In Dr. Mastronarde’s Unit 24, Part II, Exercise 9 on page 203, I am supposed to write in Greek, “That young man aimed at being chaste.”
The answer book wrote, “Ἐκεῖνος ὁ νεανίας τοῦ σώφρων εἶναι ἐφεῖτο.”
Three questions:
In present passive sentences, does εἶναι always have to be present? I wrote the sentence without εἶναι.
Shouldn’t σώφρων be σώθρονος?
Is the definite article before the adjective necessary?
Actually ἐφεῖτο is aorist middle,
No, because it is refers to the subject, νεανίας. The genitive article is for εἶναι, since ἐφίεμαι takes the genitive of the things aimed at (being wise, in the present case). In the nominative it would be τὸ σώφρων εἶναι. And you do need εἶναι, as you need being in the English.
Maybe not, but it makes things clearer.
Since ἐφίεμαι takes the genitive, I thought it would be σώθρονος. I am confused by this.
It takes the genitive of τὸ σώφρων εἶναι, hence τοῦ σώφρων εἶναι. If it took the dative it would be
τῷ σώφρων εἶναι. σώφρων must remain nominative as it refers to the subject of the principal, νεανίας.
I am still confused and confused why the article is a genitive while the adjective is in the nominative. There is no agreement in case.
Try reading again what I wrote.
I still don’t get it.
Simplifying things, if you wanted to say “The young man aimed at being,” it would be ὁ νεανίας τοῦ εἶναι ἐφεῖτο, right?
I think you are confused as to why τοῦ (genitive) does not agree with σώφρων (nominative), but the τοῦ is not modifying the σώφρων.
Let us try to say, “The young man aimed at being human.” “Being human” is τὸ ἅνθρωπος εἶναι, so the sentence would be:
ὁ νεανίας τοῦ ἅνθρωπος εἶναι ἐφεῖτο.
An analogous sentence (without the aiming bit) would be ὁ νεανίας ἅνθρωπος ἐστίν.
So τοῦ is modifying εἶναι? Is that an articular infinitive? Shouldn’t σώφρων be in the genitive to agree with it?
Would it be possible just to write, “Ἐκεῖνος ὁ νεανίας σώθρονος ἐφεῖτο”?
I think so. It is τὸ εἶναι that becomes τοῦ εἶναι.
I still do not understand the answer. It seems to violate the rule that ἐφεῖτο takes a genitive, yet the answer adds an infinitive rather than using σώθρονος ἐφεῖτο. I don’t get it.
τοῦ εἶναι (genitive articular infinitive) is the object of ἐφεῖτο. σώφρων is the predicate nominative referring to the subject νεανίας. Maybe if we paraphrase:
Ἐκεῖνος ὁ νεανίας σώφρων εἶναι ἠθέλησεν.
Predicate nominatives are, well, nominative.
The infinitive with an article is a substantive.
το ειναι is a neuter nominative/accusative substantive, meaning “the act of being” or similar. του ειναι is a genitive substantive, τωι ειναι is a dative substantive.
As others have mentioned, it is an example of the articular infinitive (which is something I find quite hard when it comes up).
In the phrase -
‘τοῦ σώφρων εἶναι’ (of being wise)
it is worth looking at it from the point of view of predicate or attributive position (something I think Mastronarde isn’t clear on with articular infinitives).
So the expression is one unit, with the modifier (σώφρων) in the attributive. The unit as a whole is in the genitive, to go with ‘ἐφεῖτο’.
Another way to say it in English which would be fairly literal would be ‘That youth is desirous of being wise’.
I don’t think my explanation is very clear (and is also possibly wrong!), so hopefully someone else can express this better than I can.
I also am also not sure if articular infinitives come up enough to be worth your time researching Smyth or similar just yet, but maybe brushing up on the attributive/predicate positions might help (something which I always find to be a useful waste of my time).
Hi, Lukas.
At the risk of muddying the water still further, I think the confusion occurs in the process of translation.
If I were to translate the Greek literally as: ‘That the young man he aims of the to be chaste’, would that make it any clearer as to why the article/infinitive goes with the verb and the adjective goes with the noun?