Fact-Checking the Torah -- SWLT 1 and finding the words

The first rule of SWLT is that cultures use expressions for culture-specific features and also shape themselves around the expressions they use.  No two languages have words for all the same concepts because no two languages developed inside the same culture.  Translators must choose words that accurately reflect the meaning used by the culture in which the primary document, the source of the translation, was used.  Otherwise the translation suffers in its value for understanding the features of the culture to which the primary document belongs.

It’s also possible to get a false impression of the culture into whose language the translation is made.  I left a concept hanging last week and I’ll discuss it now so I don’t leave you with a false impression.

I discussed raqia and related words in Torah in Genesis, Exodus and Numbers.

What does Septuagint do with those words?  I already said that it misconstrues raqia and uses stereoma, meaning a hard body, suiting the Greek idea of the celestial spheres and ignoring the idea of a thin layer.

What does Septuagint do with Exodus 39:3?  It gives that label to a verse about taking the half sheqel poll tax for use in building the tabernacle.  Exodus 36:10 describes cutting threads of gold but not hammering them out.  Numbers 17:4 has Elazar make the censers into plates for the altar but ignores the issue of hammering out which is specified in Hebrew in that verse.  Septuagint simply ignores words that relate to raqia. 

There are words for “hammer out” in Liddell such as kopto or compounds of kroteo, but most of them have to do with iron-working or welding metal together.  None of them have to do with creating wires or thin plates.  On the face of it, you might think that Greek metal-workers had no concept at all of ductility or malleability, and never created metal wire even for decorative purposes.

But the real issue is that Liddell and Scott record words referred to in Greek writing, sometimes (in “versions for the schools”) including the New Testament.

The writers in Greece in Classical times were those who had the education of freemen, a liberal education in the trivium and quadrivium.  They didn’t know or care about what artisans did.  They didn’t write about it.  Agriculture was different because they were landowners and were supposed to draw their income from agriculture, and to do that you had to know something about farming.

And heavy metal-working produced chariots and armor, paraphernalia of upper class Greeks who served in the army at some point in their lives in many cases and had a vital interest in their armor being well-made.  Weapons also appeared in various histories of wars, such as Thucydides or the Iliad.

What’s more, Liddell and Scott were restricted to using surviving material.  They didn’t have a work on comic poetry supposedly written  by Aristotle, which formed part of the plot line in Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose.  They didn’t have Agatharchides’ 49 volume work on Europe.  About 80 plays by Aeschylus  have disappeared.  Some histories survive only in fragmentary form.  Sappho was a major poet but only fragments of her work survive. 

In the previous paragraph, I was able to include authors by name because surviving Greek material refers to them.  I couldn’t refer to Greek writers who were neither quoted nor named in the work of another writer.  Some material written in classical Greek perished even to the names of the writers.  That material could not affect Liddell and Scott’s lexicon because they didn’t have it.  “Big” Liddell, the full lexicon of which “Middle” Liddell is an abridgement, might have been ten times the size it is, if everything ever written in Classical Greek had survived.  And then we might know what words in Classical Greek referred to beaten metal thin enough to cut wires from.

Or not.  Depending on whether anybody who wrote in Classical Greek took any interest in the subject.

And now another turn of the screw.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

21st Century Classical Greek -- Resources and general principles

This blog is about a description of the grammar of Classical Greek that does three things.

1)         Applies 21^st century concepts, replacing the old labels.

2)         Explains terminology objectively.

3)         Simplifies conjugations and eliminates clumsy terminology and faulty explanations.

As you may remember from last Thursday, I developed this description after realizing that the old one had all the confusing terminology and faulty grammatical explanations I had found in pre-21^st century grammars of Biblical Hebrew. If you want that material, here is the start of that blog.

Our text is going to be Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War, a long prose work. The link goes to the first section of the first book. If you don’t already know Greek, don’t worry. Just use the Greek alphabet and sound out the words. Find a way to tag Mr. T so you can come back to him easily week after week.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0199%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D1

Perseus texts are live. You can click on any word and if it’s not a proper name, you will get an entry in the Perseus Word Tool. It links to several lexicons; we will be using “Middle Liddell” (Liddell and Scott abridged) and LSJ (Liddell Scott and Jones with links to examples, AKA “Big Liddell”).

The word tool will sometimes return several possibilities. Look for the one with a pink highlight. This will sometimes be appropriate to Thucydides’ context, but not always. I’ll tell you when it isn’t. As you get used to Greek, you’ll become able to figure it out for yourself.

The lexicon information is formatted based on morphology, not on meaning. Do not leap for the first translation when you use the lexicon. In my grammar, CONTEXT IS KING. When you compare Thucydides to the lexicon, you will often find that the best meaning for what T says, is at the end of the lexicon entry.

Word tool entries label verbs according to tense. We are going to translate all the tense labels to reflect aspect. There may be several sets of labels for a given spelling. Don’t sweat it; sometimes the same spelling in English has more than one use and Greek is the same way. I will explain to you how to figure out which one is correct. It will not always be the one that is highlighted. The “votes” were aggregated for all data on Perseus and Thucydides sometimes goes his own way.

Because CONTEXT IS KING, I will not ask you to memorize conjugational endings; that is morphology. I will ask you to memorize entire verbs that show up more than once in T, either stripped or with prefixes.

In the word tool, the word at the top left is the dictionary entry. To find entire verbs, you will copy the dictionary entry and paste it into Wiktionary. Sometimes you will have to remove a prefix. If you get part of the English, delete that. Wiktionary is not perfect, but it tries to distinguish between attested forms (in blue) and others (in red). I will not ask you to learn the philological information or every last translation. Remember, CONTEXT IS KING and the translation depends on the context.

I will often refer to two old grammars that are free online. See the Textkit website and bookmark or download John White’s First Greek Book and William Goodwin’s reference grammar. White’s declension paradigms are useful. As for Goodwin, you will find me arguing with him more often than agreeing with him, but that’s only because he is an example of old-think. You can’t bookmark pages in these books (☹) so I will give you page and section number of whatever I want you to look at.

I will go very slowly this first year, just a bit each week. I’ll pick up the pace after that; sometimes I won’t explain everything in a given section because you can use the word tool and Wiktionary to help you with it.

Next week I’ll tell you where to find declensions of the definite article and the week after that I will tell you something about Mr. T.

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Septuagint, Samaritan and Torah

Now that I have brought up Qumran, I’m sure some of you are saying, “but Qumran proves that Septuagint is closer to the Hebrew than Samaritan.”  Class, what does that have to be?

Right, an urban legend.  When I finished my verse by verse comparison the first time through, it turned out that Qumran settles about 640 or less than 11% of the differences; it settles 55% of the differences in favor of Jewish Torah.  But remember, in places where Jewish and Samaritan agree, Qumran may have a difference.  And also remember that Qumran has Greek for only 7 of the 24 books in the Tannakh (the Jewish count), and it’s in such tiny fragments it isn’t even worth publishing a book about.  Since Qumran proves nothing about Septuagint, the claim has to be false.

