21st Century Classical Greek -- diastaien

Book I section 18.

[2] δεκάτῳ δὲ ἔτει μετ᾽ αὐτὴν αὖθις ὁ βάρβαρος τῷ μεγάλῳ στόλῳ ἐπὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα δουλωσόμενος ἦλθεν. καὶ μεγάλου κινδύνου ἐπικρεμασθέντος οἵ τε Λακεδαιμόνιοι τῶν ξυμπολεμησάντων Ἑλλήνων ἡγήσαντο δυνάμει προύχοντες, καὶ οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι ἐπιόντων τῶν Μήδων διανοηθέντες ἐκλιπεῖν τὴν πόλιν καὶ ἀνασκευασάμενοι ἐς τὰς ναῦς ἐσβάντες ναυτικοὶ ἐγένοντο. κοινῇ τε ἀπωσάμενοι τὸν βάρβαρον, ὕστερον οὐ πολλῷ διεκρίθησαν πρός τε Ἀθηναίους καὶ Λακεδαιμονίους οἵ τε ἀποστάντες βασιλέως Ἕλληνες καὶ οἱ ξυμπολεμήσαντες. δυνάμει γὰρ ταῦτα μέγιστα διεφάνη: ἴσχυον γὰρ οἱ μὲν κατὰ γῆν, οἱ δὲ ναυσίν.

[3] καὶ ὀλίγον μὲν χρόνον ξυνέμεινεν ἡ ὁμαιχμία, ἔπειτα διενεχθέντες οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι καὶ Ἀθηναῖοι ἐπολέμησαν μετὰ τῶν ξυμμάχων πρὸς ἀλλήλους: καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων εἴ τινές που διασταῖεν, πρὸς τούτους ἤδη ἐχώρουν. ὥστε ἀπὸ τῶν Μηδικῶν ἐς τόνδε αἰεὶ τὸν πόλεμον τὰ μὲν σπενδόμενοι, τὰ δὲ πολεμοῦντες ἢ ἀλλήλοις ἢ τοῖς ἑαυτῶν ξυμμάχοις ἀφισταμένοις εὖ παρεσκευάσαντο τὰ πολέμια καὶ ἐμπειρότεροι ἐγένοντο μετὰ κινδύνων τὰς μελέτας ποιούμενοι.

Epikremasthentos is a personal gerundive in passive voice. The -e- in the ending is your clue.

If this was executive voice, it would be -a-, -o-, or -u-.

And of course in base voice there’s a -men- before the personal ending.

Notice all the gerundives of both types in section 2. Thucydides signs up to the Lakedaimonians leading the effort, but he uses gerundives about the Athinaians leaving their polis and taking to their ships, until he gets to nautikoi egenonto. That’s what he really cares about, not the other actions.

The next bit of subsection 2 is difficult.

ὕστερον οὐ πολλῷ διεκρίθησαν πρός τε Ἀθηναίους καὶ Λακεδαιμονίους οἵ τε ἀποστάντες βασιλέως Ἕλληνες καὶ οἱ ξυμπολεμήσαντες.

So we have “not long after revolted, against both Athinaians and Lakedaimonians, those Hellenes who revolted against the King (of the Persians) and those who fought on the same side (as the Athinaians and Lakedaimonians).”

From subsection 3, καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Ἑλλήνων εἴ τινές που διασταῖεν uses an epistemic for “whichever of the other Hellenes who set apart.” That’s if you go by the edition of Middle Liddell on Perseus.

There’s a later edition available free on-line, I think it’s on Internet Archive. You can set bookmarks for the alphabetical divisions, making lookup easier. You can also get Big Liddell (LSJ). You can search both of them in English, which I sometimes do when looking for various verbs with similar translations.

At any rate, when you notice that diistimi is based on histimi, you should suspect that it could have an intransitive imperfective eventive. The updated LSJ says so.

So is this an ergative? No. We don’t have an agent in hupo X, we have tines…ton allon Hellenes,  “whichever of the other Hellenes”. Thucydides is not trying to say, as with Minos, that somebody would have done this deliberately, it just turned out that it was Minos. He’s saying more like, since there were sides to take, they could have been taken in any direction.

In general, calling the “second aorist” an intransitive imperfective eventive gets around giving you the misconception that it shows up only in ergative structures. It can be used any time Mr. T needs something less transitive than the plain imperfective eventive, but still wants to get across the nuance of something being done deliberately, with a nuance that it was fated.

And while Thucydides does not sign up to a certainty about exactly which Hellenes had differences with each other, besides the Athinaians and Lakedaimonians, and reinforces it with ei tines pou, he is still definite about the alliance, the dissensions, the preparedness or at least training for war, and the experience gained by the grandfathers that the sons would put to use in Thucydides’ time.