Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

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Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by jeidsath »

I flipped through Page's Epigrammata Graeca OCT this morning, looking for poets that I wouldn't need a dictionary for, and settled on this Anonyma guy.

οὐκέτ᾽ ἐρῶ. πεπάλαικα πόθοις τρισίν· εἷς μὲν ἑταίρης, εἷς δέ με παρθενικῆς, εἷς δέ μ᾽ ἔκαυσε νέου, καὶ κατὰ πᾶν ἤλγηκα. γεγύμνασμαι μὲν ἑταίρης πείθων τὰς ἐχθρὰς οὐδὲν ἔχοντι θύρας· ἔστρωμαι δὲ κόρης ἐπὶ παστάδος αἰὲν ἄυπνος, ἕν τι ποθεινότατον παιδὶ φίλημα διδούς· οἴμοι, πῶς εἴπω πῦρ τὸ τρίτον; ἐκ γὰρ ἐκείνου βλέμματα καὶ κενεὰς ἐλπίδας οἶδα μόνον.

I no longer speak. I've been overthrown by passions three. One for a whore,
one for a nun, and one that inflames me after a lad.
And by them all I am pricked. I've stripped for the whore,
persuaded by a passion with no guarded entrances.
I've been spread out by the maiden on my bed always sleepless,
having given the child a single most passionate kiss.
Oh dear, how shall I speak of the third fire? For from that one
I only know glances and empty hopes.

πεπάλαικα - overthrown? Wrestling related verb? Or just "struck"?
τὰς ἐχθρὰς θύρας - "guarded entrances"? I thought that ἐχθρά was a noun? "Having no doors that are enemies"?
παστάδος - something one is ἔστρωμαι on. A bed? From παστάρ? I can't think of any -αδος words that I know
φίλημα - Is "kiss" over-specifying? Any mark of affection?
διδούς - Active participle? I would have expected a passive
βλέμματα - From βλέμμα. Is this a glance or a wink? I only have a vague sense of it having to do with the eye.

EDIT: Fixed ἐκείου -> ἐκείνου, noticed by Paul below
“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.”

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Paul Derouda »

There are a few things I don't understand about the poem myself, but I think you got it wrong in quiet a few places...

ἐρῶ = ἐραω desire
πεπάλαικα "I have wrestled"
πόθος "longing" (not quite the same I think as "passion")
ἤλγηκα "I have suffered"
γεγύμνασμαι "I am excercised in" γυμνάζω means "to train, to exercise", the connection with nudity has been lost.
πείθων is active, so "I" is the subject
παιδὶ not a "child" here I suppose?
βλέμμα is a glance

I don't know what τὰς ἐχθρὰς οὐδὲν ἔχοντι θύρας or ἐκείου mean.

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Paul Derouda »

Ok, I think I got it: γεγύμνασμαι μὲν ἑταίρης /πείθων τὰς ἐχθρὰς οὐδὲν ἔχοντι θύρας "I'm experienced at trying to convince a hetaira's doors which are hostile to one who has nothing".

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Paul Derouda »

παστάς is a porch. So I guess ἔστρωμαι δὲ κόρης ἐπὶ παστάδος αἰὲν ἄυπνος "I'm lying on the a girl's porch, always sleepless".

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by jeidsath »

Thank you. Also, I missed the μέν/δέ between the ἑταίρης and the κόρης
Ok, I think I got it: γεγύμνασμαι μὲν ἑταίρης /πείθων τὰς ἐχθρὰς οὐδὲν ἔχοντι θύρας "I'm experienced at trying to convince a hetaira's doors which are hostile to one who has nothing".
This makes more sense, but are you sure that γεγύμνασμαι can't go with ἑταίρης? This would help the μέν/δέ too. "I'm practiced (worn out?) of a hetaira, persuading the doors hostile to one who has nothing, but..."
“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.”

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Paul Derouda »

jeidsath wrote: Thu Oct 31, 2019 6:57 pm This would help the μέν/δέ too.
The opposition is between what he's experienced at the hetaira's door and what he's lived through on the girl's porch.

