21st Century Classical Greek -- ago

Moving on to Book I section 9. This is a long section so do two things. First, mark everything you recognize. If you recognize the grammar but not the word (see safestata), mark it anyway.

Second, go to Wiktionary and learn ἄγω.

Ἀγαμέμνων τέ μοι δοκεῖ τῶν τότε δυνάμει προύχων καὶ οὐ τοσοῦτον τοῖς Τυνδάρεω ὅρκοις κατειλημμένους τοὺς Ἑλένης μνηστῆρας ἄγων τὸν στόλον ἀγεῖραι.

[2] λέγουσι δὲ καὶ οἱ τὰ σαφέστατα Πελοποννησίων μνήμῃ παρὰ τῶν πρότερον δεδεγμένοι Πέλοπά τε πρῶτον πλήθει χρημάτων, ἃ ἦλθεν ἐκ τῆς Ἀσίας ἔχων ἐς ἀνθρώπους ἀπόρους, δύναμιν περιποιησάμενον τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν τῆς χώρας ἔπηλυν ὄντα ὅμως σχεῖν, καὶ ὕστερον τοῖς ἐκγόνοις ἔτι μείζω ξυνενεχθῆναι, Εὐρυσθέως μὲν ἐν τῇ Ἀττικῇ ὑπὸ Ἡρακλειδῶν ἀποθανόντος, Ἀτρέως δὲ μητρὸς ἀδελφοῦ ὄντος αὐτῷ, καὶ ἐπιτρέψαντος Εὐρυσθέως, ὅτ᾽ ἐστράτευε, Μυκήνας τε καὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν κατὰ τὸ οἰκεῖον Ἀτρεῖ (τυγχάνειν δὲ αὐτὸν φεύγοντα τὸν πατέρα διὰ τὸν Χρυσίππου θάνατον), καὶ ὡς οὐκέτι ἀνεχώρησεν Εὐρυσθεύς, βουλομένων καὶ τῶν Μυκηναίων φόβῳ τῶν Ἡρακλειδῶν καὶ ἅμα δυνατὸν δοκοῦντα εἶναι καὶ τὸ πλῆθος τεθεραπευκότα τῶν Μυκηναίων τε καὶ ὅσων Εὐρυσθεὺς ἦρχε τὴν βασιλείαν Ἀτρέα παραλαβεῖν, καὶ τῶν Περσειδῶν τοὺς Πελοπίδας μείζους καταστῆναι.

[3] ἅ μοι δοκεῖ Ἀγαμέμνων παραλαβὼν καὶ ναυτικῷ [τε] ἅμα ἐπὶ πλέον τῶν ἄλλων ἰσχύσας, τὴν στρατείαν οὐ χάριτι τὸ πλέον ἢ φόβῳ ξυναγαγὼν ποιήσασθαι.

[4] φαίνεται γὰρ ναυσί τε πλείσταις αὐτὸς ἀφικόμενος καὶ Ἀρκάσι προσπαρασχών, ὡς Ὅμηρος τοῦτο δεδήλωκεν, εἴ τῳ ἱκανὸς τεκμηριῶσαι. καὶ ἐν τοῦ σκήπτρου ἅμα τῇ παραδόσει εἴρηκεν αὐτὸν“ πολλῇσι νήσοισι καὶ Ἄργεϊ παντὶ ἀνάσσειν:

”Hom. Il. 2.108οὐκ ἂν οὖν νήσων ἔξω τῶν περιοικίδων (αὗται δὲ οὐκ ἂν πολλαὶ εἶεν) ἠπειρώτης ὢν ἐκράτει, εἰ μή τι καὶ ναυτικὸν εἶχεν. εἰκάζειν δὲ χρὴ καὶ ταύτῃ τῇ στρατείᾳ οἷα ἦν τὰ πρὸ αὐτῆς.

In subsection 4, notice hos Homiros touto dediloken. The last is perfective why? Because what Homer wrote remains as written.

Actually, that’s not precisely true. There was a canonical Homer, but Stephanie West wrote a thesis showing that variations on the Iliad might have been part of competitions designed to show off a poet’s abilities. Mr. T makes a comment later about writing for a competition. We also know that there were competitions over which tragedy to present during the Great Dionysia festival. Each poet had to present a tetralogy, three tragedies and a satire; the Archon picked the three winners.

