen to touch Sophocles in his studies that much, I think.

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There’s no harm in consulting translations when trying to get at the meaning of a Greek text. But it’s always a good idea to look at the context of a sentence or passage if the meaning is not clear on its face.

Lloyd-Jones’ Loeb Sophocles is one of the best translations to use to assist in understanding the Greek (as are some of the newer Loebs). He stays as close as possible to the literal words of the Greek and, without sacrificing readability and even elegance, doesn’t aim at creating English poetry (not that there’s anything wrong with that, either, but it’s not always helpful in figuring out how the Greek fits together). At the same time, I think it’s fair to say that few scholars have possessed his command of ancient Greek in modern times.

If you were to dig hard enough, you’d probably find that some 19th century scholar did propose το as a conjecture, in an era when conjecture was a blood sport. But there would be no point in mentioning it in the OCT critical notes, which are stripped down more or less to essential information, since there’s support for το in a real witness to the text (not just a conjecture), albeit apparently not in the medieval manuscript tradition.

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I was wondering about that article. If the above were the original concept in Greek, it would have been strange to leave out that τό. I had tried to work out some elision that I missed, but couldn’t see it. It would be easy to see a scribe changing τό to τά here.

I’m shaky on this, because I would have thought that πολλα was an adverbial use of the adjective. I seem to recall in Smyth where he says that it can be hard to tell the two usages apart.

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Just a question of usage. If we were to supply a verb, would it be singular or plural, with two neuter subjects? I’d say in singular, but I’m not sure.

χωρίς ἐστι τό τ᾽ εἰπεῖν πολλὰ καὶ τὸ (εἰπεῖν) καίρια
or
χωρίς εἰσι τό τ᾽ εἰπεῖν πολλὰ καὶ τὸ (εἰπεῖν) καίρια?

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Probably singular because the articular infinitives are neuter, but possibly plural because they are χωρίς from one another. We’ll never know.

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