This time, I know the source of the urban legend: it’s in the 1851 introduction to Lancelot Brenton’s English translation of Septuagint. 

The first thing you have to know about this English translation is that it’s bad.  It’s really bad.  It’s not clear how it got to be so bad.  Brenton lived in Victorian England, a period when studies of the Classics in both Greek and Latin were still required for admittance to a university.  We don’t know where he got his education or how well he did at it.  We don’t know what resources he had access to, except that we know he lived on the Isle of Wight but his publisher’s office was in London.  That is, to get published at all, he had to go to London to meet with his publisher, and this opened up to him all the resources available in London.

What is also clear is that he could have used Liddell and Scott’s famous Greek lexicon which was in its third edition.  Unless it was drastically re-organized in the last century and a half, it suggests that Brenton had all the faults of an inexperienced or careless translator.

He uses the first definition in the dictionary in cases where a later part of the entry works better.  He could have avoided this if he realized that Liddell is a lexicon of Classical Greek by and large, and Septuagint was not Classical Greek but koine.  This falls in that category I was talking about of using a dictionary with the wrong focus.

Sometimes Brenton uses meanings for one Greek word that apply to another Greek word.  He uses “ugly” for aoratos, a word that actually means “unseen, invisible.”  You can’t call an invisible object ugly; it’s a conceptual error.

Sometimes he seems to ignore the dictionary completely and make things up out of his head.  In Genesis 1:16, Septuagint uses arkhi for Hebrew memshelet and Brenton turns it into “regulate”, which Liddell & Scott does not have for arkhi at all.

Finally, Brenton sometimes translates according to a received meaning in English which the Greek doesn’t support.

And then, just in time for the 1851 edition of his translation, he added an introduction which is the probable source for your urban legend above.  Brenton claims that in “many passages” where Samaritan Pentateuch and Septuagint BOTH differ from the Hebrew, they resemble each other and Septuagint more closely resembles the Hebrew.

I think I have discovered Brenton’s source for this claim; it’s online and I’ll talk about it next week.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

21st Century Classical Greek -- diastaien

Book I section 18.

[2] δεκάτῳ δὲ ἔτει μετ᾽ αὐτὴν αὖθις ὁ βάρβαρος τῷ μεγάλῳ στόλῳ ἐπὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα δουλωσόμενος ἦλθεν. καὶ μεγάλου κινδύνου ἐπικρεμασθέντος οἵ τε Λακεδαιμόνιοι τῶν ξυμπολεμησάντων Ἑλλήνων ἡγήσαντο δυνάμει προύχοντες, καὶ οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι ἐπιόντων τῶν Μήδων διανοηθέντες ἐκλιπεῖν τὴν πόλιν καὶ ἀνασκευασάμενοι ἐς τὰς ναῦς ἐσβάντες ναυτικοὶ ἐγένοντο. κοινῇ τε ἀπωσάμενοι τὸν βάρβαρον, ὕστερον οὐ πολλῷ διεκρίθησαν πρός τε Ἀθηναίους καὶ Λακεδαιμονίους οἵ τε ἀποστάντες βασιλέως Ἕλληνες καὶ οἱ ξυμπολεμήσαντες. δυνάμει γὰρ ταῦτα μέγιστα διεφάνη: ἴσχυον γὰρ οἱ μὲν κατὰ γῆν, οἱ δὲ ναυσίν.

[3] καὶ ὀλίγον μὲν χρόνον ξυνέμεινεν ἡ ὁμαιχμία, ἔπειτα διενεχθέντες οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι καὶ Ἀθηναῖοι ἐπολέμησαν μετὰ τῶν ξυμμάχων πρὸς ἀλλήλους: καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων εἴ τινές που διασταῖεν, πρὸς τούτους ἤδη ἐχώρουν. ὥστε ἀπὸ τῶν Μηδικῶν ἐς τόνδε αἰεὶ τὸν πόλεμον τὰ μὲν σπενδόμενοι, τὰ δὲ πολεμοῦντες ἢ ἀλλήλοις ἢ τοῖς ἑαυτῶν ξυμμάχοις ἀφισταμένοις εὖ παρεσκευάσαντο τὰ πολέμια καὶ ἐμπειρότεροι ἐγένοντο μετὰ κινδύνων τὰς μελέτας ποιούμενοι.

Epikremasthentos is a personal gerundive in passive voice. The -e- in the ending is your clue.

If this was executive voice, it would be -a-, -o-, or -u-.

And of course in base voice there’s a -men- before the personal ending.

Notice all the gerundives of both types in section 2. Thucydides signs up to the Lakedaimonians leading the effort, but he uses gerundives about the Athinaians leaving their polis and taking to their ships, until he gets to nautikoi egenonto. That’s what he really cares about, not the other actions.

The next bit of subsection 2 is difficult.

ὕστερον οὐ πολλῷ διεκρίθησαν πρός τε Ἀθηναίους καὶ Λακεδαιμονίους οἵ τε ἀποστάντες βασιλέως Ἕλληνες καὶ οἱ ξυμπολεμήσαντες.

So we have “not long after revolted, against both Athinaians and Lakedaimonians, those Hellenes who revolted against the King (of the Persians) and those who fought on the same side (as the Athinaians and Lakedaimonians).”

From subsection 3, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων εἴ τινές που διασταῖεν uses an epistemic for “whichever of the other Hellenes who set apart.” That’s if you go by the edition of Middle Liddell on Perseus.

There’s a later edition available free on-line, I think it’s on Internet Archive. You can set bookmarks for the alphabetical divisions, making lookup easier. You can also get Big Liddell (LSJ). You can search both of them in English, which I sometimes do when looking for various verbs with similar translations.

At any rate, when you notice that diistimi is based on histimi, you should suspect that it could have an intransitive imperfective eventive. The updated LSJ says so.

So is this an ergative? No. We don’t have an agent in hupo X, we have tines…ton allon Hellenes,  “whichever of the other Hellenes”. Thucydides is not trying to say, as with Minos, that somebody would have done this deliberately, it just turned out that it was Minos. He’s saying more like, since there were sides to take, they could have been taken in any direction.

In general, calling the “second aorist” an intransitive imperfective eventive gets around giving you the misconception that it shows up only in ergative structures. It can be used any time Mr. T needs something less transitive than the plain imperfective eventive, but still wants to get across the nuance of something being done deliberately, with a nuance that it was fated.

And while Thucydides does not sign up to a certainty about exactly which Hellenes had differences with each other, besides the Athinaians and Lakedaimonians, and reinforces it with ei tines pou, he is still definite about the alliance, the dissensions, the preparedness or at least training for war, and the experience gained by the grandfathers that the sons would put to use in Thucydides’ time.

