Gorgias 456 b-c syntax

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Kurama
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Gorgias 456 b-c syntax

Post by Kurama »

φημὶ δὲ καὶ εἰς πόλιν ὅπῃ βούλει ἐλθόντα ῥητορικὸν ἄνδρα καὶ ἰατρόν, εἰ δέοι λόγῳ διαγωνίζεσθαι ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ ἢ ἐν ἄλλῳ τινὶ συλλόγῳ ὁπότερον δεῖ αἱρεθῆναι ἰατρόν, οὐδαμοῦ ἂν φανῆναι τὸν ἰατρόν, ἀλλ᾽ αἱρεθῆναι ἂν τὸν εἰπεῖν δυνατόν, εἰ βούλοιτο.

I am trying to parse this sentence, from Gorgias 456 b-c. I have two main doubts.

I originally found the sentence in Mastronarde's first edition, Unit 35. The version I gave just above is straight copy paste from Perseus. There are differences between the texts. Mastronarde has βούλῃ instead of βούλει, but I guess this is only a variant.

Another difference is that Mastronarde has ὅποι instead of ὅπῃ. This makes a difference to me. I can make sense of ὅπῃ but not of ὅποι. Either way, it seems that the word is being used as indefinite relative. ὅποι is 'whithersoever' and ὅπῃ is 'by whichever way'. I can understand ὅπῃ as modifying ἐλθόντα. It is simply a dative of means, so that εἰς πόλιν ὅπῃ βούλει ἐλθόντα means 'having gone to a city by whichever way you wish'. What I don't understand is why Mastronarde also thinks it makes sense to read ὅποι. This leads me to my first question.

In this case, ὅποι βούλει would mean 'whithersoever you may want'. But the translation of the participle would then be 'having gone whithersoever you may want to a city'. This sounds a bit weird to me, since here 'gone' has two complements of destination (apologies if that is not the correct term). It would be like saying 'going to London to the south'. I guess one could perhaps take ὅποι βούλει as an adverbial modifier of ἐλθόντα, so that we get 'having gone-whithersoever-you-may-want to a city'. Is that what is going on here? Are such double complements common in Greek?

The second doubt I have is this: I understand that φημί is the main verb, and that it takes both an accusative and an infinitive as complements to form an indirect discourse construction. I also understand that τὸν ἰατρόν in οὐδαμοῦ ἂν φανῆναι τὸν ἰατρόν is the accusative complement and that οὐδαμοῦ ἂν φανῆναι is the infinitive complement. What I don't understand is what ῥητορικὸν ἄνδρα καὶ ἰατρόν is doing. I would perfectly understand if ῥητορικὸς ἀνήρ and ἰατρός were in the genitive case. We'd simply have an absolute genitive participle construction. I would also understand if we simply had πόλιν ὅπῃ βούλει ἐλθόντα. It would be a circumstantial participle modifying τὸν ἰατρόν. But as things stand, I can't make sense of the sentence because to me there seem to be two dangling accusatives (ῥητορικὸν ἄνδρα καὶ ἰατρόν).

Of course, I understand that the sentence is saying that if a rhetorican and a physican went into an arbitrary city, and if they had to compete by speaking, etc., the physician would lose and the rhetorican would win. So I understand that the function of εἰς πόλιν ὅπῃ βούλει ἐλθόντα ῥητορικὸν ἄνδρα καὶ ἰατρόν is to tell us that the sentence is going to say something about a rhetorican and a physicist that go to some city. But, as in my other post, I want to know what is going on at the level of syntax.

So far the explanation I've been able to come up with is either that Greek allows you to repeat an accusative when you have a long sentence like this or that εἰς πόλιν ὅπῃ βούλει ἐλθόντα ῥητορικὸν ἄνδρα καὶ ἰατρόν is actually an absolute participle and the case has been changed to the accusative by attraction.

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jeidsath
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Re: Gorgias 456 b-c syntax

Post by jeidsath »

I'm afraid that I can't see the difference in meaning between ὅποι βούλει or ὅπῇ βούλῃ. Maybe someone else can.

