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

David Goldfarb goldfarb at OCF.Berkeley.EDU
Sun Feb 12 02:42:45 EST 2006


From: Christopher Shelton <christophershelt at netscape.com>
>I stumbled across this line in translation last night.  I will transliterate:
>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.

I'm still hardly beyond beginner status myself, so take this with a grain
of salt:

NOMIZOMAI looks to me like middle voice used reflexively, "I deem 
myself".  This accords with "ARISTOS" and "PONHROS" being in the
nominative case.

I'm curious why you translate "ARISTOS" as "unreliable" and "PONHRON"
as "difficult".  "ARISTOS" is the superlative of "AGAQOS", "good" or 
"brave", yes?  It may be used here in an intensive sense, "very good".
And doesn't "PONHROS" mean "base" or "wicked"?  So this would be something
like, "They deem me/I deem myself neither very good nor very bad."

-- 
   David Goldfarb          |
goldfarb at ocf.berkeley.edu  |        "It's flabby and delicious."
goldfarb at csua.berkeley.edu |



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