That’s a lot of material to write. We know that the surviving body of Aeschylus is only about 10% of his output, and that other known poets also produced works that didn’t survive. Imagine how much more we would know about the Greek language if more poetry and prose had survived!

21st Century Classical Greek -- the rest of section 8

OK, let’s look for other interesting grammar in Thucydides Book I section 8.

καὶ οὐχ ἧσσον λῃσταὶ ἦσαν οἱ νησιῶται, Κᾶρές τε ὄντες καὶ Φοίνικες: οὗτοι γὰρ δὴ τὰς πλείστας τῶν νήσων ᾤκησαν. μαρτύριον δέ: Δήλου γὰρ καθαιρομένης ὑπὸ Ἀθηναίων ἐν τῷδε τῷ πολέμῳ καὶ τῶν θηκῶν ἀναιρεθεισῶν ὅσαι ἦσαν τῶν τεθνεώτων ἐν τῇ νήσῳ, ὑπὲρ ἥμισυ Κᾶρες ἐφάνησαν, γνωσθέντες τῇ τε σκευῇ τῶν ὅπλων ξυντεθαμμένῃ καὶ τῷ τρόπῳ ᾧ νῦν ἔτι θάπτουσιν.

[2] καταστάντος δὲ τοῦ Μίνω ναυτικοῦ πλωιμώτερα ἐγένετο παρ᾽ ἀλλήλους (οἱ γὰρ ἐκ τῶν νήσων κακοῦργοι ἀνέστησαν ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ, ὅτεπερ καὶ τὰς πολλὰς αὐτῶν κατῴκιζε),

[3] καὶ οἱ παρὰ θάλασσαν ἄνθρωποι μᾶλλον ἤδη τὴν κτῆσιν τῶν χρημάτων ποιούμενοι βεβαιότερον ᾤκουν, καί τινες καὶ τείχη περιεβάλλοντο ὡς πλουσιώτεροι ἑαυτῶν γιγνόμενοι: ἐφιέμενοι γὰρ τῶν κερδῶν οἵ τε ἥσσους ὑπέμενον τὴν τῶν κρεισσόνων δουλείαν, οἵ τε δυνατώτεροι περιουσίας ἔχοντες προσεποιοῦντο ὑπηκόους τὰς ἐλάσσους πόλεις.

[4] καὶ ἐν τούτῳ τῷ τρόπῳ μᾶλλον ἤδη ὄντες ὕστερον χρόνῳ ἐπὶ Τροίαν ἐστράτευσαν.

Dilou in this section is Delos, birthplace of Apollo and Artemis.

The grammar in that phrase is interesting. There’s a base voice personal gerundive followed by hupo Athinaion. Is this an ergative structure? Well, no it’s not, because Delou is in the -ous case, not the -oi case. The ergative is in the subsection after that.

Jowett reverses the sense of the first phrase which actually means “the islanders were no less pirates…”

Tode to polemo is the Megaeran war. Notice the sequence of events: Delos was cleaned up during that war, the tombs being opened (anairetheison in passive voice). The translation of the next phrase is “the dead,” but Jowett has missed the point again.

ὅσαι ἦσαν τῶν τεθνεώτων ἐν τῇ νήσῳ

You’ve seen hosai before; it means “to the extent of”. That limits which tombs were opened. It’s limited to ton tethneoton, “those slain” using a perfective verb. In this instance, only people killed in that specific war, having been buried on the spot, were exhumed and buried elsewhere. In a later section Thucydides tells how all the tombs were cleansed from Delos.

Jowett misses the distinction entirely. He says “the dead”, which could include anybody buried on Delos, no matter when their death happened, leaving you to think that the Athinaians redded out all the tombs then existing. But then you have to ask yourself a question: didn’t the Greeks cremate their dead?

It turns out that cremation was used for the great or the upper classes, and only in Athins. Cremation requires a lot of fuel, half a ton of wood per body. Athins was not well-wooded; it had to import the wood from places like Macedonia – and Macedonia did not practice cremation. So, first, when Homer emphasizes how horrified Zeus was that Hector would not be cremated, it doesn’t reflect Hellenic mores; it’s an insult to Hector’s reputation. In other words, as usual, scholars have taken a single example and pretended that it is a culture-wide phenomenon.

