I am wondering if I have a accusative absolute in the first sentence?
If yes, is it “ἄρα δεῖ ποιεῖν ταῦτα φοβουμένους” or “ἄρα δεῖ ποιεῖν ταῦτα”? I believe φοβουμένους is a present participle.
I am also uncertain what the first word, the definite article τὰ goes with? Is it an article for the accusative absolute? Or does it just mean “the men/things”?
I think I have the second sentence, but it is the first one that has me confused. I think the translation is something like, “The first sentence that is confusing? And are you ordering these? I am far from it.”
Included in this confusion are the first three words. I am not sure if they mean, “ordering these men to us” or something else?
I am wondering if I have a accusative absolute in the first sentence?
"Less common than the genitive absolute is the accusative absolute. This is the normal construction when an impersonal expression is involved: the participle of the impersonal verb appears in its neuter singular form…
Do you see a participle of an impersonal verb in your sentence?
“A second use of the accusative absolute is with a noun and personal-verb participle introduced by ὡς or ὥσπερ, as if, in the belief that:…”
No ὡς or ὥσπερ either.
"τὰ κελευόμεν’ " :you clearly think this is an accusative but is the verb active or passive? What verb could it be the object of?
What kind of participle is “φοβουμένους”? ταῦτα is the direct object of “φοβουμένους”.
OK. It is not an accusative absolute. It is a phrase with an impersonal verb. I need to rewrite the sentence, so I can look at it:
“τὰ κελευόμεν’ ἡμᾶς ἄρα δεῖ ποιεῖν ταῦτα φοβουμένους;”
I shall leave ἄρα out for now. φοβουμένους is a middle participle. “δεῖ ποιεῖν ταῦτα φοβουμένους” translated “It is necessary to do fearing these things”? or “It is necessary to do while fearing these things”?
Edit" I am still confused with how ἡμᾶς fits into the picture. For a while, I thought κελευόμεν was an active verb, but I just noticed the accent. It is a middle participle. So now I have “The things ordered by(?) us.” Is it legal to write, “by us” even though ἡμᾶς is an accusative?
I am still confused with how ἡμᾶς fits into the picture.
Cant sleep!
"Subject of the Infinitive. When the subject of the action denoted by the infinitive is expressed in Greek, it is normally in the accusative case, unless it is the same person or thing as the subject of the finite verb.
δεῖ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους πόνους φέρειν.
It is necessary for men to endure toil.
Or (personal form) Men must endure toil." p 59
" ἡμᾶς ἄρα δεῖ ποιεῖν" is one complete phrase now you have to work out what is the object of this clause?
“φοβουμένους is a middle participle”
What kind of middle participle. Think about what you studied in unit 27.
No, what I was thinking might be helpful here is for you to find the noun associated with the adjective, φοβουμένους. In other words, what noun is φοβουμένους modifying? I am struggling with this myself, and I find that it helps that once a circumstantial participle is found, that its associated noun is then found. This helps knit the sentence together.
You have identified that the object of the verb is ταῦτα.
But have you identified the subject of the verb? The subject of the verb will be the noun associated with the adjective, φοβουμένους, and it will agree in case, number and gender with that adjective.
A particle is both an adjective and a verb, so you must determine how it acts as a verb (what objects or adverbs does it have), and also what noun it modifies (what is its subject).
The point katalogon is making is that φοβουμένους has to agree with something in τὰ κελευόμεν’ ἡμᾶς ἄρα δεῖ ποιεῖν. If the circumstantial participle didnt agree (ie have the same subject) it would have to be a genitive absolute construction. Can you see what it is? What case and number is φοβουμένους? What is the subject of ποιεῖν (see my previous post) ?
This is all much like the examples of circumstantial participles you have already seen.
What you are struggling with most is how to fit "τὰ κελευόμεν’ " with “ἡμᾶς ἄρα δεῖ ποιεῖν”.
τὰ = things. κελευόμεν’ is a passive participle agreeing with τὰ. "τὰ κελευόμεν’ " must be the object of ποιεῖν.
ἄρα “…is inferential, like οὖν, but is more subjective, suggesting that the speaker is forced to a conclusion and that the interlocutor will be too. Often ἄρα marks the conclusion as surprising or contrary to previous assumptions…” p 248. It has another use in questions which is introduced later .
Something you wrote a post or two ago is starting to dawn on me. Originally I divided the sentence like this,
"τὰ κελευόμεν’ ἡμᾶς ἄρα / δεῖ ποιεῖν ταῦτα φοβουμένους. I thought the impersonal verb of the second half placed the words of only the second half in the accusative. κελευόμεν is an accusative plural neuter present middle/passive participle. So would I translate the first three words plus ποιεῖν as “Do things we are ordering”? Or “Do things ordered by us”?