Fact-Checking the Torah -- Septuagint's bad grammar

Last week I only talked about the meanings of words. This week I have examples of how Septuagint misunderstands Hebrew grammar.

It frequently, if not always, gets wrong two important structures in Hebrew.

One is the construct state. The construct is a genitive phrase but not a possessive; it uses two nouns, one of which modifies the other. The usual translation is “X of Y”.

In one place, this results in Septuagint creating a person who doesn’t exist in Hebrew. In Genesis 26:26, Septuagint translates achuzat ohavaiv, “the group of his friends,” as “Ohozath his friend.” In fact, it doesn’t even say “friend,” it uses a word that the famous Liddell & Scott Intermediate Lexicon (“Middle Liddell”) translates as “bridegroom’s best friend,” and explains as a man who leads the bride to the groom’s house. (Rabbi Shelomo ben Yitschaq “Rashi”, the famous medieval commentator on Tannakh and Talmud, says that it is impossible for a king to have only one friend.)

What’s more, Septuagint goes back to Genesis 21:22 where the phrase achuzat ohavaiv doesn’t even appear, and sticks it in.

The other structure Septuagint doesn’t get is something I call “the duplicate conditional” in the lessons about it that I post on my Biblical Hebrew blog. If you know of an actual grammatical term for this, please tell us all in the comments.

The format of the duplicate conditional is two different forms of the same verb sequentially, first a form I call the aspectless verb, then the imperfect aspect.

The most important example of this structure is the phrase mot tamut which I discussed in the Gan Eden narrative. Its related phrase mot yumat always relates to capital punishment and carries the connotation of a requirement for due process. Never does the Septuagint phrase the translation to carry this connotation, and in only one case that I could find did it translate the phrase as “subject to death,” the closest approximation the translators could achieve.

If you have been studying Hebrew, as I have kept suggesting, by now you understand the construct state easily. You may be having more trouble with the duplicate conditional but my blog lessons should help.

The urban legend about the Septuagint has Ptolemy collecting 72 rabbis to do the translation. It has to be an urban legend because 23 centuries ago it was impossible that rabbis expert in Hebrew would produce these sort of mistakes. But it’s understandable if the translation was a political expedient carried out by non-Jews, because political expediency does not demand grammatical accuracy.

Septuagint also represents cultural quoting out of context and that’s next week’s discussion.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

21st Century Classical Greek -- suppletives

Go through Book I, 3.4, and mark all the things you have learned about.

οἱ δ᾽ οὖν ὡς ἕκαστοι Ἕλληνες κατὰ πόλεις τε ὅσοι ἀλλήλων ξυνίεσαν καὶ ξύμπαντες ὕστερον κληθέντες οὐδὲν πρὸ τῶν Τρωικῶν δι᾽ ἀσθένειαν καὶ ἀμειξίαν ἀλλήλων ἁθρόοι ἔπραξαν. ἀλλὰ καὶ ταύτην τὴν στρατείαν θαλάσσῃ ἤδη πλείω χρώμενοι ξυνεξῆλθον.

Now click on that last word, ksunekshlthon, and then click on “Middle Liddell” to see the dictionary entry.

At the top it says “Dep.”

This is an abbreviation for “deponent”, a Latin term for a word that doesn’t have an “active” voice, as if it were defective somehow.

When you look at the top of the box, you see sunekserkhomai; it’s a -mai verb. All -mai verbs are marked deponent in the dictionary.

But Thucydides is not evaluating the going or coming out accompanied by somebody. Khromenoi describes the action of a sort of oracle proclaiming it was time for the Greeks to learn to be good sailors. In a sense, the Greeks were fated to become good sailors.

Now copy sunekserkhomai, paste it into Wiktionary, and get rid of the two prefixes so that all you have left is erkhomai. Now hit enter. Make sure you have the page for Ancient Greek that has Usage Notes in the middle. This describes what erkhomai really is: not a deponent, but a suppletive.

A suppletive uses different roots in different parts of its conjugation. This page lists the various roots, some of which look like abbreviations of others.

Erkhomai isn’t really a -mai verb in the sense of having no executive voice. It’s a suppletive with executive voice in those parts of the conjugation which it borrows from non-mai roots. This is that exception I told you about a long time ago, to the distinction between -mai and non-mai verbs.

Learn erkhomai and also learn eimi, “come, go” (you already learned eimi “be”). There’s another important verb in this subsection, epraksan from prasso, but only learn that if you have some brain cells left when you’ve learned the other two.

Thucydides’ last point about the Hellenes not working together for common goals, is that they had to learn seamanship before they could engage in the Trojan War. We all know that the siege of Wilusa took 20 years, which is not exactly a sea engagement. What does Thucydides mean? We won’t find that out until section 11.

21st Century Classical Greek -- dia

This week we have short, straightforward sections, I 2.3-5.

μάλιστα δὲ τῆς γῆς ἡ ἀρίστη αἰεὶ τὰς μεταβολὰς τῶν οἰκητόρων εἶχεν,

ἥ τε νῦν Θεσσαλία καλουμένη καὶ Βοιωτία Πελοποννήσου τε τὰ πολλὰ πλὴν Ἀρκαδίας, τῆς τε ἄλλης ὅσα ἦν κράτιστα.

Learn malista and ελάχιστα elakhista as “most [of all]” and “least [of all]”. They are irregular superlatives.

The first clause has the verb at the end, so the order is SOV. This is very common in Greek, so always identify the subject or topic and verb; what’s in the middle is going to be the object of the verb or an appositive to the subject/topic.

διὰ γὰρ ἀρετὴν γῆς αἵ τε δυνάμεις τισὶ μείζους ἐγγιγνόμεναι στάσεις ἐνεποίουν ἐξ ὧν ἐφθείροντο, καὶ ἅμα ὑπὸ ἀλλοφύλων μᾶλλον ἐπεβουλεύοντο.

Meizous is the comparative of mega, “big”.

The regular comparative of both adjectives and adverbs is -tera and the superlative -taton, as in aksiologotaton from section 1.

And finally, learn poieo, “make, do”, a high frequency verb both alone and with prefixes as in subsection 4.

The structure here is a prepositional phrase as the topic. Where is the verb? It’s enepoioun. The subject of that verb is eggignomenai, and so we have TSOV. The topic links this subjsection to the previous one.

Eftheironto is a problem. The morphology is base voice, the aspect progressive. It is not a -mai verb, yet Middle Liddell gives us mostly passive – that is, intransitive – meanings for it. But look at II and the example ei mi ftherei, “if you don’t depart”. That’s intransitive, but it suits our context.  What does this subsection discuss except reasons why people left their turf?

Jowett follows Middle Liddel to destruction – or rather, “ruin”. The communities weren’t ruined, a true passive concept. They did depart their turf, and the subject of migrating away from one’s home is also covered in subsection 5:

τὴν γοῦν Ἀττικὴν ἐκ τοῦ ἐπὶ πλεῖστον διὰ τὸ λεπτόγεων ἀστασίαστον οὖσαν ἄνθρωποι ᾤκουν οἱ αὐτοὶ αἰεί.

