X. An. 1.3.5

Greek Learning Greek
1

εἰ μὲν δὴ δίκαια ποιήσω οὐκ οἶδα, αἱρήσομαι δ᾽ οὖν ὑμᾶς καὶ σὺν ὑμῖν ὅ τι ἂν δέῃ πείσομαι.

Loeb taking πείσομαι as fut. 1 sg. of πασχω translates this as “Whether I shall be doing what is right, I know not, but at any rate I shall choose you and with you shall suffer whatever I must.”

But I’m thinking that since πείσομαι can also be construed as the fut. 1 sg. of πειθομαι one could also translate this as “I will comply with whatever you should ask.” My thinking is that Loeb read πείσομαι as πασχω here because of the occurence of ἔπαθον in the previous section, but IMO that’s not necessarily correct. And I’m reading δέῃ here as “may ask” rather than “may need” since δεω covers both meanings.

Does that make sense?

[after several edits] Ack, now I think it must be πασχω because of the καὶ σὺν ὑμῖν which doesn’t fit in with reading πειθομαι instead of πασχω. Correct? Or could it still translate as “I will comply with you and with whatever you should ask.” ?

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Hi Mitch,
It’s good you recognize that πείσομαι here wil be the future of πάσχω. But you should also recognize that ὅ τι ἂν δέῃ means “whatever I must” not “whatever you ask.” That would be middle (δέησθε) not active..

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Yeah after reading the passage again I realized I was mistaking δέῃ as pres. mid. subj 2 sg. (you may ask/beg/request) whereas it’s actually pres. act. sub. 3 sg. (he/she/it may need = it may be necessary that [impersonal construction]) so it’s clearly πασχω here not πειθομαι.

Gotta watch that I don’t get tripped up in the future regarding those two identical subjunctive endings :wink:

4

Yes, whenever you see δέῃ your first and probably last thought should be that it’s the subjunctive of impersonal δεῖ. Ιt’s so much more likely to be that than anything else.