I am having trouble with one word in a passage. The passage reads, "ὁ μὲν πατὴρ φίλιός τε καὶ χαρίεις ἦν ὥσθ’ ὑπὸ πάντων φιλεῖσθαι, τῶν δὲ δύο ὑέων ἑκάτερος ἑκάτερον πολλὰ κακὰ λέγει ὥσθ’ ὑπὸ μηδενὸς ἐπαινεῖσθαι.
What bothers me is how to translate “ἑκάτερον” since it is in the neuter. ὑέων is a masculine genitive, and I believe πολλὰ κακὰ is plural neuter. What does ἑκάτερον refer to?
So far my translation is, “The father was friendly and graceful, so that he was loved by all, of the two sons each spoke bad things [other?], so that each were loved by none.”
It’s not “speaking bad things to each other,” which would be dative. Here it’s accusative (κακὰ λέγειν + acc.=to speak ill about someone). “Each of his two sons spoke many terrible things about the other…”
-Don’t forget πολλὰ
-The contrast is between the father (ὁ μὲν πατὴρ) and his two sons (τῶν δὲ…). Note that Greek doesn’t need to express possession with a pronoun.
Speak ill “of” or “about” are idiomatic English expressions and are the equivalent of “κακὰ λέγειν”. The accusative that phalakros is talking about is then the object of the verb.
From LSJ
“λέγειν τινά τι say something of another, esp. κακὰ λ. τινά speak ill of him, revile him, Hdt. 8.61; ἀγαθὰ λ. τινάς Ar. Ec. 435; τὰ ἔσχατα, τὰ ἀπόρρητα λ. ἀλλήλους, X. Mem. 2.2.9, D. 18.123; also εὖ or κακῶς λ. τινά, A. Ag. 445 (lyr.), S. El. 524, cf. 1028; εὖ λ. τὸν εὖ λέγοντα X. Mem. 2.3.8.”
So I think you are mixing up your languages here. " “about” can be in the accusative" dosent really make sense if you think about it.
There’s not a one-to-one correspondence between Greek and English, as Seneca explains. For example, the sentence οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι τὸν Σωκράτη πολλά τε καὶ κακὰ λέγουσι could be translated in several ways: “the Athenians say many bad things about Socrates” “the Athenians speak much ill of Socrates” “the Athenians greatly revile Socrates” “the Athenians trash Socrates” etc. Sometimes you use “about,” sometimes you don’t; the Greek construction stays the same.
I appreciate the correction from Phalakros. To be (overly-)colloquial for a second, “each sht-talking the other" rather than "each talking sht to the other.”
(The other English example that occurred to me was “we preach Christ crucified”, but it’s really Greeklish.)