Let me try my hand at this:

No longer do I desire. I've wrestled with three cravings that have burnt me: one for a prostitute,
one for a virgin, one for a lad.
And I've suffered in every way. I've worn out myself
trying to persuade the prostitute's doors to open, so hostile to a penniless man;
and I make the girl's porch my bed, never sleeping,
offering the lass one kiss so full of desire
But oh how could I speak about the third one, out of which
I know only glances and empty hopes.

ποθεινότατον I'm not sure if this is "most desirable" or "most full of desire". To me, the second makes more sense.

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by jeidsath »

Oh, they are real doors. And her porch. Of course. I see the door/porch contrast now.

Here is the next one, which was probably together with it because of the similar theme (all these are under a subheading "A. E CORONA MELEAGRI"):

Κύπρι, τί μοι τρισσοὺς ἐφ᾽ ἕνα σκοπὸν ἤλασας ἰούς, ἐν δὲ μιῇ ψυχῇ τρισσὰ πέπηγε βέλη; καὶ τῇ μὲν φλέγομαι, τῇ δ᾽ ἕλκομαι· ᾗ δ᾽ ἀπονεύσω διστάζω, λάβρῳ δ᾽ ἐν πυρὶ πᾶς φλέγομαι.

Venus, why have you driven three darts on one look (wound?),
and in one soul stuck three arrows?
And by one I am burnt, am pulled by another, and I διστάζω the one I will ἀπονεύσω,
but in a strong fire I am entirely burning.

ἰός -- an arrow?
σκοπός -- I feel like I'm forgetting a meaning for some reason
φλέγομαι -- passive, to be burnt?
ἀπονεύσω -- curse off, send off or something? Future or present?
διστάζω -- stand apart from?
“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.”

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Paul Derouda »

I found a translation for the first one by Paton (https://topostext.org/work/535):
No longer do I love. I have wrestled with three passions that burn: one for a courtesan, one for a maiden, and one for a lad. And in every way I suffer pain. For I have been sore exercised, seeking to persuade the courtesan's doors to open, the foes of him who has nothings and again ever sleepless I make my bed on the girl's couch, giving the child but one thing and that most desirable, kisses. Alack! how shall I tell of the third flame? For from that I have gained naught but glances and empty hopes.

I'm not sure he got it quite right with "and again ever sleepless I make my bed on the girl's couch, giving the child but one thing and that most desirable, kisses" - isn't the point that he's frustrated, hence my "offering" for present δίδους; also, I think it's better here if the kiss is full of desire rather than desirable. Apparently παστάς can also mean "bridal chamber" beside "porch", but why "couch"? Because she sleeps in the bed, while the frustrated lover sleeps on the couch?

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Paul Derouda »

jeidsath wrote: Thu Oct 31, 2019 7:38 pm Oh, they are real doors. And her porch. Of course. I see the door/porch contrast now.

Here is the next one, which was probably together with it because of the similar theme (all these are under a subheading "A. E CORONA MELEAGRI"):

Κύπρι, τί μοι τρισσοὺς ἐφ᾽ ἕνα σκοπὸν ἤλασας ἰούς, ἐν δὲ μιῇ ψυχῇ τρισσὰ πέπηγε βέλη; καὶ τῇ μὲν φλέγομαι, τῇ δ᾽ ἕλκομαι· ᾗ δ᾽ ἀπονεύσω διστάζω, λάβρῳ δ᾽ ἐν πυρὶ πᾶς φλέγομαι.

Venus, why have you driven three darts on one look (wound?),
and in one soul stuck three arrows?
And by one I am burnt, am pulled by another, and I διστάζω the one I will ἀπονεύσω,
but in a strong fire I am entirely burning.

ἰός -- an arrow?
σκοπός -- I feel like I'm forgetting a meaning for some reason
φλέγομαι -- passive, to be burnt?
ἀπονεύσω -- curse off, send off or something? Future or present?
διστάζω -- stand apart from?
σκοπός a watchman, but also the mark, the thing aimed and fired at
τῇ - τῇ - what femine nouns could these possible refer to?
For the two last words you'll have to use the dictionary, as your guesses are wrong.

