Lysias' Λόγος ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἀδυνάτου

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Wes Wood
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Re: Lysias' Λόγος ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἀδυνάτου

Post by Wes Wood »

1) You are absolutely correct about me having difficulties here. This is partially a result of my forgetting where I was when I picked up from the previous day. My major difficulty with this phrase (I think) was not a result of the accusative phrase at the beginning but with τουτι. I did not know what it was, but I was positive that it wasn’t plural. I also did not believe it to be a dative despite it looking somewhat similar to one. I intended to check this and the ending of the section the next day, but I only remembered the latter goal. I forgot therefore the “these” remained. Having checked Smyth, I think I now have solved my problem. How is this: “I have stopped caring for my mother this [being] the third year after her death”? I may still be wrong, but I feel better about it!

2) who will “provide for/take care of” me is in fact much better.

3) I was ἄνευ excuse. (I think there is a better word for that though...) I gotcha now. That has to be one of your most cleverly helpful correctives yet.

4) I did not know this. I will try to make note of it.

5) This revelation makes much better sense. I was more focused on the definition of the participle than on the person it was referring to.

6) I was taking it as referring to trade. If I am correct, your suggestion that I be more explicit is a very good one. If I am wrong, I was only saved because of the ambiguity.

7) My “always” was an attempt to translate the optative. I have so little experience with it, I don’t quite know what to do with it. General suggestions would be appreciated.

Thank you again!
Ἀσπάζομαι μὲν καὶ φιλῶ, πείσομαι δὲ μᾶλλον τῷ θεῷ ἢ ὑμῖν.-Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους 29δ
Stephen Hughes
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Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Wes Wood §6 - Second feedback - ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἀδυνάτου

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Wes, you seem to be more aware of how you are thinking about the text this time, rather than just what you are thinking about the text.
Wes Wood wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:
Lysias 24.6 wrote:τὴν δὲ μητέρα τελευτήσασαν πέπαυμαι τρέφων¹ τρίτον ἔτος τουτί
and my mother being dead ¹I have not fed¹ these three years
What do you mean by, "I have not fed"? It seems that you haven't accounted for τὴν ... μητέρα τελευτήσασαν being in the accusative case.
1)My major difficulty with this phrase (I think) was not a result of the accusative phrase at the beginning but with τουτι. I did not know what it was, but I was positive that it wasn’t plural. I also did not believe it to be a dative despite it looking somewhat similar to one. I intended to check this and the ending of the section the next day, but I only remembered the latter goal. I forgot therefore the “these” remained. Having checked Smyth, I think I now have solved my problem. How is this: “I have stopped caring for my mother this [being] the third year after her death”? I may still be wrong, but I feel better about it!
Picking up a "Chance Card" from Smyth is a great way to get $200, but let's look at it anyway. The obvious question is, "What does the τρίτον ἔτος τοῦτο count from?" There seem to 3 (or 4) alternatives.

Let's assume that the speech was delivered in 402 BCE.
  • Did the mother die in the current year 402 BCE, and the father 3 years earlier in 404? That would give a rendering like, "For three long years since his death in 404 BCE, I have had to support my mother, who has recently died during this (third) year (after his death), 402 BCE."
  • Alternatively, did the father die at some indeterminate point in the past, and then the invalid supported his mother up till 2 years before the present, when she died, and he no longer had to support her. Which would be something like, "(Despite receiving nothing in the way of an inheritance from my father) I have stopped supporting my mother for only these last two years since her death in 404 BCE, (after many years of spending all my money on her over a long time)."
  • Does he feel that the mother died because he couldn't support her. (For a long time I was able to look after her, but in 404 BCE I couldn't do it anymore, so) for two years now I have stopped looking after her, and lo and behold, now (in 402 BCE) she is dead too.
[A lot of that has to do with the interpretation of tenses.]

Smyth takes the τρίτον ἔτος τοῦτι together with the τελευτήσασαν (the time of death being a point of time from which the years could be counted). Alternatively, it could either go with the πέπαυμαι τρέφων (which would be the beginning of a period of not feeding, after doing it for some time) or perhaps the κατέλιπεν (which is logically also the beginning of the τρέφων), both of which then were followed by a duration of two years.