Learn dia, “through, because of”. You’ll mostly see it with the -on case, but notice that it sometimes shows up with the -ous case. It means pretty much the same thing regardless of the noun case, which causes a problem for the old grammars. Ek can also mean “because of”, as you saw in subsection 3.

All of the old grammars try to generally define oblique noun cases, the -on case being a departure from something and the -ous case being the approach to something, while the -ois case is supposed to mean within a space or time.

However when you study dia you find it it means “during” with both cases. This is close to the claimed nuance of the -ois case.

Old grammars also describe the -ous case as being part of an expanse, but with dia the -on case certainly takes on that nuance.

Finally, notice that dia plus either case is a kind of instrumental.

21st Century Classical Greek -- more on obliques

Book I section 35. Now the Kerkyraeans deal with the treaty violation issue.

λύσετε δὲ οὐδὲ τὰς Λακεδαιμονίων σπονδὰς δεχόμενοι ἡμᾶς μηδετέρων ὄντας ξυμμάχους:

[2] εἴρηται γὰρ ἐν αὐταῖς, τῶν Ἑλληνίδων πόλεων ἥτις μηδαμοῦ ξυμμαχεῖ, ἐξεῖναι παρ᾽ ὁποτέρους ἂν ἀρέσκηται ἐλθεῖν.

[3] καὶ δεινὸν εἰ τοῖσδε μὲν ἀπό τε τῶν ἐνσπόνδων ἔσται πληροῦν τὰς ναῦς καὶ προσέτι καὶ ἐκ τῆς ἄλλης Ἑλλάδος καὶ οὐχ ἥκιστα ἀπὸ τῶν ὑμετέρων ὑπηκόων, ἡμᾶς δὲ ἀπὸ τῆς προκειμένης τε ξυμμαχίας εἴρξουσι καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς ἄλλοθέν ποθεν ὠφελίας, εἶτα ἐν ἀδικήματι θήσονται πεισθέντων ὑμῶν ἃ δεόμεθα.

[4] πολὺ δὲ ἐν πλέονι αἰτίᾳ ἡμεῖς μὴ πείσαντες ὑμᾶς ἕξομεν: ἡμᾶς μὲν γὰρ κινδυνεύοντας καὶ οὐκ ἐχθροὺς ὄντας ἀπώσεσθε, τῶνδε δὲ οὐχ ὅπως κωλυταὶ ἐχθρῶν ὄντων καὶ ἐπιόντων γενήσεσθε, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς ὑμετέρας ἀρχῆς δύναμιν προσλαβεῖν περιόψεσθε: ἣν οὐ δίκαιον, ἀλλ᾽ ἢ κἀκείνων κωλύειν τοὺς ἐκ τῆς ὑμετέρας μισθοφόρους ἢ καὶ ἡμῖν πέμπειν καθ᾽ ὅτι ἂν πεισθῆτε ὠφελίαν, μάλιστα δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ προφανοῦς δεξαμένους βοηθεῖν.

[5] πολλὰ δέ, ὥσπερ ἐν ἀρχῇ ὑπείπομεν, τὰ ξυμφέροντα ἀποδείκνυμεν, καὶ μέγιστον ὅτι οἵ τε αὐτοὶ πολέμιοι ἡμῖν ἦσαν, ὅπερ σαφεστάτη πίστις, καὶ οὗτοι οὐκ ἀσθενεῖς, ἀλλ᾽ ἱκανοὶ τοὺς μεταστάντας βλάψαι: καὶ ναυτικῆς καὶ οὐκ ἠπειρώτιδος τῆς ξυμμαχίας διδομένης οὐχ ὁμοία ἡ ἀλλοτρίωσις, ἀλλὰ μάλιστα μέν, εἰ δύνασθε, μηδένα ἄλλον ἐᾶν κεκτῆσθαι ναῦς, εἰ δὲ μή, ὅστις ἐχυρώτατος, τοῦτον φίλον ἔχειν.

Subsection 2 has an oblique areskitai.  In the Middle Liddell entry, part III points out that this verb is used to represent a political party voting on a resolution to do something or not. Jowett’s “pleases” is at the top of the entry, but LSJ points to this specific section as an expression of the will of a representative body. You also have the an flipping the focus of areskitai elthein from those being voted for (opoteros) to those doing the voting.

Subsection 3 almost seems to have a conditional, ei plus an imperfective conceptual in base voice, and in the counterpoint clause eirksousi in the imperfective conceptual oblique. On the face of it, this would be one of Goodwin’s conditionals implying nothing about its truth, and he allows for the i.c. in the protasis but only if it is like a promise. That’s not the case here, the Kerkyraeans are saying something more like, when they’re doing this they’re prohibiting us from trying to do something similar to protect ourselves. The subsection closes with another i.c. about the Korinthians unjustly accusing Athins of being unjuct if they were to help the Kerkyraeans.

Jowett moves the opening clause from subsection 5 into the end of subsection 4 which, again, destroys Thucydides’ style. From polla de on is an introduction in subsection 5 to what Mr. T says in subsection 5. Jowett treats it as a summary of everything before subsection 5, which it is not, because prior to subsection 5 the Kerkyraeans have shown the dark side of what is going on, not the advantage helping them would be to Athins.

21st Century Classical Greek -- a bunch of idioms

Book I section 31.  This section gets us to some speech-making that is impoprtant for the grammar. Otherwise it’s quite straightforward. Notice a couple of idioms, orgi ferontes and genitai thesthai.

τὸν δ᾽ ἐνιαυτὸν πάντα τὸν μετὰ τὴν ναυμαχίαν καὶ τὸν ὕστερον οἱ Κορίνθιοι ὀργῇ φέροντες τὸν πρὸς Κερκυραίους πόλεμον ἐναυπηγοῦντο καὶ παρεσκευάζοντο τὰ κράτιστα νεῶν στόλον, ἔκ τε αὐτῆς Πελοποννήσου ἀγείροντες καὶ τῆς ἄλλης Ἑλλάδος ἐρέτας, μισθῷ πείθοντες.

[2] πυνθανόμενοι δὲ οἱ Κερκυραῖοι τὴν παρασκευὴν αὐτῶν ἐφοβοῦντο, καί (ἦσαν γὰρ οὐδενὸς Ἑλλήνων ἔνσπονδοι οὐδὲ ἐσεγράψαντο ἑαυτοὺς οὔτε ἐς τὰς Ἀθηναίων σπονδὰς οὔτε ἐς τὰς Λακεδαιμονίων) ἔδοξεν αὐτοῖς ἐλθοῦσιν ὡς τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ξυμμάχους γενέσθαι καὶ ὠφελίαν τινὰ πειρᾶσθαι ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν εὑρίσκεσθαι.