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by jeidsath »

I think that I remember σκοπός now from the lookout in Odysseus' ship?
τῇ - τῇ - what femine nouns could these possible refer to?
Not the women? τρισσοὺς ἰούς seems masculine. τρισσὰ βέλη seems neuter.
For the two last words you'll have to use the dictionary, as your guesses are wrong.
Generally I'm trying to wait until I see the word again in normal reading, but I do stoop to TLG search when I can't submerge my curiosity.

Plato:
ἡμεῖς δέ πως θᾶττον ἐκ τῶν ψιλῶν λόγων πρὸς τὴν γεωμετρίαν ἀπενεύσαμεν

Philo
καὶ σχεδὸν δύο εἰσὶν αὗται μόναι αἱ τῆς νομοθεσίας πάσης ὁδοί, μία μὲν ἡ πρὸς τὸ ἀληθὲς ἀπονεύουσα...ἑτέρα δὲ ἡ πρὸς τὰς τῶν νωθεστέρων δόξας

Iamblichus
Ἤδη τοίνυν καὶ ἐν αὐτοῖς τοῖς Πλατωνικοῖς πολλοὶ διαστάζουσιν, οἳ μὲν εἰς μίαν σύνταξιν καὶ μίαν ἰδέαν τὰ εἴδη καὶ τὰ μόρια τῆς ζωῆς καὶ τὰ ἐνεργήματα συνάγοντες, ὥσπερ Πλωτῖνός τε καὶ Πορφύριος· οἳ δὲ εἰς μάχην ταῦτα κατατείνοντες, ὥσπερ Νουμήνιος·

So, another try:

καὶ τῇ μὲν φλέγομαι, τῇ δ᾽ ἕλκομαι· ᾗ δ᾽ ἀπονεύσω διστάζω
And by the one I'm burned, by the other I'm pulled, and the one I will incline to, I feud with."
“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.”

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Paul Derouda »

Point is, τῇ is an adverb, no feminines. ”I’m being burnt here and wounded (ελκοω) there and I hesitate which side I’m going to lean (fall?).”

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by jeidsath »

Wouldn't that have to be ἑλκοῦμαι? (I double checked that I didn't make a mistake in transcription.) I was thinking ἕλκω, passive ἕλκομαι. I'll see if I can find another one with φλέγειν.

But otherwise I get the point, "here I'm burned, there I'm pulled..."
“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.”

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

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Maybe yes. Anyway, I’m sorry but I really don’t see the point of not looking up in the dictionary. I think a good dictionary has always been a great help with all my language studies, not just Greek but English and others as well. A good dictionary gives you not just a definition but also examples of usage, so you get the idea of the word’s whole semantic range, as well information about the register it belongs to. I think the one mistake you can make with a dictionary is looking up too quickly, without digesting the information and making a real effort to memorize the word for good.

I recognize that you want study with some sort of language immersion method, but with time I’ve come to believe that they really work without systematic grammar and vocabulary work only in kids and teenagers; I think the language acquisition capasities of us grown-ups are fundamentally different, as our brains are fundamentally different. We are more capable of studying analytically when we grow up, but we lose the greater part of the brain’s hard wired capasity for ”automatic” language acquisition. So, to summarize: you should pay more systematic attention to the Greek you read and make sure you understand the grammatical constructions before you proceed.

On a related note, I have several real dictionaries which I have payed for installed on my iPhone. If someone can recommend an even better one for English than Merriam-Webster or Oxford English, I’d be grateful.

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by jeidsath »

I haven't sworn off dictionaries for good, I've temporarily restrained my usage of them for reading. My major standard of progress is how much makes sense to me when I pick something random to read, and how many re-reads it takes for it to start making sense. By that standard, my progress has increased significantly in the past several months. Eventually it will stall out and I'll try something different.