τουτονί & νυνί (which we saw in section 1) also have the same deictic (not dative) ending. νῦν "now" v.
νυνί "right now" (stronger form, but only used in a narrower range of syntactic constructions)
Wes Wood wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:ἀνεῦ
ἄνευ ... I gotcha now.
Your memory for vocabulary is better than mine on this point.
Wes Wood wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:κτήσασθαι "acquire" is recognisably differentiated from κεκτῆσθαι "possess"​ in the classical period. In the New Testament we only find the present.
4) I did not know this. I will try to make note of it.
The point is that he was too poor to procure a slave.
Wes Wood wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:πλὴν ταύτης "except this" - the translation is good, but to what does the ταύτης refer? (trade or pension)
6) I was taking it as referring to trade. If I am correct, your suggestion that I be more explicit is a very good one. If I am wrong, I was only saved because of the ambiguity.
Translation covers a multitude of ignorance.

The phrase is πρόσοδος δέ μοι οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλη πλὴν ταύτης. Grammatically it is circular. cf. ὀνομάζομαι Στέφανον. ὄνομα δέ μοι οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλο πλὴν τούτου (neuter). Contextually, it refers to the income derived from his trade, so really, the question is about whether a pension can be thought of as πρόσοδος "income". [It is incorrect to consider the genders of ἐπίδομα and τέχνη, if that is why you have assumed τέχνη.] I don't think that they would have considered a dole from the state as income. Rather than triple handling money by giving the dole, saying it is taxable, taxing it and getting some of it back, as some governments do, it is much simpler to give only a little in the first place, and to not give the dole to those who had an income.
Wes Wood wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:κινδυνεύσαιμι is not κινδυνεύοιμι [corrected], so perhaps your "always" (while perhaps good) is mis-placed in the sentence. What's your reason for including it.
My “always” was an attempt to translate the optative. I have so little experience with it, I don’t quite know what to do with it. General suggestions would be appreciated.
Okay, general things ... :oops: ... :? ... <still thinking> ... :roll: ... :idea:

The optative is a mood, not an aspect. :geek:
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Wes Wood
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Joined: September 20th, 2013, 8:18 pm

§7 - Lysias On the refusal of a pension to the invalid-Wes W

Post by Wes Wood »

Part One:
μὴ τοίνυν, ἐπειδή γε ἔστιν, ὦ βουλή, σῶσαί με δικαίως, ἀπολέσητε ἀδίκως: μηδὲ ἃ νεωτέρῳ καὶ μᾶλλον ἐρρωμένῳ ὄντι ἔδοτε, πρεσβύτερον καὶ ἀσθενέστερον γιγνόμενον ἀφέλησθε:

"Therefore since indeed it is possible, O Council, to save me lawfully, do not destroy me unjustly: neither take away what you gave to a younger and stronger man as he becomes older and weaker."

I am glad you pointed out "ἔστιν." I don't think I would have noticed any difference if you hadn't. I still don't see too much difference here, though. Am I missing something? I am having a little more difficulty with the last section. I am going to try to slow down and understand what is going on with before I post it. Εὐχαριστῶ σοι.
Ἀσπάζομαι μὲν καὶ φιλῶ, πείσομαι δὲ μᾶλλον τῷ θεῷ ἢ ὑμῖν.-Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους 29δ
Stephen Hughes
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Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Wes Wood §7.1 - First feedback - On the refusal of a pension

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Wes Wood wrote:Part One:
μὴ τοίνυν, ἐπειδή γε ἔστιν, ὦ βουλή, σῶσαί με δικαίως, ἀπολέσητε ἀδίκως: μηδὲ ἃ νεωτέρῳ καὶ μᾶλλον ἐρρωμένῳ ὄντι ἔδοτε, πρεσβύτερον καὶ ἀσθενέστερον γιγνόμενον ἀφέλησθε:

"Therefore since indeed it is possible, O Council, to save me lawfully, do not destroy me unjustly: neither take away what you gave to a younger and stronger man as he becomes older and weaker."

