Hi all! I am working through Zouke’s Anagnostikon and I have a few sentences I am struggling to grasp the meaning of. I have been unable to find an English translation although the second two sentences are from a passage that seems very similar to a passage from Xenophon’s Memorabilia!
If you’re in want of seeds, you’ll get them right away from me.
I think that both parents are working all day long, but if the kids need anything, each of them (the parents) takes care to provide them with as many good things as possible.
They don’t spare anything so that each of the kids should have the most good things. Or maybe better in English "for each of the kids to have. . . "
In the last sentence, LSJ suggests that middle απεχομαι rather than active απεχω has the sense “abstain from”.
Active for “withhold nothing” (=spare nothing as you say) rather than “abstain from nothing” I would think. It makes me imagine them willing to kill the fatted calf, etc.
I haven’t tried to find the Memorabilia passage, but is it the one with Socrates lecturing his snotty teenager about being nice to Mom?
Withhold is not literal. I knew I shouldn’t have tried to gloss. This is how it appears to me: ουκ απεχουσι του παχεος μοσχου η ουδενος τρεφοντες τους υιους - they do not hold off from [slaughtering] the fat calf or anything feeding their sons. The middle here would suggest that they are not holding back from indulging themselves. Or that’s how it seems to me.
The LSJ cites a couple of acc. usages in active that seem to mean the same as the normal gen. (suggested by απο)