21st Century Classical Greek -- end of section 1

So here are the other two subsections, all marked up.

Subject – verb – object

[2] κίνησις γὰρ αὕτη μεγίστη δὴ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν ἐγένετο καὶ μέρει τινὶ τῶν βαρβάρων, ὡς δὲ εἰπεῖν καὶ ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἀνθρώπων.

[3] τὰ γὰρ πρὸ αὐτῶν καὶ τὰ ἔτι παλαίτερα σαφῶς μὲν εὑρεῖν διὰ χρόνου πλῆθος ἀδύνατα ἦν, ἐκ δὲ τεκμηρίων ὧν ἐπὶ μακρότατον σκοποῦντί μοι πιστεῦσαι ξυμβαίνει οὐ μεγάλα νομίζω γενέσθαι οὔτε κατὰ τοὺς πολέμους οὔτε ἐς τὰ ἄλλα.

Subsection 3 is less straightforward. The ta, as the word tool shows, could be either -ous or -oi case. Safos is an adverb, of course, and the position suggests that it modifies heurein. The clause finished with what looks like a predicate of “be”, but what “is impossible”?

If you remember, Goodwin discussed the -ous case as the subject of the impersonal gerundive. At first blush, you might think that’s what ta is, the subject of heurein. It’s not true. Heurein is exercising its impersonal gerundive right to be noun-y as well as verby. The finding is impossible. Finding what? That’s where the ta comes in, which means it’s the object, so the case is -ous.  Since the ta is definitely substantive, it can’t be modified by safos, which has to be modifying heurein. So now highlight heurein and bold the ta, and then in is in blue.

The counterpoint de clause is also not straightforward. It starts with a prepositional phrase relating to the “found”. The hon after it relates it to what happens in the de clause, which is skopounti moi pisteusai. But moi forms an idiom with ksumbainai, “I happened.” To this we have the complement skopounti, a gerundive, and pisteusai. As an imperfective eventive impersonal gerundive in executive voice, this can be the event of trusting – something. But it’s actually another complement to ksumbainai, “happened to believe”.

For the next part of the phrase, ou megala nomizo genesthai, we have to go to nomizo in the word tool, and look the whole way down the entry to II.4. Megala can be a whole lot of things; including a feminine in -ous case. With nomizo, we get “I believed it happened to not be great”.

What was not great? What’s the grammatical match? It goes the whole way back from megala to the two tas at the start of the subsection, and those go back to kinisis at the start of subsection 2. Megala works out to a dual number feminine in the -ous case; it’s dual because Thucydides is writing about ta pro auton, wars before the Peloponnesian war, some of which he will discuss, and ta eti palaitera, older wars, such as the Trojan War.

So Thucydides starts off this last clause by referring back to the evidence which is part of the first clause in this subsection, and also back to the event he started subsection 2 with. He reassures his audience that he considered his data carefully. And finally he delivers the verdict: nothing that happened before the Peloponnesian war, either in ancient times or more recently, either in war or other issues, had the scope of the war he is about to document.

If he put the verdict first, it would beg the question of how careful he was in his judgment. People in the audience gave him data, from their own experience or that of relatives, or they may have recommended written sources from their favorite authors. I’ve had people recommend sources to me, who were very hurt when I didn’t share their enthusiasm for something outdated with debunked information in it. Thucydides is trying to short-circuit arguments about that, but at last he has to tell the truth: most sources I used were too old and unclear to trust, and what I did trust, showed that what I’m writing about is indeed bigger than anything in history.