I am glad you pointed out "ἔστιν." I don't think I would have noticed any difference if you hadn't. I still don't see too much difference here, though. Am I missing something?
ἔστιν is an impersonal constructed with an infinitive, not the copula ἐστίν which you are doubtless familiar with. You could compare Hebrews 9:5 as a syntactic parallel ὑπεράνω δὲ αὐτῆς Χερουβὶμ δόξης κατασκιάζοντα τὸ ἱλαστήριον· περὶ ὧν οὐκ ἔστιν νῦν λέγειν κατὰ μέρος. "All the such like things about which it is not possible (for me / us) to talk about now without going off-topic."

You are probably not "missing" anything, if you are asking about this construction. It is just an unfamiliar construction in the New Testament, but is quite common in the classical period.
Wes Wood wrote:Am I missing something? I am having a little more difficulty with the last section.
If you are asking about this section, then, yes, you are missing μᾶλλον. It could be taken as "more importantly", or "more to the point"

The sense of με that should be carried right through is "missing" and has been rendered by "a man".

As regards style: "Neither" is not natural at the beginning of a sentence when it is the second thing that is "not". The first μὴ ... ἀπολέσητε ἀδίκως: is followed by the second μηδὲ ... ἀφέλησθε: perhaps you could Use "Neither destroy me unjustly, nor deprive me of what ..."
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Wes Wood
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Joined: September 20th, 2013, 8:18 pm

§7 - Lysias: Part Two-Wes Wood

Post by Wes Wood »

"μηδὲ πρότερον καὶ περὶ τοὺς οὐδὲν ἔχοντας κακὸν ἐλεημονέστατοι δοκοῦντες εἶναι νυνὶ διὰ τοῦτον τοὺς καὶ1 τοῖς ἐχθροῖς ἐλεινοὺς ὄντας ἀγρίως ἀποδέξησθε"

nor now because of this [man] wildly turn away the ones who are being pitied [even] by [their] enemies when [I translated και as when] formerly you seemed to be merciful on the ones who had nothing wrong with them.

Notes: I modified some of the tenses according to sense, struggled with what to do with και in both places, and am not sure the best way to treat all of the μηδε units throughout the reading. I hope I understood you correctly about the superlative without your hint I would have said something along the lines of "you seemed to be most merciful on" but I don't know if I would have left it that way or not. It would seem absurd in the context. I will try to assemble all of my corrections when I make it all the way through this section. I can't believe you don't think I am ready for the section you just posted. :lol: *extreme sarcasm*
Ἀσπάζομαι μὲν καὶ φιλῶ, πείσομαι δὲ μᾶλλον τῷ θεῷ ἢ ὑμῖν.-Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους 29δ
Stephen Hughes
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Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Wes Wood §7.2 - First feedback - On the refusal of a pen

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Wes Wood wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:ἐλεημονέστατοι δοκοῦντες εἶναι - you need to stick to the rules for the construction of δοκεῖν that was introduced previously, and to not stick closely to the rules you have assumed for the formation of superlatives.
I hope I understood you correctly about the superlative without your hint I would have said something along the lines of "you seemed to be most merciful on" but I don't know if I would have left it that way or not. It would seem absurd in the context.
That was perhaps a little too dramatic, a little too presumptive and a little under-helpful.

I meant that to find the dictionary form of the word you would need to apply fuzzy logic (assuming that you are not familiar with this type of consonant-stem ἐλεήμων -> ἐλεημονέστερος, -τατος), rather than the step-by-step transformation / construction.