Why am I being accused of randomly picking out words? I treated ἡμᾶς ἄρα δεῖ ποιεῖν as a whole unit when I tried to translate the phrase in the last post.
No accusations! I was posting quickly before a meeting.
I treated ἡμᾶς ἄρα δεῖ ποιεῖν as a whole unit
You wrote “So would I translate the first three words plus ποιεῖν as “Do things we are ordering”? Or “Do things ordered by us”?”
I could not understand why you would just look at the "first three words plus ποιεῖν " ie τὰ κελευόμεν’ ἡμᾶς…ποιεῖν. That is what struck me as random. You missed out δεῖ. And your translation isn’t correct. Remember κελευόμεν’ is passive.
φοβουμένους agrees with ἡμᾶς?
Yes!
I have posted how I think this sentence breaks down. Do you now understand it?
I am not sure. Since δεῖ is an impersonal verb, translated “It is necessary” or “one must,” at first I thought the subject would be “It” or “one.” But ἡμᾶς turned out to be the subject.
Attempted translation, “Must we after all do this: ordering the things because we fear these?”
This is a very scary sentence. At first, I wondered if the author wrote it to make students wrack their brains out over it, but I finally did an Internet search and found it is actually from Demosthenes’ On the Peace. I have been beating my head against the wall since yesterday as to how to divide up the sentence.
Demosthenes is very hard (well I think so). I tried reading the crown once but gave up.
I am not sure. Since δεῖ is an impersonal verb, translated “It is necessary” or “one must,” at first I thought the subject would be “It” or “one.” But > ἡμᾶς turned out to be the subject> .
the things which are called for =what is called for (dont forget it’s passive)
ταῦτα φοβουμένους;
because (we) fear these things or “because of fear of these things”
Its important to take some time to understand how this sentence fits together.
To work out the syntax of a sentence like this you need to look at every word decide cases and analyse verbs. Whenever you see δεῖ be on the look out for an infinitive and remember that the subject of the infinitive will (usually) be in the accusative case. Then look to find the object of the infinitive (if there is one). Finally look at the participle phrase and see how it grammatically relates to the rest of the sentence.
As old fashioned as it might be finding subject and object of verbs is often a good way to start tackling sentences like this.
Finally in καὶ σὺ ταῦτα κελεύεις; I think καὶ is adverbial. Are you too…?
(Think of et tu Brute? or καὶ σὺ τέκνον… )
Sentences taken out of context are always going to be a little more challenging. As I think I have said before you have to believe that the Greek makes sense. Working at complex sentences like this are a good way of revising/learning a number of grammatical points. Its an achievement to have had a go at some Demosthenes!
Seneca, sorry, I understand about the too many cooks.
When I read through this discussion last night, I had a strong feeling that Lukas might be missing the important part of identifying which noun in the sentence was being modified by the circumstantial participle (as an adjective). All I wanted to do was to get that idea across.
I am struggling with participles myself, being a beginner. What I do is I generate two English clauses when I find a circumstantial participle.
In this case:
Main clause: It is necessary that we do the bidden things.
Participial clause: We fear these things.
I make the subject of the participial (subordinate) clause the noun which agrees with participle.
I then knit the two clauses together.
It is necessary that we do the bidden things (because) we fear these things.
Finally, an appropriate subordinating conjunction can be decided upon, in this case, because.
Seneca, sorry, I understand about the too many cooks.
Please feel free to chip in any time. It is very helpful to hear from someone who is working on this textbook. I did not use M. to learn Greek so I am coming to this fresh. All I meant was that Lukas ended up being more confused and I didn’t want him to feel overwhelmed. That said it is helpful to have different points of view. Also I make mistakes and it is helpful to have those picked up.
Establishing the grammatical connection between the circumstantial participle and the main clause would normally be the first step. As M. says “The circumstantial participle may agree with the subject, the direct or indirect object, the object of a preposition, or any other noun or pronoun expressed or implied in the sentence.” I think Lukas found it difficult to work out what the main clause was and how it worked.
The sentences you posted would be good practice for Lukas to see if he understands this aspect of participle use.
It would also be worth looking at the sentences in North and Hillard Greek Prose Composition available via a link here http://discourse.textkit.com/t/the-textkit-book-collection/17987/1 p.122. I think as I have said many times that the problem with M. is that there are not enough exercises nor text to read.