[3] οἱ δὲ Κορίνθιοι πυθόμενοι ταῦτα ἦλθον καὶ αὐτοὶ ἐς τὰς Ἀθήνας πρεσβευσόμενοι, ὅπως μὴ σφίσι πρὸς τῷ Κερκυραίων ναυτικῷ καὶ τὸ αὐτῶν προσγενόμενον ἐμπόδιον γένηται θέσθαι τὸν πόλεμον ᾗ βούλονται.

[4] καταστάσης δὲ ἐκκλησίας ἐς ἀντιλογίαν ἦλθον, καὶ οἱ μὲν Κερκυραῖοι ἔλεξαν τοιάδε.

The verbs I bolded in subsections 2 and 3 are different versions of the same verb. Both are personal gerundives, in base voice of course. The first is progressive conceptual, the second is imperfective eventive. What’s the difference?

The Kerkyraeans knew perfectly well that they were in the given situation, belonging neither to the Hellenic nor the Athinaian treaty. This had been true, as we will see, for some time.

The Korinthians found out what the Kerkyraeans were doing, and decided to get their own licks in.

The imperfective in subsection 3 looks weird because not only is there no sigma in it, but it also drops a nu.

Jowett misses that kratista in subsection 1 is a superlative.

Notice the hopos clause in subsection 3.

ὅπως μὴ σφίσι πρὸς τῷ Κερκυραίων ναυτικῷ καὶ τὸ αὐτῶν προσγενόμενον ἐμπόδιον γένηται θέσθαι τὸν πόλεμον ᾗ βούλονται.

“…so that not against themselves on the part of the fleet of the Kerkyraeans and those of them happening to be an obstruction, would there happen the war that they had in prospect.”

Empodion is a problem on Perseus. In the online Middle Liddell, which is a later version, empodion clearly is an obstruction.

The purpose is to keep the Athinaians from joining the Kerkyraeans against the Korinthians.

21st Century Classical Greek -- base voice personal gerundives

There are three base voice personal gerundives in this subsection. Let’s pound home what these gerundives do.

φαίνεται γὰρ ἡ νῦν Ἑλλὰς καλουμένη οὐ πάλαι βεβαίως οἰκουμένη, ἀλλὰ μεταναστάσεις τε οὖσαι τὰ πρότερα καὶ ῥᾳδίως ἕκαστοι τὴν ἑαυτῶν ἀπολείποντες βιαζόμενοι ὑπό τινων αἰεὶ πλειόνων.

Nun … kaloumeni means “now called”. The Hellas in the middle is what the personal gerundive refers to.

This is part of a definite noun phrase, “the [region] now called Hellas.”

Notice that the timing derives from the context, that nun. The old grammars would not have called kaloumeni an “absolute” because it is in the -oi case, not an oblique case. However, they give no reason why only oblique cases could be termed absolutes. And as I already showed, things that might be absolutes don’t indicate timing because it’s present in the context, not the morphology.

As a progressive conceptual, kaloumeni means people being in the habit of calling a specific region Hellas.

And being in base voice, kaloumeni shows that the name was not deliberately adopted for the purpose of naming the region, which would be executive voice.

Oikoumeni refers to a non-deliberate settling of Hellas, as if people just spontaneously wandered into the region and settled there.

Now we have some wording which shows how the phrasing has to break out. Apoleipontes is an executive voice personal gerundive. Tin eauton apoleipontes means “each one his own [property] leaving.” Thucydides can’t be definite about any individual who did this, so he can’t use a conjugated verb.

Then biazomenoi, “constrained”, meaning nobody deliberately forced them out. In the next subseection Thucydides will talk about why people felt constrained to leave beyond the fact of tinon aiei pleionon showing up.

The entire phrase is ekastoi…biazomenoi upo, etc.

Remember, the only conjugated verb in this subsection is fainetai. All the other events, Thucydides refers to by description. He recognizes their modern effects, but he can’t conjugate his verb.

By the way, go to White, page 235, section 760 and if you didn’t already learn eautou, the real reflexive pronoun, do it now. If you did learn it, go to page 236, section 763 and learn tis, which  you have seen in tini ton barbaron. The Middle Liddell entry will show you that it’s one of the most flexible words in Classical Greek, so it’s worth learning just for itself. 

21st Century Classical Greek -- know

Book I section 20 is a little long. Let’s see if there’s anything new and fun in it. Once you’ve marked everything you understand, of course.

 τὰ μὲν οὖν παλαιὰ τοιαῦτα ηὗρον, χαλεπὰ ὄντα παντὶ ἑξῆς τεκμηρίῳ πιστεῦσαι. οἱ γὰρ ἄνθρωποι τὰς ἀκοὰς τῶν προγεγενημένων, καὶ ἢν ἐπιχώρια σφίσιν ᾖ, ὁμοίως ἀβασανίστως παρ᾽ ἀλλήλων δέχονται.

[2] Ἀθηναίων γοῦν τὸ πλῆθος Ἵππαρχον οἴονται ὑφ᾽ Ἁρμοδίου καὶ Ἀριστογείτονος τύραννον ὄντα ἀποθανεῖν, καὶ οὐκ ἴσασιν ὅτι Ἱππίας μὲν πρεσβύτατος ὢν ἦρχε τῶν Πεισιστράτου υἱέων, Ἵππαρχος δὲ καὶ Θεσσαλὸς ἀδελφοὶ ἦσαν αὐτοῦ, ὑποτοπήσαντες δέ τι ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ καὶ παραχρῆμα Ἁρμόδιος καὶ Ἀριστογείτων ἐκ τῶν ξυνειδότων σφίσιν Ἱππίᾳ μεμηνῦσθαι τοῦ μὲν ἀπέσχοντο ὡς προειδότος, βουλόμενοι δὲ πρὶν ξυλληφθῆναι δράσαντές τι καὶ κινδυνεῦσαι, τῷ Ἱππάρχῳ περιτυχόντες περὶ τὸ Λεωκόρειον καλούμενον τὴν Παναθηναϊκὴν πομπὴν διακοσμοῦντι ἀπέκτειναν.

[3] πολλὰ δὲ καὶ ἄλλα ἔτι καὶ νῦν ὄντα καὶ οὐ χρόνῳ ἀμνηστούμενα καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι Ἕλληνες οὐκ ὀρθῶς οἴονται, ὥσπερ τούς τε Λακεδαιμονίων βασιλέας μὴ μιᾷ ψήφῳ προστίθεσθαι ἑκάτερον, ἀλλὰ δυοῖν, καὶ τὸν Πιτανάτην λόχον αὐτοῖς εἶναι, ὃς οὐδ᾽ ἐγένετο πώποτε. οὕτως ἀταλαίπωρος τοῖς πολλοῖς ἡ ζήτησις τῆς ἀληθείας, καὶ ἐπὶ τὰ ἑτοῖμα μᾶλλον τρέπονται.

