Please grant me some indulgence. I have gone only as far as unit 28 in M, yet, rather impudently, I am taking a shot at this text, from the book “Stories in atttic greek” by Francis D. Morice. Maybe I shouldn’t do that, but here goes.
I have no problem with the first sentence, which I understand to mean “Solon was the most clever of all the Athenians, for not only his citizens admired his wisdom, but also all the other Greeks, and even many of the foreigners.”
I can’t make sense of the second sentence. I get " Having heard about a certain one of the Scythians, named Anacharsis, he was planning himself to converse with Solon having also himself in his fatherland a reputation as being wise." First, a relative pronoun “οσ” immediately after Anacharsis would help a lot. But even with that, the sentence seems incomplete: what did Solon do after “Having heard…”.? It sounds a bit like the “dangling participle” construction in English. And I guessed “ονοματι” means “named”, but I don’t recognize the form.
So, if you treat “a certain Scythian” as the subject, rather than the object, it will make sense to you. “a certain Scythian, named Anacharsis, having heard about Solon…”
τῷ ὀνόματι is the dative of the 3rd dec. neuter noun τὸ ὄνομα, name. It is often used thus idiomatically. We do the same in English. “A man, John by name” etc.
To Seneca:
Thank you for your comment.
I agree “his citizens” is wrong (I interpreted the definite article “οι” as having the force of a possessive article, which is not really indicated in this case), but I did consider “σοφιαν αυτου” to go together, hence “his wisdom”.
To Scribo:
Thank you for your reply. Now the sentence makes sense to me - my erroneous understanding was driving me crazy. But I don’t understand how “τουτων” comes out as “Solon”. I understand that it is a demonstrative used as a pronoun, and I suppose “Solon” in the previous sentence can be considered its antecedent. I understand that it is genitive because “peri” requires it, but why is it plural ?
To Laurentius Mons:
Thank you - your reply clears things up.
Something like “these facts”, but the Greek often uses an abstract plural where we’d use abstract singular. ἐθελήσαις, ὦ Ἱέρων, διηγήσασθαι ἃ εἰκὸς εἰδέναι σε βέλτιον ἐμοῦ; at the beginning of Xenophon’s Hieron, for example. “Would you be willing to speak on matters which you are likely know better than me?” An English questioner, I suspect, would have started that out with a singular.
