21st Century Classical Greek -- another stunning translation problem

Book I section 42.

‘ὧν ἐνθυμηθέντες καὶ νεώτερός τις παρὰ πρεσβυτέρου αὐτὰ μαθὼν ἀξιούτω τοῖς ὁμοίοις ἡμᾶς ἀμύνεσθαι, καὶ μὴ νομίσῃ δίκαια μὲν τάδε λέγεσθαι, ξύμφορα δέ, εἰ πολεμήσει, ἄλλα εἶναι.

[2] τό τε γὰρ ξυμφέρον ἐν ᾧ ἄν τις ἐλάχιστα ἁμαρτάνῃ μάλιστα ἕπεται, καὶ τὸ μέλλον τοῦ πολέμου ᾧ φοβοῦντες ὑμᾶς Κερκυραῖοι κελεύουσιν ἀδικεῖν ἐν ἀφανεῖ ἔτι κεῖται, καὶ οὐκ ἄξιον ἐπαρθέντας αὐτῷ φανερὰν ἔχθραν ἤδη καὶ οὐ μέλλουσαν πρὸς Κορινθίους κτήσασθαι, τῆς δὲ ὑπαρχούσης πρότερον διὰ Μεγαρέας ὑποψίας σῶφρον ὑφελεῖν μᾶλλον (ἡ γὰρ τελευταία χάρις καιρὸν ἔχουσα,

[3] κἂν ἐλάσσων ᾖ, δύναται μεῖζον ἔγκλημα λῦσαι),

[4] μηδ᾽ ὅτι ναυτικοῦ ξυμμαχίαν μεγάλην διδόασι, τούτῳ ἐφέλκεσθαι: τὸ γὰρ μὴ ἀδικεῖν τοὺς ὁμοίους ἐχυρωτέρα δύναμις ἢ τῷ αὐτίκα φανερῷ ἐπαρθέντας διὰ κινδύνων τὸ πλέον ἔχειν..

Why you have to watch out for the Word Tool: its assignments don’t match how we understand the grammar, even without the 21^st century stuff. WT has four entries for enthumithentes, two labeled passive (which is correct) and two labeled middle-passive. Why does it say middle-passive? It labels the “tense” as “aorist”, which never has a middle-passive. It also has two entries labeled “comp_only” for no reason that I can see. What, in fact, does “comp_only” mean? So on top of everything else, somebody doing the WT labeling used some incomprehensible assignment method.

At any rate, the dictionary entry for this verb ends in -mai; this is evidence that the base voice and passive in imperfective aspect of -mai verbs have identical morphology. What we have to figure out is which of them is appropriate. Because Thucydides uses enthumithentes with hon, clearly an object, we have to assign it to the base voice.  

Enthumithentes expresses the concept of thinking something over. There are non-mai verbs in Middle Liddle that have that idea. What Thucydides is going for is the root of the verb, thumos, soul or heart. It’s kind of late in the game for an appeal to hearts and minds, but the Korinthians are making a stab at it. It could be another rhetorical mistake: OK so you don’t think this is the logical thing to do, but there’s a morality beyond the law and that is what you have to consider.

The two words I have bolded are translated differently by Jowett and not just as a matter of noun case. This same type of error occurs in the horrible Septuagint. In subsection 1 Jowett has “neighbor”, in subsection 4 he has “like, similar”. I keep saying that you have to translate in accordance with the context, but what is the context?

In subsection 1, the phrase is akiouto tois homoiois himas amunesthai. All the old translators want this to mean a quid pro quo. Akiouto is an imperative in progressive conceptual, which ought to tell the Athinaions to immediately form a specific habit of thought.  It has a complement in amunesthai, which with the -ois case phrase should mean to defend those like the Athinaians. But for some reason the Korinthians stick in himas, “us”, in the -ous case. As the object of amunesthai, this should mean defending those like the Athinaians against the Korinthians, which is surely not what they plan to suggest.

The old translators don’t have a  problem with this, because they are used to thinking of the -ous case as the subject of an “infinitive”. However, we have already seen that this is not universally true, and that using himas implies an anti-passive structure. There is no prior verb which would take himas as an object. If it is supposed to be the object of aksiouto, then the context means to think it fit that the Korinthians be defended, but there’s no room for the tois homoiois unless it means “like yourselves”.

Taking it as meaning “quid pro quo” probably derives from the translators being trained to think of the -ois case as meaning “for”, but that’s another example of bad training. It means “for” in the sense of “for the benefit of”. “Quid pro quo” means “in exchange for” and in any case, Middle Liddell shows that it not only requires the -ous case, it also requires a form of didomi. In general, exchanges for something require the -ous case of the thing exchanged for, one example being Iliad 6.235-236. I have said before that the grammar books keying on one of several meanings produced mistakes; Jowett’s translation is an example of how the grammars have failed.

Most translators of classical material (even the Bible), make the inevitable bad decision to copy familiar translations. I had to fight myself all the time when I wrote Narrating the Torah to avoid this, even though I knew that the old translators knew nothing of 21^st century grammar or the other concepts I was trying to express. The copying makes the work go faster, but it reproduces old errors. And the other location of homoiois or rather homoious in subsection 4 argues for a different meaning. The phrase is τὸ γὰρ μὴ ἀδικεῖν τοὺς ὁμοίους ἐχυρωτέρα δύναμις ἢ τῷ αὐτίκα φανερῷ ἐπαρθέντας διὰ κινδύνων τὸ πλέον ἔχειν, “not doing wrong to somebody like you is safer for power than by an instantaneous appearance being led through dangers to have more.”

In this case we also have an -ous case with an impersonal gerundive, but all the translators agree that it is an object, not a subject. The position probably promotes that interpretation, since it resembles English syntax. It does, however, make nonsense of Jowett’s translation of “neighbor”, which the other translators don’t use.

In any case, the Korinthians made a mistake in telling the Athinaians that the Kerkyraeans were not their like but the Korinthians were and should be supported in preference to the other party.