In specific, I've noticed myself getting significantly better at noticing word formation and context, and at remembering that I've seen a word before from a single usage. I am paying more attention to what I read. From yesterday, though most of my reading was Plato and Euripides, I remember (patchily):

οὐκετι ἐρῶ. πεπαλαικα ποθοις...εἷς μὲν ἑταίρης
εἷς δὲ κορης, εἷς δὲ νέου. γεγύμνασμαι μὲν ἑταίρης
πείθων τὰς ἐχθρας οὐδὲν ἔχοντι θύρας
ἐστρώμαι δἐ κορης παστάδος αἰεν ἄυπνος
ἕν τι ποθεινοτατον παιδι φιλημα δίδους.
...τί ἀν εἰπω;...
βλέμματα καὶ κενας ἐλπιδας

Κρυπι,...ἕνα σκοπὸν τρισσους ιους...
...τρισσα πεπαγεν (sic) βελη
τῇ μὲν φλέγομαι, τῇ δ᾽ ἕλκομαι, ᾗ δ᾽ ἀπονεύσω
διστάζω...πᾶς φλέγομαι

People can scroll up to see how good/bad that was. Better than where I was a few months ago if I had tried the same, at least. Would I remember any of that if I had simply gone through looking up the glosses for the words I didn't know? I doubt it.

I can't help you with the dictionary question. I use Google for "define:" when I need a word etymology. I never found English language dictionaries useful growing up, and don't actually own one now. My copies of Shakespeare and Chaucer do have glosses on the sides.
“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.”

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Hylander »

πείθων τὰς ἐχθρὰς οὐδὲν ἔχοντι θύρας· -- this is a standard trope of Greek erotic elegy, taken over by Roman elegy, too (Propertius, and treated humorously by Ovid): spending the night outside the woman's door, begging to be let in but denied entry. There is actually a term for this: paraclausithyron,, a complaint in front of the woman's closed door. Paul got this right: "trying to persuade".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraklausithyron

"Whore " is not an appropriate translation for ἑταίρη (note the Ionic coloring, de rigeur in this genre; also κόρης). This is a high-class courtesan who only sleeps with men wealthy enough to maintain her in luxury. She is a "kept woman", a "companion", not a mere πόρνη.

πεπάλαικα -- "I'm no longer in love: I've wrestled with -- and overcome -- three passions"



ἔκαυσε -- is aorist: "burned me". " . . . inflames me" misses the point entirely (Patton's translation also misses the point). He's telling us he's no longer in love: he was set on fire and got burned.

ἤλγηκα -- "I have experienced pain/agony" (but does the perfect perhaps suggest that, contrary to his claim that he's no longer in love, he still feels the agony?).

γεγύμνασμαι -- 'I'm worn out". This is a common meaning for this word, especially in the perfect passive.

ἔστρωμαι δὲ κόρης ἐπὶ παστάδος -- ἔστρωμαι is middle: "I'm stretched out". κόρης depends on παστάδος: "on the young girl's bed/couch"

ποθεινότατον -- "desired" not "passionate".

ἕν τι ποθεινότατον παιδὶ φίλημα διδούς -- the point is that he was limited to just a kiss and never got to "go all the way". And of course "nun" is quite wrong, and "child" isn't quite right.

σκοπὸν -- "target"

πέπηγε βέλη is intransitive: it's the arrows that stick.

τῇ μὲν . . . , τῇ δ᾽ . . . · ᾗ δ᾽ . . . -- "one way . . . , the other way . . ."

ἕλκομαι -- "I am torn to pieces" (?)