Subsection 2 has a very confusing statement about the Harmonios and Aristogeiton situation. It doesn’t get any clearer when you check out the references in the related Wikipedia articles, but that’s what Thucydides is talking about. Probably everything that got on the record was transmitted orally, and that’s not the most reliable source of information, as Mr. T is saying in this section.

Look up οἶδα in Wiktionary and learn it. What you “know” about this verb is going to depend on whether you downloaded LSJ from online, because the LSJ on Perseus is totally blank. Middle Liddell has vastly more information. Some supervisor didn’t realize that the person keying in the LSJ data hadn’t done their job. Notice that proeidotos later in this section is based on oida.

Also notice oiontai in subsection 3, from oiomai. The point of using a -mai verb, instead of using prooida again, is the evaluation ouk orthos.

21st Century Classical Greek -- hopos

Book I section 19. This is short but has a couple of new grammar points in it.

καὶ οἱ μὲν Λακεδαιμόνιοι οὐχ ὑποτελεῖς ἔχοντες φόρου τοὺς ξυμμάχους ἡγοῦντο, κατ᾽ ὀλιγαρχίαν δὲ σφίσιν αὐτοῖς μόνον ἐπιτηδείως ὅπως πολιτεύσουσι θεραπεύοντες, Ἀθηναῖοι δὲ ναῦς τε τῶν πόλεων τῷ χρόνῳ παραλαβόντες πλὴν Χίων καὶ Λεσβίων, καὶ χρήματα τοῖς πᾶσι τάξαντες φέρειν. καὶ ἐγένετο αὐτοῖς ἐς τόνδε τὸν πόλεμον ἡ ἰδία παρασκευὴ μείζων ἢ ὡς τὰ κράτιστά ποτε μετὰ ἀκραιφνοῦς τῆς ξυμμαχίας ἤνθησαν.

Hupoteleis ekhontes forou are polises paying tribute. This is what Mr. T negates, instead of the verb higounto, the progressive eventive for something they would have repeated for each ally, creating a habit that they would have continued after the Persian war.

Learn sfisin as a real reflexive:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CF%83%CF%86%CE%B5%E1%BF%96%CF%82

Sfeis always emphasizes its antecedent, while himeis is a 1^st person plural and humeis is 2^nd person plural, in a non-emphatic sense. The phrase sfisin autois monon shows that the Lakedaimonians were not about to let any of their allies degenerate into this freedom nonsense, and that is one of the causes of the Peloponnesian war.

Look up politeusousi in the word tool; it has four options. Let’s see if we can straighten them out, and the word hopos is going to help us. When you look it up in Wiktionary, you see that it can be either an adverb or a conjunction. LSJ and Middle Liddell tend to treat it as a conjugation in one entry and use a separate one for the adverb. I think we’re pretty safe with a conjunction here, because it helps us figure out what politeusousi is.

The options are personal gerundive, imperfective conceptual indicative, and imperfective conceptual oblique. I already said that I had moved this oblique over into the conceptual column to regularize the conjunction paradigms. The personal gerundives are also in imperfective conceptual. The point is that this is what the Spartans wanted from their oligarchs, whether they got it or not. It can hardly be indicative, therefore. It’s more likely to be oblique.

Goodwin has a Greek index, and you would think he would include hopos there with hos, but he doesn’t, so once again he lets us down. We have to guess what the function might be. Let’s start with the morphology, and Goodwin does have an index entry for future with hopos, in an object clause. See 292, section 1372.

So he says an object clause has to do with a projected result, and that suits imperfective conceptual. He says the verb should either be indicative or epistemic. He says the epistemic should have a prior eventive verb, and then he refers us to a prior section, 1392.

And 1392 discusses the “original purpose” of a person. Look at section 1395; it says an oblique should come after conceptuals, and epistemics after eventives. BUT farther back, 1366 says the indicative follows hopos mostly in poetry. Goodwin does not refer to this in his index under “future with hopos”.

Now go to section 1370 where Goodwin admits that Thucydides and his contemporary Herodotus use oblique in this situation far more then examples like Homer and Xenophon.

Why?

“Why” is a very dangerous question to ask in discussing grammar, but let’s go back to our definitions. Oblique is something more likely to happen; epistemic is something nobody believes will happen. Let’s see if we can find Xenophon using hopos with an epistemic.

So I got out my search engine with the keywords Perseus Xenophon ὅπως.  I got Cyropaedia 1.6.2.:

…ὅπως μὴ δι᾽ ἄλλων ἑρμηνέων τὰς τῶν θεῶν συμβουλίας συνιείης,…

As you know by the iota in sunieis, this is indeed an epistemic. What is he saying? Kuros’ father says “I had you taught to be your own soothsayer so that you wouldn’t have to rely on others for your omens.” This is a father talking to his son, and we know kids don’t always take advantage of what their parents do for them, even if the parent explains the reason.

Homer has it in Odyssey, 11.480,

ὅπως Ἰθάκην ἐς παιπαλόεσσαν ἱκοίμην.

Odysseos has sacrificed to the dead using Circe’s instructions. The ghosts are coming to drink the blood and Odysseos wants to save it for Teiresias the soothsayer to find out, “how to get to rocky Ithakos.” The crew has already suffered a number of catastrophes; it’s not at all certain they’ll ever get back. If Homer had intended to give a spoiler, he failed; but as a good dramatist, he doesn’t want to ruin his narrative tension.

Now back to oblique, in Herodotus 3.40.4 with Ionian hokos instead of hopos:

…τοῦτο ἀπόβαλε οὕτω ὅκως μηκέτι ἥξει ἐς ἀνθρώπους:…

This is advice from Amasis to Polycrates to “throw away” whatever gives him most pleasure “so that no man [ever] sees it.” There’s always a chance somebody will come upon it, but Amasis is saying do your best to prevent that, so that the gods don’t get jealous of you.

So Thucydides uses an oblique, not just because he’s Mr. T, but because he knows how much the Spartans wanted to succeed – and he knows more of the events after this point than the Spartans did at the time.

Once again, on page 291, in section 1370, Goodwin misattributes usage – to authorship instead of context -- because he doesn’t know what we know now about how the classical authors used Greek.

And this is your chance to find hopos with the other non-indicative in the author that Goodwin thinks doesn’t use it that way, to prove that I’m wrong and it is a matter of authorship not context. Good luck.

21st Century Classical Greek -- ὥστε clauses

Book I section 12 starts with a short subsection.

ἐπεὶ καὶ μετὰ τὰ Τρωικὰ ἡ Ἑλλὰς ἔτι μετανίστατό τε καὶ κατῳκίζετο, ὥστε μὴ ἡσυχάσασαν αὐξηθῆναι.

We’ve had auksithinai before.

Learn the preposition meta. It takes all three oblique (non-oi) cases and this time the meanings vary quite a lot.

