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.