ᾗ δ᾽ ἀπονεύσω διστάζω -- διστάζω is "I am in doubt", and ᾗ δ᾽ ἀπονεύσω is deliberative subjunctive, not future: "I'm in a quandary which way to turn"

λάβρῳ δ᾽ ἐν πυρὶ -- "in a raging fire"

A. E CORONA MELEAGRI -- "anonymous from the Garland of Meleager" -- a collection of erotic elegy selected by Meleager that's included in the "Greek Anthology".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meleager_of_Gadara
I haven't sworn off dictionaries for good, I've temporarily restrained my usage of them for reading.
Personally, I think you would get more out of the Greek, and learn more Greek, by using the dictionary instead of guessing at words. And also, as Paul notes, by paying systematic attention to the Greek and making sure you understand the grammatical constructions.
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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Hylander wrote: Fri Nov 01, 2019 2:33 pm Personally, I think you would get more out of the Greek, and learn more Greek, by using the dictionary instead of guessing at words. And also, as Paul notes, by paying systematic attention to the Greek and making sure you understand the grammatical constructions.
There's nothing wrong with doing a first run through the passage without resorting to a dictionary. Doing so can be a very beneficial exercise. But it's like a first draft -- don't stop there, go back and check your work using the dictionary.
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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Paul Derouda »

Hylander wrote: Fri Nov 01, 2019 2:33 pm ἕν τι ποθεινότατον παιδὶ φίλημα διδούς -- the point is that he was limited to just a kiss and never got to "go all the way".
I'm sure most of your corrections are right, but wouldn't we have aorist and not present participle in this particular case? Did he even get to give that one kiss? Hence my "offering".

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by mwh »

The final couplet not only avoid the expected δέ, it’s the epigram’s punchline, the twist in the tail: it gives the lie to the opening οὐκέτ᾽ ἐρῶ. All those perfect tenses describe how he’s been in the past but is not longer—but now we learn he’s still afflicted by his third πόθος. He’s gotten past the others but not this one. (Paton misunderstands: καὶ κατὰ πᾶν ἤλγηκα is not “And in every way I suffer pain”—it’s perfect not present. And διδούς, like πείθων, is pointedly imperfective, as Paul sees—he tried but didn’t succeed. The tenses are all-important.)

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Hylander »

As usual, mwh brings it into focus and nails it.

εἷς μὲν ἑταίρης, εἷς δέ με παρθενικῆς, εἷς δέ μ᾽ ἔκαυσε νέου -- I'm not sure you noticed that all three genitives are complements of ἔκαυσε -- a neat tricolon. ἑταίρης, and παρθενικῆς are not dependent on πόθοις,, as your translation (like Patton's) suggests, missing the tricolon.

A couple more notes on this, from Gow and Page Hellenistic Epigrams, II:

τὰς ἐχθρὰς οὐδὲν ἔχοντι θύρας should mean "the door, which is hostile to me because I have nothing". "hostile to a man who has nothing" would be μηδὲν ἔχοντι.

ἐπὶ παστάδος is a conjecture for the manuscript's impossible reading ἐπιστάδος,. Gow/Page take it to mean "porch". He was lying abjectly out on the porch trying (you're absolutely right, Paul) to give her nothing more than just a kiss.
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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Paul Derouda »

Hylander wrote: Fri Nov 01, 2019 4:32 pm εἷς μὲν ἑταίρης, εἷς δέ με παρθενικῆς, εἷς δέ μ᾽ ἔκαυσε νέου -- I'm not sure you noticed that all three genitives are complements of ἔκαυσε -- a neat tricolon. ἑταίρης, and παρθενικῆς are not dependent on πόθοις,, as your translation (like Patton's) suggests, missing the tricolon.
Good point; I took me a moment to understand, but I didn't miss it. Still, I translated the verb nevertheless as if it were a perfect: "I've wrestled with three cravings that have burnt me: one for a prostitute, one for a virgin, one for a lad."

What's the final verdict for παστάς - "porch" or "couch"? To me, it doesn't seem like much of a "paraclausithyron" if he managed to get in, even if he has to sleep on the couch (the image seems somewhat modern to me...).

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Hylander »

The paraclausithyron is at the door of the courtesan; the porch belongs to the second flame, the virgin. Gow/Page express some uncertainty about the exact image this is supposed to evoke.

By the way, Paul, English "cravings" is not quite right. "Crave" is usually associated with food or other material things, not with love. "Desire" or "passion" are better.

