What’s up with the use of the accusative case here? What syntactical category does this fall under?
Odyssey 6.29 (and the first word of l.30) reads:
ἐκ γάρ τοι τούτων φάτις ἀνθρώπους ἀναβαίνει ἐσθλη
Which translates as "For indeed from among these things a good reputation rises up (to? among? for?) men.
One could imagine the meaning being “to men” or “for men,” but wouldn’t that require ἀνθρώπους to be in the dative case? One could imagine that ἀνθρώπους is the direct object of ἀναβαίνει: “a good reputation raises men up.” That seems the most straightforward interpretation to me. In fact, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why it DOESN’T mean that.
But then why do Merry, Riddell and Monro recommend “good report spreads among men” specifically when commenting about this unparalleled construction? http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0055%3Abook%3D6%3Acommline%3D29
Why does A.T. Murray translate as “good report arises among men” and Lattimore as “a good reputation among people springs up”?
Is there some syntactical category of the accusative that allows it to be taken as “among men”? Can somebody refer me to some section in Smyth or Monro’s Homeric Greek that discusses this?