Go to the bottom of the Middle Liddell entry. Meta is also used as a prefix to verb roots. The results are very different from verb to verb. This is why you have to learn the verb, not just because the root can have a number of meanings, but also because derivatives with prefixes don’t all change meaning the same way just because they all have the same prefix.

The negation here is of isukhasasan, not auksithinai. Goodwin says this happens when a personal gerundive expresses a condition. If he means a situation, and not a conditional, that’s what we have here. LSJ gives a translation of this exact phrase in a positive statement, “by resting from war”, but we want to preserve the negation so, “so that there was no quiet for increasing,” the turmoil probably included those border wars and exiling of strongmen.

But we have something else here. Goodwin page 310, section 1449 talks about hoste clauses with almost any verb as a result clause. Since results are tied to perfective aspect, it seems natural that Goodwin’s examples use perfective aspect. But auksithinai is imperfective. What’s going on?

Well, Goodwin has an example from Demosthenes 2.26 ending in elpizete which is progressive eventive, but first, he quotes the phrase wrong. He rearranges the wording and gets the form of gignomai wrong. The real expression is hoste di’ hon ek khriston faula ta pragmata tis poleos gegonen, and gegonen is perfective.

Second, Goodwin admits that with an i.g., this equates to a purpose clause, not a result clause. Unless the i.g. is perfective, we have to be looking at a purpose clause. And in that case an imperfective is no surprise, since an imperfective, as I keep pointing out, is the default verb form.

Finally, Goodwin contradicts himself in section 1451. He is forced to admit that this type of clause, with an i.g., could be negated with either ou or mi. To him, if there’s a result, we would negate with ou; if a purpose, we would negate with mi. But that would require negating the verb; we’re negating the personal gerundive, not the impersonal.

When you read through pages 310-311, sections 1449-1460, it becomes clear that hoste can introduce a clause with any verbal form the author needs to get across the idea of either a result or a purpose, subject to all the nuances of aspect and definiteness, but always with complete certainty – no obliques or epistemics. Since we know, however, that Goodwin and his sources gloss over inconvenient truths, you should download a text version of your favorite author and use some kind of search function to see if you can find hoste used with an oblique or epistemic. If you can, no holds are barred and we can reduce three pages of material to the simple statement that hoste introduces a clause; what the clause means rests on our 21^st century paradigm of verbal nuance and on the context, but it tends to be a statement of result or purpose.

Result and purpose are two of the functions of the oblique in Biblical Hebrew. Your next question might be why does Greek also have oblique morphology. However, BH uses its aspectless form in clauses of purpose; it also has the auxiliary l’maan “for the sake of” with the aspectless form. So there is more than one way to deal with purpose and result in both ancient languages. It remains to dig deep and find out if the variation in use has a special meaning, or is  simply stylistic.

21st Century Classical Greek -- another stunning translation problem

Book I section 42.

‘ὧν ἐνθυμηθέντες καὶ νεώτερός τις παρὰ πρεσβυτέρου αὐτὰ μαθὼν ἀξιούτω τοῖς ὁμοίοις ἡμᾶς ἀμύνεσθαι, καὶ μὴ νομίσῃ δίκαια μὲν τάδε λέγεσθαι, ξύμφορα δέ, εἰ πολεμήσει, ἄλλα εἶναι.

[2] τό τε γὰρ ξυμφέρον ἐν ᾧ ἄν τις ἐλάχιστα ἁμαρτάνῃ μάλιστα ἕπεται, καὶ τὸ μέλλον τοῦ πολέμου ᾧ φοβοῦντες ὑμᾶς Κερκυραῖοι κελεύουσιν ἀδικεῖν ἐν ἀφανεῖ ἔτι κεῖται, καὶ οὐκ ἄξιον ἐπαρθέντας αὐτῷ φανερὰν ἔχθραν ἤδη καὶ οὐ μέλλουσαν πρὸς Κορινθίους κτήσασθαι, τῆς δὲ ὑπαρχούσης πρότερον διὰ Μεγαρέας ὑποψίας σῶφρον ὑφελεῖν μᾶλλον (ἡ γὰρ τελευταία χάρις καιρὸν ἔχουσα,

[3] κἂν ἐλάσσων ᾖ, δύναται μεῖζον ἔγκλημα λῦσαι),

[4] μηδ᾽ ὅτι ναυτικοῦ ξυμμαχίαν μεγάλην διδόασι, τούτῳ ἐφέλκεσθαι: τὸ γὰρ μὴ ἀδικεῖν τοὺς ὁμοίους ἐχυρωτέρα δύναμις ἢ τῷ αὐτίκα φανερῷ ἐπαρθέντας διὰ κινδύνων τὸ πλέον ἔχειν..

Why you have to watch out for the Word Tool: its assignments don’t match how we understand the grammar, even without the 21^st century stuff. WT has four entries for enthumithentes, two labeled passive (which is correct) and two labeled middle-passive. Why does it say middle-passive? It labels the “tense” as “aorist”, which never has a middle-passive. It also has two entries labeled “comp_only” for no reason that I can see. What, in fact, does “comp_only” mean? So on top of everything else, somebody doing the WT labeling used some incomprehensible assignment method.

At any rate, the dictionary entry for this verb ends in -mai; this is evidence that the base voice and passive in imperfective aspect of -mai verbs have identical morphology. What we have to figure out is which of them is appropriate. Because Thucydides uses enthumithentes with hon, clearly an object, we have to assign it to the base voice.  

Enthumithentes expresses the concept of thinking something over. There are non-mai verbs in Middle Liddle that have that idea. What Thucydides is going for is the root of the verb, thumos, soul or heart. It’s kind of late in the game for an appeal to hearts and minds, but the Korinthians are making a stab at it. It could be another rhetorical mistake: OK so you don’t think this is the logical thing to do, but there’s a morality beyond the law and that is what you have to consider.

The two words I have bolded are translated differently by Jowett and not just as a matter of noun case. This same type of error occurs in the horrible Septuagint. In subsection 1 Jowett has “neighbor”, in subsection 4 he has “like, similar”. I keep saying that you have to translate in accordance with the context, but what is the context?

In subsection 1, the phrase is akiouto tois homoiois himas amunesthai. All the old translators want this to mean a quid pro quo. Akiouto is an imperative in progressive conceptual, which ought to tell the Athinaions to immediately form a specific habit of thought.  It has a complement in amunesthai, which with the -ois case phrase should mean to defend those like the Athinaians. But for some reason the Korinthians stick in himas, “us”, in the -ous case. As the object of amunesthai, this should mean defending those like the Athinaians against the Korinthians, which is surely not what they plan to suggest.

The old translators don’t have a  problem with this, because they are used to thinking of the -ous case as the subject of an “infinitive”. However, we have already seen that this is not universally true, and that using himas implies an anti-passive structure. There is no prior verb which would take himas as an object. If it is supposed to be the object of aksiouto, then the context means to think it fit that the Korinthians be defended, but there’s no room for the tois homoiois unless it means “like yourselves”.