See my post above on ἐπὶ παστάδος, edited without seeing yours.
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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by jeidsath »

So the metaphor throughout is burned by love, not inflamed by passion? Is that always the metaphor in these? I assumed that the aorist ἔκαυσε meant something set ablaze.

I also see that I would have done better searching for διστάζω instead of διαστάζω
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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Hylander »

So the metaphor throughout is burned by love, not inflamed by passion? Is that always the metaphor in these? I assumed that the aorist ἔκαυσε meant something set ablaze.
Not "got burned" in the colloquial sense of being taken unawares, but rather the fire metaphor, both being set aflame and being destroyed by fire. My suggested correction was to counter your present-tense "enflames me."
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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by jeidsath »

I only made it into present tense for the Englishing because I didn't want to write "inflamed", making it seem like it was over, now with ἤλγηκα having present effect right after. Also why I had "am pricked", not "was pained". (Though I found the dirty joke appropriate too.)

But now I don't understand. Is ἔκαυσε meant to indicate a passion set ablaze with energy, or a harm caused by a passion (or its results)?
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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Hylander »

I didn't want to write "inflamed", making it seem like it was over,
But that's just the point: he claims he's no longer in love, οὐκέτ᾽ ἐρῶ.
Is ἔκαυσε meant to indicate a passion set ablaze with energy, or a harm caused by a passion (or its results)?
Everything implicit in the English word "burned".
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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by jeidsath »

καὶ πυρὶ καὶ νιφετῷ με καὶ εἰ βούλοιο κεραυνῷ βάλλε, καὶ εἰς κρημνοὺς ἕλκε καὶ εἰς πελάγη· τὸν γὰρ ἀπαυδήσαντα πόθοις καὶ ἔρωτι δαμέντα οὐδὲ Διὸς τρύχει πῦρ ἐπιβαλλόμενον.

And throw fire and rain, and if you should wish, lightning, at me,
And draw me into crags (?) and into the waves.
For the one exasperated (act. with dat. object ?) by passions and subdued by love,
Zeus' fire does not grieve (?) him when it is set on him.

(I didn't flip the last two lines to put the second into the direct object, but it should be obvious.)
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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by mwh »

I’m not inclined to correct your guesses when you can’t be bothered to look anything up. (Inevitably you get some right, or approximately right, but that’s no cause for complacency; and if you’ll forgive me, you are too fond of congratulating yourself.) And you don’t seem to realize that’s only one step toward understanding an epigram. Epigrams have structure and point, and they use language with precision. (How you managed to remember πεπαλαικα ποθοις … εἷς μὲν ἑταίρης εἷς δὲ κορης, εἷς δὲ νέου without τρισίν and the rest after all that discussion is beyond me.) You should at least know that οὐδὲ does not mean not.

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by jeidsath »

mwh wrote: Fri Nov 01, 2019 11:41 pm I’m not inclined to correct your guesses when you can’t be bothered to look anything up.
Can't be bothered? It took me about 100 times the effort (lowball) to read a few dozen sentences using ἀπαυδαω in the TLG. The Aesop's fable of the hare being alternately licked and bitten by the dog seemed clearest. Elsewhere, where I understood less, it seems to mean being speechless. Sometimes from labor and being out of breath?

Regardless, it's helpful when you point out where I'm wrong, even if no one wants to correct me. Some Greek example to help me out would be amazing, but I would be ashamed to ask for that much, and can easily search the TLG myself once I know I'm wrong.
How you managed to remember πεπαλαικα ποθοις … εἷς μὲν ἑταίρης εἷς δὲ κορης, εἷς δὲ νέου without τρισίν and the rest after all that discussion is beyond me.)
The εκαυσε discussion came after, and I remember that line slightly more accurately now. But it's my below average memory that leads to my extraordinary measures in method.
You should at least know that οὐδὲ does not mean not.
I have a guess, but will have to look up some examples. Connectives give me serious trouble. I've looked it up a hundred times and it obviously hasn't stuck, so maybe it'll stick better with this.