Never-the-less... The form is perhaps a little unfamiliar, but the grammatical meaning is still superlative.
Lysias 24.7(2nd half) wrote:"μηδὲ πρότερον καὶ περὶ τοὺς οὐδὲν ἔχοντας κακὸν ἐλεημονέστατοι δοκοῦντες εἶναι νυνὶ διὰ τοῦτον τοὺς καὶ1 τοῖς ἐχθροῖς ἐλεινοὺς ὄντας ἀγρίως ἀποδέξησθε"
Wes Wood - Lysias 27.7(2nd half) wrote:nor now because of this [man] wildly turn away the ones who are being pitied [even] by [their] enemies when [I translated και as when] formerly you seemed to be merciful on the ones who had nothing wrong with them.
Stephen Hughes after the style of Wes Wood wrote:And do not now because of this man accept to think savagely about the ones who are being piteous even to their enemies when [the participle is adequate to express that syntactic meaning] formerly you were known to be merciful even regarding the ones who had nothing wrong with them.
Generally speaking, you seem to be fudging with prepositions. Taking them as what fits most easily or logically in English is not really reading Greek.The most basic question in that regard is, Does the περὶ (+acc.) "concerning" go with the ἐλεημονέστατοι, the δοκοῦντες, or the εἶναι? And what is the sense of διὰ τοῦτον (what is the direction or sense of the because?)

How did you get ἀποδέξησθε to mean "turn away" instead of "accept" (ἀποδέχομαι = ἀποδείκνυμι)?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Wes Wood
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Joined: September 20th, 2013, 8:18 pm

Wes Wood §7.2 - First feedback - On the refusal of a pen

Post by Wes Wood »

Concerning your first point: I thought you were saying it wasn't a superlative. Your clarification alleviated some stress.

Concerning the prepositions: I agree to a large extent. I am reasonably certain that περι (+acc.) goes with ελεημονεστατοι. I believe the phrase δια τουτον is referring to the testimony of the plaintiff.

I think my major problem, as you predicted, is still δοκουντες. I took it as modifying ελεημονεστατοι. This left the other verbal phrase meaning something like "do not accept the ones who..." which I could not make sense of. This led me to LSJ where one of the glosses was "to point away from," but the examples that it gave there did not really parallel the construction in this text.

τοὺς καὶ1 τοῖς ἐχθροῖς ἐλεινοὺς
We translated this differently. Am I wrong?
Ἀσπάζομαι μὲν καὶ φιλῶ, πείσομαι δὲ μᾶλλον τῷ θεῷ ἢ ὑμῖν.-Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους 29δ
Stephen Hughes
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Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

§8 - Lysias On the refusal of a pension to the invalid

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Section 8 is really very straightforward. You just might get caught up with the un-etymological senses of a few of the words.

More of the before and now contrasts:
Lysias, On the refusal of a pension to the invalid 24, 8 wrote: καὶ γὰρ ἂν ἄτοπον εἴη, ὦ βουλή, εἰ ὅτε μὲν ἁπλῆ μοι ἦν ἡ συμφορά, τότε μὲν φαινοίμην λαμβάνων τὸ ἀργύριον τοῦτο, νῦν δ᾽ ἐπειδὴ καὶ γῆρας καὶ νόσοι καὶ τὰ τούτοις ἑπόμενα1 κακὰ προσγίγνεταί μοι, τότε ἀφαιρεθείην.

1 ἑπόμενα Reiske: ἐχόμενα MSS.
Hints for §8: (If there is anything you are uncertain about after your own reading, you might find it here, otherwise you could try in the Middle Liddel.)
  • ἄτοπον - this is neuter because it is an impersonal. "strange", "paradoxical"
  • ἁπλῆ - Not complicated (ποικίλος) by other things.
  • φαινοίμην - optative. "I am evident" >>=>=>as we discussed=>=>> "It is evident that I"
  • τότε - take this as logical consequence, not a later time.
  • καὶ A καὶ B καὶ C - Both ... and ... and ... .
  • προσγίγνεταί - accrue, (be) add(ed) to.
  • ἀφαιρεθείην - I am deprived => it is deprived from me.
[/size]
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Introspection & Re: Wes Wood §7.2 - First feedback

Post by Stephen Hughes »

ὀμφαλοσκοπία (αὐτοεξέτασις)
It seems that you are developing your own approach to reading now, and we can adjust to that.

