I am supposed to write, "The general did all these good deeds to the city, but he was put to death by you because of the wicked orators who made false accusations against him.
The answer book wrote,
For the phrase, “. . .. put to death by you . . .,” Is there a difference whether I use δία with accusative, “by means of” or ὐπὸ, with the genitive “of personal agent”?
ἀλλ᾽ ὑπὸ τῶν πονηρῶν ῥητόρων οἳ ψευδῆ αὐτοῦ κατηγόρησαν ἀπέθανεν would mean “but he was put to death by the evil orators who made false accusations against him.”
If I may add to the question, I am not sure if the last verb should be singular, plural of you, or plural of they:
He was put to death by you because of the wicked orators – referring to “he?” If yes, should it be in the passive?
He was put to death by you because of the wicked orators – should the verb refer to “by you” and be the plural of you?
He was put to death by you because of the wicked orators – should the verb refer to “the wicked orators” and be the plural of they?
Correct on #1, but this verb works as a passive when it means “to be put to death”, despite the form.
εὐχαριστῶ
The form was messing me up.
One other question: Should ψευδῆ be in the plural? The second to last verb means “make accusations against:” Therefore I am not sure if ψευδῆ is modifying “you” or something else?
You are guessing. Try to work it out. What case number and gender is ψευδῆ? Hint if you can’t work it out look on p. 181. You have to learn the endings!
So what do you know about the cases taken by κατηγορέω? Accusations (accusative ) are made against someone (genitive).
(I am tired but I think that actually M. may have intended you to take ψευδῆ as an adverb but I don’t think he introduces the idea of using neuter accusative as an adverb. )
Anyway try to work out the answer for your self and let us know what you think.
I don’t know. ψεψδῆ is a singular accusative. As you stated, κατηγόρησαν takes a genitive. τοὺς πονηροὺς ἥρτορας is a plural accusative. ὑφ᾿ ἠμῶν is a plural genitive.
If you look carefully, you should see ἀληθῆ three different times in that chart.
ψευδῆ is a neuter plural. The neuter plural of this adjective works as a noun meaning “lies”.
Wow. I missed the other two, but they are neuter. I give up on this sentence.
It may be worthwhile to send your answer book off to a friend in Siberia, and instead to do all of the composition exercises from the beginning without it, posting your answers here to get someone to check your work.
I think this underlines the fact that you are going too fast through this book. The idea is that you should learn by heart the paradigms M. gives before you attempt the exercises. Its a very unglamorous part of learning Greek but reading out the declensions and conjugations repeatedly to yourself and copying them out (repeatedly) so you can see any patterns emerging is vital. I used to write everything using red ink for the endings so I could see which endings were the same in different cases. I would recite conjugations when cycling to class. Its a lot of hard work.
You should perhaps be taking at least two weeks to go through a chapter of Mastronade. This would give you time to thoroughly review material in previous chapters to consolidate what you have already covered. Every day you should be revising the conjugations and declensions you have covered in the past. Its a bit like a musician practising scales none of us like it but it is important.
In this exercise when you saw “he was put to death by you” you should have thought about what you know about “ἀποθνῄσκω” which you can find in the index p. 489 which points you to p. 177 where M. has:
The active verb ἀποθνῄσκω is idiomatically used as an alternative to the passive of ἀποκτείνω and can thus be translated be put to death and also be accompanied by an expression of personal agent with ὑπό (as in Exercise I.1 below)." As M. says use “ὑπό” don’t try to be too inventive in thinking of other prepositions. This is an idiomatic expression and you need to learn it. There is a lot of putting to death in Greek literature!
The questions you asked about this verb reveal an uncertain grasp of the grammar and morphology. “he was put to death by you” has to be third person singular. You need to revise passives in unit 11. It is complicated by the active form passive meaning but M. is clear in his explanations on this.
κατηγορέω takes a genitive “of the person accused” but it can also mean speak against and in that sense ἀληθῆ (EDIT of course I mean ψευδῆ )is an accusative neuter plural object of the verb. Literally something like" they spoke falsehoods against him". This a prime example where you have to understand what is being said in English (made false accusations against him) and then think how is that expressed in Greek.
Joel may be right about not using the answer book if you are looking at it it when you get stuck!
Don’t despair these are all tricky points. Ignore what I said about adverbs. It shows we all make mistakes.
Too many cooks! But let me point out that ψευδῆ in ψευδῆ αὐτοῦ κατηγόρησαν is an inner accusative (not a direct object), just as ἀληθῆ or πολλά or ouden would be.
But it’s quite clear from his questions that Lukas is completely lost, and that it would be utterly pointless for him to proceed further through Mastronarde. Regrettable but undeniable. I don’t know if he’d do better to start over with a simpler textbook.
That is one of things that lost me. I thought κατηγορέω took a genitive and all of a sudden I have an accusative.
The person charged goes into the the genitive, the thing he’s accused of into the accusative.
Is Mastronarde ever going to be useful for anyone who doesn’t already have experience with Latin or another highly declined language? Especially for self-learning? Looking through it, I feel like it would need ten times as many exercises, at minimum, especially reading exercises. And far more examples of every point made within the text.
I doubt that you would say that Lukas wasted his time with Mastronarde. He’s well prepared for anything else out there at this point: JACT, Athenaze, Crosby, (or Thrasymachus!), even if he were to continue with Mastronarde and just use one of these as a supplement.
I would prefer to keep my current book and use another as a supplement. I read some reviews of The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek, but is that more for 2nd or 3rd students and above?
Any preference between JACT, Athenaze, Crosby, (or Thrasymachus!)?
I think that if you were to start on book one of Athenaze you would have a happier experience. You could probably progress quite rapidly. JACT is good but I think would requires a lot of additional external help. These are the textbooks I am most familiar with.
I have found most of the answers I have given you in Mastronade’s textbook itself. The information is all there but you have to read it and learn it. Unless you adopt a more rigorous approach I think you will face difficulties whatever textbook you use.
I don’t think you yet need The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek but it is interesting and not very expensive so it may be worth getting.
I think it’s a great book but it is demanding. The web site gives additional support and resources. http://atticgreek.org/
Of course it is. I fudged the issue by calling it an object and not a direct object because I didn’t think it worth trying to explain an inner accusative. I had always thought of the latter as an object of the verb but perhaps that isn’t right.
Whilst generally true, in the present case that’s not really a helpful way of looking at it. He was not accused of falsehoods but accused falsely. I didn’t check my copying and pasting of course I meant ψευδῆ not ἀληθῆ.
The first reference grammar and reference dictionary that you buy should be Morwood’s Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek, and his Oxford Dictionary of Classical Greek.
As a supplement to Mastronarde, I would personally recommend either Thrasymachus, by Peckett and Munday, or JACT Reading Greek. Both follow the polar opposite approach to Mastronarde – of learning to read before learning to analyze – and might provide the most help. I like Thrasymachus the best of those two, and you can probably find it cheaper.
In a usage differing somewhat from ἀληθῆ, ψευδῆ ἀκούειν gets used several times to mean to hear false things, not to hear falsely. Of course, that makes me suspect some of those leading taus in τἀληθῆ ἀκούειν type phrases.