M, 22.II.5
"… και τα περι τον βιον πλουσιοι γενησομεθα "
The key translates the clauses as “and we will become rich in regard to what concerns our livelihood…”
Now, I am very aware that attempting to translate “word-for-word” results in a bad translation. And I know that “τα”, followed by a neuter adjective can mean “thing” or other words such as “affair,” but no adjective follows “τα” here. And I know that “περι” means (among other words) “concerning.”
But how does “τα περι τον βιον” become “in regard to what concerns our livelihood” ? In fact, where does “In regard” come from?
τά can be your best friend, if you use it right… However, this is the trick that Greek has of turning a prepositional phrase into a substantive. Think of it as “the things concerning life,” which is awkward translationese that needs to be turned into better English, true, but still helps most students see better how the Greek works. As pointed out, it also happens syntactically to be an accusative of respect.
Thanks to Barry and Constantinus Philo for their reply.
The only way I can reconcile in my mind the “in regard” and the “what concerns” of the answer key is by explaining it to myself thus. This may well be heretical, but here goes:
The accusative of respect is “τα”, i.e., “the things”. So, we will become rich “in regard to the things”…(KEY: “in regards to what”)
“περι τον Βιον” - the accusative here is in compliance with the accusative meaning of “περι”. Thus, “concerning our livelihood” (KEY “concerns our livelihood”)
It works for me, until demonstrated to be wrong.
I look forward to disapproving (or approving) comments
If you look at p. 64 of M. You see the following examples:
οἱ τότε the people of that time
οἱ πρὸς τῇ θαλάττῃ the people near the sea
τὰ χαλεπά (the) difficult things
τὰ δίκαια the just things (i.e., just deeds or what is just)
So you can see that οἱ can be used on its own because “people” is understood from the context. There is no reason why τὰ cannot be used in the same way. But τὰ has to have some kind of “description” to tell us what kind of things are being referred to.
In your sentence what are the “things” they are “περι τον βιον”. So the next step is to see how the phrase “τὰ περὶ τὸν βίον” (the things concerning life/livelihood ) works with “πλούσιοι γενησόμεθα”. You can see that “τὰ περὶ τὸν βίον” is an accusative (not really a direct object*) in some relation to the verb (we will become) and that πλούσιοι modifies the subject “we”. The type of accusative here is called an accusative of respect see page 142 unit 17. So we could translate this as "we will become rich in respect of [ the things (τὰ) about (περὶ) (our - understood) livelihood ]. The latter needs a better translation to read more smoothly in English so “in regard to what concerns our livelihood”. In regard to what grates on my ear but no matter.
I think you need to re-read all the replies you have received and try to understand what you are being told from various perspectives. I am not convinced you have understood them, but if you have feel free to ignore what I say. I think you are concentrating too much on trying to map an English translation of the answer onto the Greek. You need to understand the Greek before you try to translate it. I know I am a broken record on this but its important.
Edit
*I edited this to remove what I said about “τὰ περὶ τὸν βίον” being an object of the verb. It isn’t but I was trying to think of a way of distinguishing between the subject of the verb and the rest of the of the sentence. It clearly isn’t in the nominative because there is no verb for which it could be a subject. So if not nominative it has to be accusative. Then you have to think what kind of accusative - an accusative of respect.
