δι' ἂν in Cyril of Alex.

cwconrad
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Re: δι' ἂν in Cyril of Alex.

Post by cwconrad »

Stirling Bartholomew wrote:
cwconrad wrote: The question is what a διὰ is doing with it, where there's no noun on hand in any of the cases with which this preposition construes.
Carl,

When the question came up, it seemed to me that particle ἂν following a preposition was inherently improbable. ἂν follows conjunctions and other particles. I haven't found any examples of ἂν following a word that functions as a preposition. Is that even possible?
FWIW, what I wrote expressed my thinking after looking at the constructions, both involving an ἅν following the optative, as is quite ordinary with a potential optative and an inexplicable δι(ὰ) without an object that had to be a misprint of some sort.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Stephen Hughes
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Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: δι' ἂν in Cyril of Alex.

Post by Stephen Hughes »

cwconrad wrote: an inexplicable δι(ὰ) without an object that had to be a misprint of some sort.
An implausible reconstruction would be to add a μα in front. (οὐ) μὰ Δί' would be inconsistent with the general tenor of the authour.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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