καταμέμφομαι with the sense of "complain"

Greek Learning Greek
1

I came upon this sentence in Marcus Aurlius and was surprised to see that the translations take it to mean "Never let anyone hear you complain.

Μηκέτι σου μηδεὶς ἀκούσῃ καταμεμφομένου τὸν ἐν αὐλῇ βίον μηδὲ σὺ σεαυτοῦ.

According to the LSJ, the meaning is “to find fault with or to blame.” So I would translate it: “Let no one hear you finding fault with life at court. You shouldn’t even hear yourself talking that way.” I suppose finding fault with something or a situation could shade into the meaning of complaining. Is that the idea here?

2

Yes. If you hear someone finding fault with something, they must be complaining, right? The dictionary isn’t meant to be used as a template when translating. That would lead to a lot of nonsense and poor language. You need to get the sense and then decide how that is best expressed in English.

3

Thank you. I don’t know why I didn’t think to look before, but I just noticed that the Cambridge Greek Lexixon gives “complain” in addition to “find fault with, criticize.”