trust sb as ...

Greek Learning Greek
1

Chase & Phillips ch8.

Review Exercise

2. They trust the king as fair and just.

I could use an indirect sentence with infinitive:
Πιστεύουσι τον βασιλέα καλὸν καὶ δίκαιον εἶναι.
Here, can I put the king in accusative as the subject of the infinitive, where πιστεύω normally takes dative?

Or I could use ὡς clause (in order to make it, as an exercise, as close as possible to the English sentence):
Πιστεύουσι τῷ βασιλεῖ ὡς καλῷ καὶ δικαίῳ.
I think I should make the adjectives agree with ‘the king’ in case, right?

Thanks in advance for any advice. :slight_smile:

2

Well, I’d go with the second one really since what they trust is the king, and not “they trust that the king is”. Or you could do a compilation like Πιστευουσι τω βασιλει ως καλόν και δίκαιον είναι I suppose (I may have botched that; I just woke up. You know what I mean though)

3

I understand the english sentence to mean exactly what Mingshey says in his first option. They trust the king to be fair and just.

4

I’ll vote for the second option. The first one has a nuance like saying “Trusting the king, this is a good and fair choice to do”. I have the impression, the English sentence wants to say “They trust the king, because he is fair and just”.

5

Hmmm. Not native English speaker here so chances are I’m wrong, but I sort of see the English sentence as putting the emphasis on their trusting the king period. In other words, You could just say “They trust the king”. Granted, that would leave the reason out, but it would still be a whole sentence. That does not happen with the first alternative (that puts the emphasis on what the king is) which would be like “They trust that the king is fair” (it doesn’t mean that he actually is though).
On the other hand, maybe I should stop posting before finishing my coffee :smiley:

6
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7

Thank you all for your ideas.
The participle would be a good alternative. But in the lesson 8 the students are not supposed to have learnt about participles yet, while ὡς has just introduced as an equivalent to English “as”. And there was introduction to indirect sentence with infinitive back in the lesson 5.
:bulb: I think I’d better make a note for a revisit to this exercise in the lesson 19 where participle is first introduced.