The existence of tombs suggests an ancient practice known in Jewish law: secondary inhumation. The dead were buried in situ; when the flesh rotted away, the family collected the bones and put them in a tribal tomb. In this section, Thucydides is probably recognizing that it’s pretty tough for a family to find out, in the fog of war, where their relatives had been buried. It was all simply left until after the war and then the Athinaians went to work.

In Book II when Thucydides gets around to the plague, he says that bodies were cremated. By this time, the Athinaians were mewed up in the city and couldn’t get out to perform initial inhumation. Tens of thousands of people were dying; carrion eaters wouldn’t touch them, says Thucydides. There was obviously only one way to deal with the corpses but, while the custom was for private funerals, desperate people threw corpses into funeral pyres they didn’t pay for. Probably nobody could sympathize with that between the plague (before the Renaissance) and the Spanish Flu epidemic. In year 2 of the pandemic I think it’s a little more comprehensible.

21st Century Classical Greek -- not ergative

Now you may remember other examples of hupo plus the -on case and wonder whether they are ergative structures. One was section 2.1:

ἕκαστοι τὴν ἑαυτῶν ἀπολείποντες βιαζόμενοι ὑπό τινων αἰεὶ πλειόνων.

This is not ergative. Thucydides has gone straight for the base voice personal gerundive describing the action, “constrained”. It’s a decrease in definiteness, not transitivity.

Section 2.4:

καὶ ἅμα ὑπὸ ἀλλοφύλων μᾶλλον ἐπεβουλεύοντο.

This is an idiom. LSJ states that base voice is used only when the context means “to be the object of plots”, epebouleuonto. The conjugated verb is progressive eventive, thus a habit of forming plots, but since the idiom is de-transitized, Thucydides puts the agent into the instrumental.

As far as I can tell, there are only about five examples of ergative structure in Peloponnesian War. Before I’m done with you, I may find more of them, and I may also figure out why Thucydides uses them. In other words, why would Thucydides use this structure at all, instead of using full intransitivity (“passive”)?

I’ll have another post on this subject but possible ramifications are

1)         The ergative is strictly for the imperfective. Keep reading to find out if I’m wrong, or post a comment if you already know that I am. Make sure to cite to the evidence.

2)         The ergative never uses a -mai verb, which doesn’t have executive voice. This would mean that having only base voice means -mai verbs can never be deliberately transitive.

3)         Thucydides is the last Greek writer to use the ergative, and maybe the only one. If you are a Greek geek who favors Xenophon or Herodotus, you owe it to yourself to reread him to see if this is true.

21st Century Classical Greek -- ergative

So I skipped most of Thucydides Book I section 7 and I’m going straight to section 8, subsection 2 to discuss an important use of the “second aorist”, which is intransitive for histimi.

καταστάντος δὲ τοῦ Μίνω ναυτικοῦ πλωιμώτερα ἐγένετο παρ᾽ ἀλλήλους (οἱ γὰρ ἐκ τῶν νήσων κακοῦργοι ἀνέστησαν ὑπ᾽ αὐτοῦ, ὅτεπερ καὶ τὰς πολλὰς αὐτῶν κατῴκιζε)

We have what looks like a subject in the -oi case, and an agentive phrase hup’ autou, and in English we have structures like “the drawing was done by him.”

But anestisan is not passive. It’s “aorist 2” and it’s executive voice.

How do we get a passive nuance from an executive voice verb?

Well we don’t. Remember, passive voice appears in the structure for intransitivity.

What Thucydides does in 8.2 is use an intransitive structure, both by his use of case and by his use of a second aorist verb form known to have intransitive use. There’s only one way to translate that in English, and it’s called passive, not intransitive.

What’s the connection? A language of northeast Anatolia, where the Indo-Europeans (and Semites) developed.. It’s called Hurrian, and it is classed as “ergative”, which means that the object of a transitive verb has a marker and the subject doesn’t. However the “subject” of a “passive” structure in Hurrian has a marker – and we know that the grammatical subject of a passive verb is the logical object of the verb.

