Good evening colleagues: I wonder if anyone would care to comment on this sentence which occurs in Reading Nine of Claxton’s “Attica”. She informs that the imperative governs an object clause which itself contains two clauses. So far so good; but what I cannot get my head around, and I fear I have been looking at for far too long is what kind of object clause it could be. I hazard that it might be the equivalent to a present general condition, but if I look too long it turns into something else.
If you have a look at 10.2 in the Review Section, it actually uses this sentence as an example. It’s a simple present condition with ἐννοησάτω (an imperative) in the apodosis.
εἰ μὲν τις … νομίζει…,> ἐννοησάτω …
The apodosis “ἐννοησάτω ὅτι ὅπου πολιτεῖαι μεθίστανται πανταχοῦ ταῦτα γίγνεται” can be considered a result clause because it is what results from the protasis “εἰ μὲν τις ὑμῶν νομίζει πλείους τοῦ καιροῦ ἀποθνῄσκειν”.
At least I think that’s why she’s referring to it as an object clause. If you read Review Section 10.1, you’ll see what I mean.
This sentence is somewhat puzzling to me, but not for the point about which the OP inquired. I would have expected οπου αν πολιτειαι μεθιστωνται – a “general” relative clause, with αν + subjunctive. But Marchant’s OCT accepts οπου πολιτειαι μεθιστανται, and no variant is listed in the apparatus.
As for the “object” clause, I think any indirect speech introduced by οτι can be classified as an object clause: the οτι clause is the object or complement of the verb of speaking/thinking. This one happens to include two clauses within it: a main clause, πανταχου ταυτα γιγνεται, and a subordinate relative clause, οπου πολιτειαι μεθιστανται. I think that’s all the author of the textbook means.
Aetos, I think the author must be referring to the οτι clause as the “object” clause, not the ει μεν τις . . . εννοησατω conditional. I don’t think the apodosis εννοησατω can be considered a “result” clause.
Hylander explains what Claxton must mean by an object clause.. It’s a term we can probably do without—unless it helps, of course.
And as he says, more normally you’d have a “general” or “indefinite” relative clause here, with αν and subjunctive: “let him bear in mind that where constitutions get changed (οπου aν μεθιστωνται) this always happens” (i.e. people get killed). But the point Critias is making is that whether you like it or not the constitution is getting changed (from a democracy to an oligarchy), as a matter of hard cold fact. That calls for the indicative, a “definite” relative clause rather than an “indefinite” one.
But evidently Claxton doesn’t concern herself with that.
Plural πολιτεῖαι and πανταχοῦ are what made me think of this as a general relative clause. I guess I can read it as a specific instance applicable to Athens in 404. But it seemed to me general, like “When you make an omelette you have to break some eggs.”
Thanks, Hylander and mwh. I think what was confusing me was my thinking that object clauses were only associated with verbs of effort or fearing. The term apparently has a much broader scope. After reading Claxton’s notes on Effort clauses, I discovered that she refers to object clauses as “noun clauses”, which in turn can “play the part of a substantive and is either the subject or the object”, to quote Smyth (S2189); hence, in our example “ὅτι ὅπου πολιτεῖαι μεθίστανται πανταχοῦ ταῦτα γίγνεται:” answers “what” one is to consider (ἐννοησάτω).