So, I would translate the first sentence as:
A certain man himself was calling the foreigners to dinner,
and this dog was calling another dog, saying, “Eat well with me, dear.”
I think there is something really wrong about my translation.
I’m first confused about ‘ἐαυτου’ in the first sentence and ‘τουτου’ in the second.
They’re both genitive singulars but I cannot seem to wrap my head around where I could possibly put them if not with the nominative subjects of the sentences. Am I entirely wrong? I would guess I am because pronouns and such should always gnc.
τοὺς ἐαυτοῦξένους (not ζένους; note the accentuation):
ἐαυτου is a reflexive pronoun–the antecedent is the subject Ἂνθρωπός τις. “his guests”
ὀ δέ τούτου κύων:
τούτου is a demonstrative pronoun. Here it too means “his” and because it refers back to a noun that is not the subject of the sentence, it’s not reflexive.
In both cases, the genitive pronouns mean “his” and refer to the Ἂνθρωπός τις, and they are both sandwiched in between the definitive article and the noun, which is the typical Greek word order. In English we wouldn’t use the definitive article before the nouns “guests” and “dog”, but in Greek this is the norm, and the possessive (genitive) pronoun is sandwiched between the article and the noun.
Also note that δειπήσεις is future: “you will dine well, my dear friend, with me” i.e., on what my master throws away after his feast.
I think that Perry lists the following as 328, or Babrius 42 [I love Perry’s Aesopica, but my complete lack of Latin means that it’s hard for me to get around in]. Is there a prose version? There is no friend invited to the feast in this version, but it seems that the English floating around has it, as does hotelmorocco’s professor’s version.
This morning with a little internet searching I found Chambry 178, but it was not nearly as much fun as flipping through Aesopica searching for Κύων stories. Note the varying use of αὐτοῦ and τούτου. The Chambry αὐτοῦ was the easierfor me to understand than hotelmorocco’s professor. And could Babrius have used οὗ instead of τούτου if it hadn’t been for the meter? Or is τούτου there performing a switch of topic?