For Hurrian, there is no passive verb morphology. There are intransitive structures. Greek retained this for histimi and a few other verb roots, and developed a special verb form to make these structures express deliberate actions, as well as a separate intransitive verb form in all other contexts where it wanted both intransitivity and non-deliberate expression. It just so happens that this last verb form sometimes looks like the non-deliberate transitive verb morphology (base voice) and so we get labels like “middle-passive”.

This gives us a new triplet in Classical Greek, the transitivity triplet.

1)                  Passive structures which are completely intransitive.

2)                  Ergative structures which present action intransitively and allow as how the action was deliberate. The verb may be a second aorist that Greek uses in intransitive structures. The object of the verb in an ergative structure is in the same case as the grammatical subject/logical object of a passive voice verb. Includes an agentive phrase.

3)                  Transitive structures with a verb in some voice other than passive. The agent is in the -oi case. There may be an object in some other case that is dictated by the meaning of the context.

Semitic languages don’t appear to have ergative structures. I read a paper which claimed that the nifal in Hebrew does that but there are no case markers in Hebrew. If the N-stem in other Semitic languages appeared with a “nominative” object and an agent in some other form, that would show that other Semitic languages definitely have ergative structures. But, however, it doesn’t mean Biblical Hebrew does, analogous to the fact that Aramaic has no nifal.

I have found a paper on ergativity in Indo-European languages at Jstor. But – there’s always a but – the author over-emphasizes the role of voice and has no concept of aspect. If you still want to read it (you’ll need a Jstor login), let me know.

I have also found a paper on ergativity that describes its use in terms of something called valency; use of ergatives increases or decreases the valency of an expression. I don’t remember which, I didn’t bother to memorize it. It’s another one of those useless categorizations that makes you look smart in front of other linguists by throwing around the latest jargon.

I can assure you that Thucydides never thought of valency when he used an ergative structure. He knew that this was one of his options for expressing a deliberate action. Why he went for it may become clear when somebody finds all the ergative structures in Classical Greek of the 400s BCE and identifies how else they could have been said, and what nuance of meaning the ergative brings to the table.

21st Century Classical Greek -- lambano and kata

Thucydides Book I section 7.

τῶν δὲ πόλεων ὅσαι μὲν νεώτατα ᾠκίσθησαν καὶ ἤδη πλωιμωτέρων ὄντων, περιουσίας μᾶλλον ἔχουσαι χρημάτων ἐπ᾽ αὐτοῖς τοῖς αἰγιαλοῖς τείχεσιν ἐκτίζοντο καὶ τοὺς ἰσθμοὺς ἀπελάμβανον ἐμπορίας τε ἕνεκα καὶ τῆς πρὸς τοὺς προσοίκους ἕκαστοι ἰσχύος: αἱ δὲ παλαιαὶ διὰ τὴν λῃστείαν ἐπὶ πολὺ ἀντίσχουσαν ἀπὸ θαλάσσης μᾶλλον ᾠκίσθησαν, αἵ τε ἐν ταῖς νήσοις καὶ ἐν ταῖς ἠπείροις (ἔφερον γὰρ ἀλλήλους τε καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὅσοι ὄντες οὐ θαλάσσιοι κάτω ᾤκουν), καὶ μέχρι τοῦδε ἔτι ἀνῳκισμένοι εἰσίν.

Learn idi.

Copy apelambanon into Wiktionary, take off the ape- prefix, and learn the verb lambano. It is not only a high-frequency concept, it is also the root of a lot of compound verbs. Also look at the LSJ entry and notice at the top it says this verb has an “aor. 2”. This is used in the Odyssey, Book 5 line 525.

Thucydides starts section 7 by saying “of the cities such as had been most recently settled…” Jowett does nothing with this. It is a topic order sentence. Thucydides is going back to section 5 and picking his story up again with the history of marine travel. Jowett’s sources did not recognize topic order sentences as a thing, nor did they understand that oral mindsets use such structures, which I have found in Jewish Torah and Talmud. Instead of giving us all the material in translation, Jowett cuts and pastes according to his own limited viewpoint of how literature works.

Okisthisan is imperfective eventive. The root, as you can see from the word tool, starts with omicron; this becomes omega when augment is needed.

Click on ep’ which is a contraction of epi. Look at the LSJ entry.  Notice that it can be used with any noun case; here we have it with the -ois case.