EDIT: The first hit made it easy for οὐδέ: "οὐδ’ ἢν Ἀγαμέμνονα εἴπῃς". However, looking back up at the epigram, I must have understood it when reading, but for whatever reason that didn't make it's way to the page.
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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Hylander »

Over the long timespan of ancient Greek literature, and in view of the wide diversity of different authors, many words have a range of meanings. Searching for precisely the right sense for a particular passage out of a large number of TLG citations every time you're uncertain about the meaning of a word doesn't seem like a productive use of your time, particularly when you can go straight to LSJ and pinpoint the right sense by seeing the range of meanings of a particular word and its usage in various authors. in a manageable format. You could be reading more Greek in the time you're spending on searching in TLG.

ἀπαυδήσαντα -- I had to look this up myself. Why would you resort to TLG, when LSJ glosses this specific locus, along with a few other other passages, as "faint"? This is not a common word to begin with, and this meaning is quite rare: I doubt you will ever encounter it again. You can see that from the LSJ entry. If you don't recognize the -αυδαω component, you could look that up But I don't think you will get the meaning in this passage from απ+αυδαω. I thought ἀπαυδήσαντα might be similar to απαγορευω, meaning something like "deny" or "reject" or "disavow", but that meaning didn't make sense here.

βάλλω + acc. of the person generally means not just "throw", but "throw and hit", or just "hit". This is another point you could have found in LSJ, and maybe you would remember this usage instead of continuing to routinely translate the verb as "throw".

ἀπαυδήσαντα πόθοις καὶ ἔρωτι δαμέντα -- a neat chiasmus.

τρύχει -- "consume"; literally "eat".

νιφετῷ -- "snow"

οὐδὲ -- "not even". It's not a connective here. It's the negative of και in the sense of "even".

καὶ πυρὶ καὶ νιφετῷ με καὶ εἰ βούλοιο κεραυνῷ -- Starting the translation with "and" here, as if "and" were a connective to something that preceded it, is not quite right. The phrase, as articulated by the three και, is a tricolon. Starting with the phrase with και as the initial word in the line, where there is nothing to transition from, together with the two και that follow, makes the three elements more vehement and more hyperbolic, as if the phrase were set in caps or bold type. Hard to convey in English.
Last edited by Hylander on Sat Nov 02, 2019 10:21 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by mwh »

Joel, I admit to having some sympathy with your method, but you take it much too far. When I have a problem with vocabulary (as I all too often do), I look it up in LSJ. If I want to pursue it further, only then might I resort to the TLG. But many of your mistakes are simply careless, or thoughtless. And you ought to have been able to see at a glance that οὐδὲ is not a connective here.

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

mwh wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 4:02 am Joel, I admit to having some sympathy with your method, but you take it much too far. When I have a problem with vocabulary (as I all too often do), I look it up in LSJ. If I want to pursue it further, only then might I resort to the TLG. But many of your mistakes are simply careless, or thoughtless. And you ought to have been able to see at a glance that οὐδὲ is not a connective here.
The story is possibly apocryphal, and I no longer remember the details, but a famous classicist was once asked at a gathering his profession. He responded "I look things up for a living."

My method, as I suggested above, is to read through a passage once without looking anything up. Sometimes just looking at the Greek and understanding it are synonymous. At other times more digging is required. Since I'm a chicken, often even when I think I understand it completely, I'll look stuff up to make sure I haven't had a mental short circuit. Seriously, when guys whose initials are include L and S have done all that hard work for you, why not take advantage of it, especially for casual and rapid reading?
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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by jeidsath »

mwh wrote:But many of your mistakes are simply careless, or thoughtless. And you ought to have been able to see at a glance that οὐδὲ is not a connective here.
I don't know the grammatical definition of "connective", and didn't mean to use the word so precisely. What I see at a glance that οὐδέ is doing the same thing in οὐδ’ ἢν Ἀγαμέμνονα εἴπῃς, yes, and is not οὐ. I reached for a poor gloss, which happens frequently. Perhaps it is because of carelessness, though I think not.
Hylander wrote:ἀπαυδήσαντα -- I had to look this up myself. Why would you resort to TLG, when LSJ glosses this specific locus, along with a few other other passages, as "faint"? This is not a common word to begin with, and this meaning is quite rare: I doubt you will ever encounter it again
When the LSJ acts as a big book of glosses, it's at its worst, not its best. The word, from my glance through the TLG, and as I tried to indicate in the last post, means something like "speechless" literally, "απο-" + the very common Homeric talking verb "αυδαω", but gets used with connotations of breathlessness and exhaustion. It seems to occur a number of times in Tragedy, and then is more common in later Greek (as are many of the words that I'm having trouble with in this thread). Here's Plutarch:

