[B-Greek] Neither unreliable nor difficult...

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at ioa.com
Sun Feb 12 05:12:35 EST 2006


On Feb 12, 2006, at 2:34 AM, Christopher Shelton wrote:

> I stumbled across this line in translation last night.  I will  
> transliterate:
>
> ἐμὲ οὔτε ἄπιστον οὔτε πονηρὸν  
> νομίζουσιν.
> οὔτε ἄπιστος οὔτε πονηρὸς  
> νομίζομαι.
>
> EME OUTE ARISTON OUTE PONHRON NOMIZOUSIN.  OUTE ARISTOS OUTE  
> PONHROS NOMIZOMAI.
>
> Basically I'm not sure about the 2nd sentence.  I rendered the 1st  
> sentence as follows:  "They neither deem me unreliable nor  
> difficult."  But the next sentence throws me:  is NOMIZOMAI Middle  
> or Passive?  And what would its definition be in either case?  I'm  
> lost.  Thank you for any help you can give me with this.

You don't say where you saw this; it looks like a grammatical  
exercise; that was your own translation? It depends to some extent on  
which period of ancient Greek this belongs to. I'd make it "They deem  
me neither very good nor bad; I deem myself neither very good nor  
bad." The second clause could be understood with a middle verb -- or  
with a passive; if it's a grammatical exercise, then the second  
clause probably has a passive verb. If it's a real sentence written  
by an ancient Greek, then it probably expresses the distinction  
between others' evaluation of the speaker and his own evaluation of  
himself.

I say that the time period of the sentence matters because in  
classical Attic these are fundamentally words distinguishing social  
class when referring to persons: ARISTOS means "excellent,  
outstandingly good" while PONHROS means "working-class" The ARISTOI  
are the worthies, the PONHROI the "working stiffs" characterized by  
PONOI. PONHROS in Attic comedy has the sense of "underhanded" or  
"mischievous," but in Koine usage it may mean "evil" or "wicked."


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/




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