Unit 30, Part III, Exercise 3

Greek Learning Greek
1

Χαίρετε!

I would like to check if I am dividing up a sentence correctly, The sentence reads,
“οὕτω δεινὸς λέγειν ἦν οὗτος ὁ πονηρὸς ὥστε φαίνεσθαι ἄξιος εἶναι ἀρχῆς.”

I believe this is a natural result clause, so first I divide the sentence into,
οὕτω δεινὸς λέγειν ἦν οὗτος ὁ πονηρὸς / ὥστε φαίνεσθαι ἄξιος εἶναι ἀρχῆς.

I think the subject is ὁ πονηρὸς with “person” being implied. I also believe that I have a copula, ἦν connecting πονηρὸς with δεινὸς.
So now I divide the sentence into,
οὕτω δεινὸς λέγειν/ἦν/ οὗτος ὁ πονηρὸς / ὥστε φαίνεσθαι ἄξιος εἶναι ἀρχῆς.

For the second half, I believe that φαίνεσθαι is the infinitive that I translate as a regular verb. It can take an infinitive when meaning “appearing to,” so I believe the infinitive is εἶναι. Hopefully, the answer does not reverse what I am thinking in the second half.
Is that correct so far?

2

A good start. Think about how you are going to take (δεινὸς) λέγειν?

3

So far I was thinking about translating the first half as, “This evil one is so clever (crafty, terrible, fearful) at speaking that . . .”

4

Sounds good. :smiley:

5

This evil one was so clever at speaking that he is appearing to be worthy of rule.

I think the answer book just used three different words: Villain instead of evil one, appeared instead of appearing, and office instead of rule.

6

You understood the structure of the Greek and that’s the most important thing.

πονηρός is (amongst other things) base or cowardly or “in moral sense, worthless, knavish”. “The evil one” sounds a bit like the devil.

“appeared instead of appearing”

I dont think that the Infinitive in this construction expresses a temporal relationship between the two clauses. If the sentence began οὕτω δεινὸς λέγειν ἐστι… the infinitive would still have been φαίνεσθαι and both clauses would be translated as present. But as the first clause is in the past tense (he was so clever) I think the infinitive is best translated as a past tense too.

“office instead of rule”

Without any context it’s difficult to know which word to choose. The implication of the sentence is that as an eloquent speaker our base and worthless man was able to pull the wool over the eyes of the masses and was elected to office.