21st Century Classical Greek -- conditional six

Book I section 27.  This is a good time to talk about “false friends”.

Κορίνθιοι δ᾽, ὡς αὐτοῖς ἐκ τῆς Ἐπιδάμνου ἦλθον ἄγγελοι ὅτι πολιορκοῦνται, παρεσκευάζοντο στρατείαν, καὶ ἅμα ἀποικίαν ἐς τὴν Ἐπίδαμνον ἐκήρυσσον ἐπὶ τῇ ἴσῃ καὶ ὁμοίᾳ τὸν βουλόμενον ἰέναι: εἰ δέ τις τὸ παραυτίκα μὲν μὴ ἐθέλει ξυμπλεῖν, μετέχειν δὲ βούλεται τῆς ἀποικίας, πεντήκοντα δραχμὰς καταθέντα Κορινθίας μένειν. ἦσαν δὲ καὶ οἱ πλέοντες πολλοὶ καὶ οἱ τἀργύριον καταβάλλοντες.

[2] ἐδεήθησαν δὲ καὶ τῶν Μεγαρέων ναυσὶ σφᾶς ξυμπροπέμψαι, εἰ ἄρα κωλύοιντο ὑπὸ Κερκυραίων πλεῖν: οἱ δὲ παρεσκευάζοντο αὐτοῖς ὀκτὼ ναυσὶ ξυμπλεῖν, καὶ Παλῆς Κεφαλλήνων τέσσαρσιν. καὶ Ἐπιδαυρίων ἐδεήθησαν, οἳ παρέσχον πέντε, Ἑρμιονῆς δὲ μίαν καὶ Τροιζήνιοι δύο, Λευκάδιοι δὲ δέκα καὶ Ἀμπρακιῶται ὀκτώ. Θηβαίους δὲ χρήματα ᾔτησαν καὶ Φλειασίους, Ἠλείους δὲ ναῦς τε κενὰς καὶ χρήματα. αὐτῶν δὲ Κορινθίων νῆες παρεσκευάζοντο τριάκοντα καὶ τρισχίλιοι ὁπλῖται..

Your first reaction to the bolded word in subsection 1 was probably “angels? What – wait, what?”

When I took French in high school back in the dark ages, our teacher made a point of talking to us about “false friends”, words that look familiar but don’t mean what they mean in English. It’s kind of like N’Oleans beignets being like doughnuts, and French beignets being more like fritters.

It’s not just French and English however; some words in French have look-alikes with widely different meanings in Spanish. And a bilet in Russian might be a pawn ticket, instead of a ticket to an event, a love letter, or a formal invitation.

Aggeloi are messengers and from this everything else follows.

If you are reading Greek and you come across something that looks familiar from English, but you don’t know why it’s there because the meaning works out really strange, you are probably looking at a false friend. Always check the lexicon.

If you didn’t already learn παρασκευάζω, learn it now.

In subsection 1

…εἰ δέ τις τὸ παραυτίκα μὲν μὴ ἐθέλει ξυμπλεῖν,…

lies across the boundary between a reported question and the protasis of a conditional. Notice the progressive indicative which means the people making the proclamation believed that some Korinthians would not be willing to serve in the actual army but would want to participate in some other way.

If we continue to think of this as “present tense”, we have a present tense for a future action. As a progressive conceptual, however, it expresses the situation of the people who want to go or not. Notice that the expressed condition is not wanting to go; wanting to go has already been addressed by the proclamation.

In subsection 2 we have:

…εἰ ἄρα κωλύοιντο ὑπὸ Κερκυραίων πλεῖν…

If we look at this as a conditional, the protasis has an epistemic, meaning that the Korinthians didn’t really believe the Kerkyraeans would sail out to hinder them. The hupo kerkyraion might make you think it’s ergative, but the verb is not in executive voice. It’s also in progressive aspect, despite referring to a future action, and all the ergatives we have seen used an intransitive imperfective eventive.