I like to go as quickly as possible through the whole text, seeing that I understand the meaning of each Greek word (or at least recognise which dictionary entry is corresponds to), and how the syntactic structures work together with each other. Once that is done, then I like to look at the works of the standard commentators to get insights into the Greek that I've missed / misunderstood, and to look at the popular translations to see if there are other ways that things can be taken. It is a three-stage process of revisiting the text.

You are obviously a man of much greater patience for details than I have. We have slowed down to understand well each section as we go. You would be better at the semesterised learning experience than I ever was. At University, the text was read from go to whoa once and then an exam given, and engagement with the text was over. The best students were the ones, who like you, worked linearly through the prescription. For foolish students, like me, the greatest engagement and best insight into the text came during the summer holidays or in the years after graduation. Revisiting the text from different perspectives suits my learning style.

What we have been doing is that you are reading this text with me, according to my understanding, with only a little help from LSJ when needed. My plan was to go through quite quickly Bear Grylls style (Man vs. Text) with only a knife and one's survival skills and determination to get us through. I think that can be done by the autumnal equinox without the task being too taxing. After that, there are many school and college texts available for Lysias, so you could choose one of those and read through this twenty-fourth speech again with one of those commentaries again. I think that one should compare one's own knowledge with that of a commentator, rather than grabbing for a crutch when you have perfectly good feet to walk on. In that way, the work of commentators become models of excellence and scholarship to which we strive to attain.

As a third step, any of these constructions that you have been having difficulty with could be used in composition. As you probably realise, these texts were not just preserved and studied in antiquity and throughout the Roman Empire (what we call Byzantium) so that students could see and appreciate the best classical style, but also so they could use it in their own writing. Authouring lends an authenticity to one's knowledge of Greek, in my opinion at least, and the best way to be able to understand the New Testament is to attain a level of Greek that would allow me to have been able to have written it. Similarly, you can see in almost one thousand postings of mine here on the forum, I have almost never quoted a reference work, on the understanding that if I couldn't have written them, it is inauthentic for me to quote them. But, of course, not everyone shares my foibles. I expect that comparison with the understanding of others and authouring to be over at the latest by the mid-winter solstice.
Wes Wood wrote:Concerning the prepositions: I agree to a large extent. I am reasonably certain that περι (+acc.) goes with ελεημονεστατοι. I believe the phrase δια τουτον is referring to the testimony of the plaintiff.
You may well be right.
Wes Wood wrote:τοὺς καὶ1 τοῖς ἐχθροῖς ἐλεινοὺς
We translated this differently. Am I wrong?
I like your translation better. Mine is puerile and stilted to try and "retain" the dative.
Wes Wood wrote:I think my major problem, as you predicted, is still δοκουντες. I took it as modifying ελεημονεστατοι.
I don't think there is an obvious problem here now. Just hard-wire a grammatical transformation from personal to impersonal. A Chinese speaker would have less problem with Attic than they do with New Testament Greek, because for them personals are more understandable than impersonals.
Wes Wood wrote:This left the other verbal phrase meaning something like "do not accept [ἀποδέχομαι] the ones who..." which I could not make sense of. This led me to LSJ where one of the glosses [to ἀποδείκνυμι] was "to point away from," but the examples that it gave there did not really parallel the construction in this text.
Tell me clearly, are you taking μηδὲ ... ἀγρίως ἀποδέξησθε as from μηδὲ ... ἀγρίως ἀποδέχομαι or μηδὲ ... ἀγρίως ἀποδείκνυμι?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Wes Wood
Posts: 692
Joined: September 20th, 2013, 8:18 pm

Re: Lysias' Λόγος ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἀδυνάτου

Post by Wes Wood »

ἀγρίως ἀποδείκνυμι. This is what I thought it to be. For what it's worth, I am visiting my parents today. I probably won't be on until tomorrow. I will be done with 7 & 8 then, though.
Ἀσπάζομαι μὲν καὶ φιλῶ, πείσομαι δὲ μᾶλλον τῷ θεῷ ἢ ὑμῖν.-Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους 29δ
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