Θουκυδίδης Ἀθηναῖος ξυνέγραψε τὸν πόλεμον τῶν Πελοποννησίων καὶ Ἀθηναίων, ὡς ἐπολέμησαν πρὸς ἀλλήλους, ἀρξάμενος εὐθὺς καθισταμένου καὶ ἐλπίσας μέγαν τε ἔσεσθαι καὶ ἀξιολογώτατον τῶν προγεγενημένων, τεκμαιρόμενος ὅτι ἀκμάζοντές τε ᾖσαν ἐς αὐτὸν ἀμφότεροι παρασκευῇ τῇ πάσῃ καὶ τὸ ἄλλο Ἑλληνικὸν ὁρῶν ξυνιστάμενον πρὸς ἑκατέρους, τὸ μὲν εὐθύς, τὸ δὲ καὶ διανοούμενον.
Arksamenos – imperfective eventive. Perseus shows you that this is masculine nominative singular; its antecedent is Thoukudides, that is, in a sense it describes the author as making a beginning. The context shows that this is a past event because Thucydides had to make a beginning or his history wouldn’t exist.
Kathistamenou – progressive conceptual. This is a perfect example of what’s wrong with tense labels. As a “present” participle, the word nevertheless comes in a past connotation because it happened before Thucydides started writing. The point of its aspect is that it had become a settled situation, not just a series of border battles which would have been more suited by imperfective eventive.
Elpisas – same as arksamenos, once again referring to Thucydides’ actions. Those of you who already know some Greek may be surprised to see “hope” used as an event, but you didn’t look at the dictionary entry carefully. It can also mean “watch out for [something]”.
Progegenimenon – is our first perfective aspect and later, I’ll go over it in more detail, both to tell you about perfective and to discuss the root verb gignomai. Thucydides uses it here because the old wars have closed out; the Peloponnesian War was not an extension of them or a do-over. He will also use perfective for the poets, whose work is fixed in content.
Tekmairomenos – again refers to Thucydides. As progressive conceptual, it refers to the situation he is in, as having formed a judgment about the war he is recording.
Akmazontes – this progressive conceptual is the situation of the combatants. Notice that, in combination with the progressive eventive isan, it gives the nuance that the enemies achieved the height of their preparations in several steps, not one fell swoop. If Thucydides had used imperfective eventive, he would shoved those steps under the rug.
Horon – progressive conceptual. As masculine singular nominative, it again refers to Thucydides. It refers to his situation of perceiving a specific thing, which is expressed in the next two gerundives.
Ksunistamonon – progressive conceptual, the enemies reached a situation where some of them had allied together. Notice that the euthus in the men phrase modifies this act of allying together.
Dianooumenon – progressive conceptual. Being in the de phrase, this is the counterpoint to the euthus, not to the joining up. Some of the enemies took their time deciding which alliance to pick.
Once again. Thucydides pins down his writing and the war being fought. But all the actions that led him to start writing are rather described as happening than stated to happen. Some of them are expressed in progressive conceptual because they only contributed to Thucydides’ decision when they had become settled situations – the whole war could have been averted at any point while they were going on.
I brought up a concept with elpisas that deserves to be one of your mantras, and I’ll give another example of why it’s important later. For now the mantra is
KNOW THE VERB.
The lexicons are formatted so that what a student sees first relates to difficult grammar that probably sent them to the dictionary. That only works when we are focused on morphology.
Now that we are focused on meaning, with the mantra CONTEXT IS KING, we are going to find that the top part of the dictionary entry doesn’t help us with meaning. Often, the part that helps us with Thucydides is at the bottom.
You cannot read Greek while running. If you don’t know the verb, you won’t get the meaning. There’s another part to it, however, and I’ll get around to it before we hit lesson 20.
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