Now notice that throughout the entry for epi, LSJ shows the phrase “with verbs of X” where X is some category. I think you know what is coming.

It’s evidence that the lexicon is tied to the old grammar. The old grammar books have sections on noun cases and they have repeated for generations that case X is used with verbs in a specific category.

But that category may apply to only one of many uses of the verb. Having to memorize these categories fixes in the student’s mind an idea that the verb means only that thing to which the grammar book has tied use of some noun case or other. This is the analog of describing grammar only in terms of morphology and ignoring context.

It’s the reverse of how the verb really works, which is verb X plus the Y case means Z, not the Y case is used with any verb X that falls into the Z category.

The same is true with prepositions that can be used with more than one case: preposition X plus the Y case means Z, not the Y case is used with preposition X.

For the rest of it:

καὶ τοὺς ἰσθμοὺς ἀπελάμβανον ἐμπορίας τε ἕνεκα

καὶ τῆς πρὸς τοὺς προσοίκους ἕκαστοι ἰσχύος:

αἱ δὲ παλαιαὶ διὰ τὴν λῃστείαν ἐπὶ πολὺ ἀντίσχουσαν ἀπὸ θαλάσσης μᾶλλον ᾠκίσθησαν,

αἵ τε ἐν ταῖς νήσοις καὶ ἐν ταῖς ἠπείροις

(ἔφερον γὰρ ἀλλήλους τε καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὅσοι ὄντες οὐ θαλάσσιοι κάτω ᾤκουν),

μέχρι τοῦδε ἔτι ἀνῳκισμένοι εἰσίν.

Eneka is called a preposition but it always comes after what it refers to. “For the sake of” bringing trade to the isthmus.

“… and strength against each one’s neighbors

“the ancients because of piracy mostly set their ground, mostly settling away from the sea

“both those on islands as well as on the mainland

“(they suffered [repeatedly] from each other and from those others who not being sailors settled kato),

“and insofar they settled upcountry.”

Kato from kata (which you should learn because you’ll see it a lot) means not just downward, but further on. This may be related to if not a source of the British idiom “going down from London,” far into the country.

Knitting -- Brioche: where am I?

The video I gave you last week gives you part of the answer to this question. If your next stitch is a singleton, you use it to do a YO. When the next stitches are a YO and a singleton, you do a TOG.

But do you K or P TOG?

I made so many mistakes – losing my concentration and starting to P instead of K and vice versa – but now I’ve figured it out.

If that singleton is a K, you are on a P round. The next YO is for a P2TOG.

If that singleton looks like a purl, you are on a K round. The next YO is for a K2TOG.

Now. Increases.

There’s only one video that I found that shows you what to do on the next round after an increase, but it’s not for knitting in the round where you do a row with P2TOGs after the round with K2TOGS..

I can explain it to you two ways but let’s think it through because it will help you when you do decreases. Also this is for single increases and some videos show you how to do double increases. Think it through. Pretend you've done your increase in the K round and worked to the end so you're ready to start a P round.

The first stitch in a purl round is supposed to be a YO. So it’s natural to YO that first stitch where you increased. Now you have two stitches left, and if you P2TOG, you won’t have an increase any more. What’s more, if you do, you’ll have two P2TOGs in a row. That's not how brioche works.

So YO with the first stitch. Then PURL the next stitch ALL BY ITSELF. YO again with the last stitch, and then finish that round normally, doing the same thing at the other end if you’re doing symmetrical increases. When you get to the next round, it will look normal.

So now use that video you found that shows decreases for working in the flat, and do the decrease as shown. Then in your next round, think through how brioche works and you’ll be able to figure out how to work across that decrease in the purl round.

Here is a pair of brioche kneesocks worked from the toe up, with symmetrical increases. I worked the increases starting in the middle between the sides of the toe. Each sock took 1 skein or almost 190 yards of Lamb's Pride worsted wool and about 15 hours of working, including fixing mistakes. I have an ulterior motive for making these kneesocks and I'll let you know if it works out. For now, imagine that I have glued them onto a pair of flip-flops after taking the thong out, and put in a pair of Dr. Scholl's insoles with arch supports. Voila! House shoes!

Next brioche post: now let's think about how this stitch works and what it means for pullovers.