21st Century Classical Greek -- ei mi idiom

Book I section 17. You should know most of the words here. Ef’ is epi; learn it.

τύραννοί τε ὅσοι ἦσαν ἐν ταῖς Ἑλληνικαῖς πόλεσι,τὸ ἐφ᾽ ἑαυτῶν μόνον προορώμενοι ἔς τε τὸ σῶμα καὶ ἐς τὸ τὸν ἴδιον οἶκον αὔξειν δι᾽ ἀσφαλείας ὅσον ἐδύναντο μάλιστα τὰς πόλεις ᾤκουν, ἐπράχθη δὲ οὐδὲν ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν ἔργον ἀξιόλογον, εἰ μὴ εἴ τι πρὸς περιοίκους τοὺς αὐτῶν ἑκάστοις: οἱ γὰρ ἐν Σικελίᾳ ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἐχώρησαν δυνάμεως. οὕτω πανταχόθεν ἡ Ἑλλὰς ἐπὶ πολὺν χρόνον κατείχετο μήτε κοινῇ φανερὸν μηδὲν κατεργάζεσθαι, κατὰ πόλεις τε ἀτολμοτέρα εἶναι.

Ei mi ei is not a conditional. It’s an idiom meaning “except for”, meaning that except for fighting their border wars, the tyrants didn’t do anything notable except enrich themselves and their families.

Eprakhthi comes from prasso, which does some weird things. For example, you can see here that in the passive, instead of the sigma marker of the imperfective, it’s theta in the eventive, but it’s still sigma in the conceptual. See White, page 241, section 770. In the executive, however, the two sigmas become ksi. In the progressive eventive, the sigmas become taus.

The difference between prasso and poieo is the idea of experience. You use prasso not just for the experience of the Persian war, but also in practicing a trade; it is used of practicing bribery as well.

Spend the rest of this week going over this section and making sure you can trace the grammar back to prior lessons.