Taking it as meaning “quid pro quo” probably derives from the translators being trained to think of the -ois case as meaning “for”, but that’s another example of bad training. It means “for” in the sense of “for the benefit of”. “Quid pro quo” means “in exchange for” and in any case, Middle Liddell shows that it not only requires the -ous case, it also requires a form of didomi. In general, exchanges for something require the -ous case of the thing exchanged for, one example being Iliad 6.235-236. I have said before that the grammar books keying on one of several meanings produced mistakes; Jowett’s translation is an example of how the grammars have failed.

Most translators of classical material (even the Bible), make the inevitable bad decision to copy familiar translations. I had to fight myself all the time when I wrote Narrating the Torah to avoid this, even though I knew that the old translators knew nothing of 21^st century grammar or the other concepts I was trying to express. The copying makes the work go faster, but it reproduces old errors. And the other location of homoiois or rather homoious in subsection 4 argues for a different meaning. The phrase is τὸ γὰρ μὴ ἀδικεῖν τοὺς ὁμοίους ἐχυρωτέρα δύναμις ἢ τῷ αὐτίκα φανερῷ ἐπαρθέντας διὰ κινδύνων τὸ πλέον ἔχειν, “not doing wrong to somebody like you is safer for power than by an instantaneous appearance being led through dangers to have more.”

In this case we also have an -ous case with an impersonal gerundive, but all the translators agree that it is an object, not a subject. The position probably promotes that interpretation, since it resembles English syntax. It does, however, make nonsense of Jowett’s translation of “neighbor”, which the other translators don’t use.

In any case, the Korinthians made a mistake in telling the Athinaians that the Kerkyraeans were not their like but the Korinthians were and should be supported in preference to the other party.

21st Century Classical Greek -- "due and owing" nuance of impersonal gerundive

Book I section 21.

ἐκ δὲ τῶν εἰρημένων τεκμηρίων ὅμως τοιαῦτα ἄν τις νομίζων μάλιστα ἃ διῆλθον οὐχ ἁμαρτάνοι, καὶ οὔτε ὡς ποιηταὶ ὑμνήκασι περὶ αὐτῶν ἐπὶ τὸ μεῖζον κοσμοῦντες μᾶλλον πιστεύων, οὔτε ὡς λογογράφοι ξυνέθεσαν ἐπὶ τὸ προσαγωγότερον τῇ ἀκροάσει ἢ ἀληθέστερον, ὄντα ἀνεξέλεγκτα καὶ τὰ πολλὰ ὑπὸ χρόνου αὐτῶν ἀπίστως ἐπὶ τὸ μυθῶδες ἐκνενικηκότα, ηὑρῆσθαι δὲ ἡγησάμενος ἐκ τῶν ἐπιφανεστάτων σημείων ὡς παλαιὰ εἶναι ἀποχρώντως.

[2] καὶ ὁ πόλεμος οὗτος, καίπερ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐν ᾧ μὲν ἂν πολεμῶσι τὸν παρόντα αἰεὶ μέγιστον κρινόντων, παυσαμένων δὲ τὰ ἀρχαῖα μᾶλλον θαυμαζόντων, ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν τῶν ἔργων σκοποῦσι δηλώσει ὅμως μείζων γεγενημένος αὐτῶν.

In subsection 1, heuristhai followed by de could be a substantive, because it is a base voice impersonal gerundive in perfective conceptual. Note that this cannot be reflexive as Middle Liddell wants you to think because that’s what they say “middle voice” is, but it possibly refers to a discovery to which ancient and obvious signs lead, and not something deliberately sought out.

Jowett wants you to think of it as making up one’s mind to come to a given conclusion; he is misled by the idea that this would be the reflexive middle voice.

The other possibility is something I mentioned before for the i.g. It means a sort of command to be kept because it is due and owing. In our context here, it would mean telling people that once they have studied the data sufficiently, they are bound to come to specific conclusions. This repeats the concept in the first part of the subsection, that those who take into account the grounds on which Thucydides bases his opinion, will not go wrong in agreeing with his conclusions.

21st Century Classical Greek -- ktaomai

I apologize for not posting last week, I don’t know where my head was.

Thucydides Book I section 4 is short and has some great grammar.

Μίνως γὰρ παλαίτατος ὧν ἀκοῇ ἴσμεν ναυτικὸν ἐκτήσατο

καὶ τῆς νῦν Ἑλληνικῆς θαλάσσης ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἐκράτησε

καὶ τῶν Κυκλάδων νήσων ἦρξέ

τε καὶ οἰκιστὴς πρῶτος τῶν πλείστων ἐγένετο,

Κᾶρας ἐξελάσας καὶ τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ παῖδας ἡγεμόνας ἐγκαταστήσας:

τό τε λῃστικόν, ὡς εἰκός, καθῄρει ἐκ τῆς θαλάσσης ἐφ᾽ ὅσον ἐδύνατο, τοῦ τὰς προσόδους μᾶλλον ἰέναι αὐτῷ.

The first clause is another example of how aspectual languages do not need to specify the copula in an equational sentence: Minos is the most ancient that as to hearing we know possessed a fleet.

Ektisato from ktaomai would seem to be an exception to my claim that -mai verbs evaluate actions. There is a searchable PDF of Middle Liddell online for free, and it shows that there is no alternative non-mai verb with the same nuance of exerting control over a physical object. Remember, translation is not meaning and just because “acquire” is in ML as part of its English for a Greek verb, does not mean that verb is about acting on a physical object. “Acquiring strength” does not use ktaomai, but all the prefixed forms of ktaomai do relate to achieving control of a physical object.

Notice how the first three phrases end with imperfective eventive verbs. These are simple statements of actions. None  of them imply a permanent result; they can’t, because Minos is dead and gone and the lands he ruled are parts of Hellenic polises. By the way, go to Wiktionary and learn polis.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CF%80%CF%8C%CE%BB%CE%B9%CF%82

The next bit has two personal gerundives for the lesser focus of what Thucydides is saying: a people called the Karians were expelled and Minos’ sons were made rulers.

Then we get the progressive eventive kathirei showing that Minos had to act over and over again against the pirates. It is conjugated and forms the topic of some upcoming text, which makes it important enough to use a conjgated verb for.

Jowett adds into the last part a phrase that is not supported by the text, “from a natural desire.” Learn mala of which mallon is the comparative. Minos would rather the income of his territory come to him – the unexpressed alternative being that the pirates should keep it.

Auto at the end of this section may seem to be reflexive, “to himself,” but it’s not necessarily so. Thucydides is writing about Minos, and it is appropriate for Thucydides to use auto here in the sense of a third person pronoun, “him”. This example straddles the line but what is more important, ienai, of which this is the object, is not in imperfective aspect, let alone in base voice. Remember, base voice in imperfective is what the old grammars call “aorist middle voice”, which is supposedly reflexive. So once again, there’s no evidence for that old claim.