ἐλθόντα ῥητορικὸν ἄνδρα καὶ ἰατρόν seems to serve as the subject of διαγωνίζεσθαι here, doesn't it?

My understanding of this passage is: And I say that a rhetor and a doctor having gone into whatever city you prefer, if it should be necessary for them to contest by speech in the assembly or in some other speaking-place which one is to be be chosen as a doctor, the doctor would not at all appear [to be a doctor], but the man with the ability to speak would be picked, if he wished it.

Hopefully someone can correct that.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

Joel Eidsath -- jeidsath@gmail.com

Hylander
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Re: Gorgias 456 b-c syntax

Post by Hylander »

ὅπῃ/ὅποι βούλει -- set it off by commas as a kind of parenthetical and it will make perfect sense from a syntactic point of view. Without looking at a critical edition, surely ὅποι is right.

βούλῃ/βούλει -- this is spelling issue. βουληι is the older spelling; βουλει is 4th century and probably what Plato wrote, but editors (the new Oxford edition, for example) can't be restrained from normalizing texts ...

καὶ εἰς πόλιν ὅπῃ βούλει ἐλθόντα ῥητορικὸν ἄνδρα καὶ ἰατρόν -- this is part of the protasis εἰ δέοι λόγῳ διαγωνίζεσθαι ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ ἢ ἐν ἄλλῳ τινὶ συλλόγῳ ὁπότερον δεῖ αἱρεθῆναι ἰατρόν. Greek word order isn't the same as English. I hesitate to do violence to Plato's word order -- and don't do this at home -- but to make it more consistent with English word order and not consistent with Greek, this could be rearranged as:

εἰ δέοι εἰς πόλιν, ὅπῃ βούλει, ἐλθόντα ῥητορικὸν ἄνδρα καὶ ἰατρόν λόγῳ διαγωνίζεσθαι ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ ἢ ἐν ἄλλῳ τινὶ συλλόγῳ ὁπότερον δεῖ αἱρεθῆναι ἰατρόν . . .

καὶ would be lost in this atrocious and shameful distortion of Greek, but the syntax would work out ok.

Plato knew Greek better than any of us (I think even mwh, who knows Greek backwards and forwards, would agree) and "fronted" καὶ εἰς πόλιν ὅπῃ βούλει ἐλθόντα ῥητορικὸν ἄνδρα καὶ ἰατρόν because he knew how to write elegant Greek, but unfortunately he was ignorant of English.
Bill Walderman

Kurama
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Re: Gorgias 456 b-c syntax

Post by Kurama »

Hylander wrote:ὅπῃ/ὅποι βούλει -- set it off by commas as a kind of parenthetical and it will make perfect sense from a syntactic point of view.
What does ὅποι βούλει mean in the sentence? If it is a parenthetical, what does it modify? Or what kind of parenthetical is it? What is its grammatical function?
καὶ εἰς πόλιν ὅπῃ βούλει ἐλθόντα ῥητορικὸν ἄνδρα καὶ ἰατρόν -- this is part of the protasis εἰ δέοι λόγῳ διαγωνίζεσθαι ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ ἢ ἐν ἄλλῳ τινὶ συλλόγῳ ὁπότερον δεῖ αἱρεθῆναι ἰατρόν.
This explains it, thanks a lot.

Hylander
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Re: Gorgias 456 b-c syntax

Post by Hylander »

"if a rhetorician and a physician, going to a city -- wherever you want [i.e., to whichever city you want them to go] -- were to have to debate . . . "

I think you could analyze οποι οπηι/βουλει as a relative clause dependent on πολιν, rather than as parenthetical, and that is probably the better analysis.

The manuscripts have οπηι; οποι is a conjecture that is accepted by Dodds and others. The manuscripts apparently read βουλει, not βουληι, as I think is generally typical of the manuscripts of Plato.

I wonder whether ὅπῃ/ὅποι αν βούλῃ would be more likely -- a "general" relative clause with subjunctive -- but there's no manuscript authority for that and no one seems to have conjectured it. Without αν, βουληι must be indicative, and βουλει (the reading of the manuscripts) definitely is indicative.
Bill Walderman

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