Μόνα δὲ ταῦτα τῶν ἀθλημάτων ἐφέντος αὐτοῦ τοὺς πολίτας ἀγωνίζεσθαι, ὅπου ἡ χεὶρ οὐκ ἀνατείνεται, ἐπύθετό τις τὴν αἰτίαν· ὁ δέ ‘ὅπως’ εἶπε ‘μηδεὶς αὐτῶν ἐν τῷ πονεῖν ἀπαυδᾶν ἐθίζηται.’

"Faint", sure, I can see it. And I can see why someone in the 19th century would have gone for that, as the word was used more broadly for exhaustion then.

But how does it help the reading part of things, to have a gloss for everything? You would have to call up the English words to mind while you're reading.

I could pick out a number of points like this. You brought up λάβρῳ πυρί earlier and glossed it as "raging". Fine, I'm sure that's a better gloss than whatever I chose (I don't remember), but I was thinking of the stormwinds that had sunk Odysseus' raft, which were λάβροι ἀνεμοι, which I saw back in August/September. Again, thank you for the correction, but the next time I run into it, I doubt that I'll be thinking of an English word. I'll be thinking of λάβροι ανεμοι and λάβρον πῦρ
mwh wrote:I admit to having some sympathy with your method, but you take it much too far.
But I am genuinely curious now. Isn't there anyone here, that when they got to the point that they could pretty much follow what all the characters were saying in a Platonic dialogue, or a tragic play, that simply read a few for fun? Or anything that they hadn't read yet before?

I've been doing this since August. It's been fun, it's been rewarding. If my ability to read Greek atrophies, I will let you all know so that you can be the first to tell me "I told you so." But you guys were saying roughly the same sort of thing about my methods in the Unseens thread. That certainly turned out to be hugely beneficial to my Greek.

Again, my only measure of my progress is whether I can pick up Greek texts that I haven't read before and follow along. In the past couple of years, it has gone from "impossible without a lot of help" to "actually possible" for a lot of authors. I hope to get to "like English" at some point, but I think that I have a lot of reading ahead of me first.
Barry wrote:Seriously, when guys whose initials are include L and S have done all that hard work for you, why not take advantage of it, especially for casual and rapid reading?
For the same reason that you warn people off of interlinears and Loebs. Because, after a couple of years of taking advantage of L&S I notice that my retention of looked up words is poor, and that I am not sufficiently attentive to word formation and context, and I am acting to correct that.
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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Hylander »

Honestly, I think you are wasting time poring over TLG. You may have learned a lot about απαυδαω, but it's a word you will probably never encounter again. LSJ lays out all of the meanings you mentioned, and also provides citations which you could have checked had you wanted to pursue the question further. Then, if you weren't satisfied, you could turn to TLG, but why? In any case, LSJ is a better, more efficient place to start such an investigation than wading through a mass of TLG cites.

And LSJ shouldn't be dismissed as a 19th century product. It underwent a thorough and complete revision in the middle of the last century. Ιt may have deficiencies but so far it's by far the best Greek-English dictionary available, and it's unlikely to be superseded anytime soon, even with the technological advances that made TLG possible. TLG can be used at a very advanced level to nail down questions about vocabulary, but it's best used as a supplement to LSJ. LSJ is a κτημα ες αει.

The translations you offered, "speechless", "breathless", or even "exhausted" (all of which LSJ also mentions), seem weak in the context of the rhetorical hyperbole of this poem. But LSJ also provides citations to other instances where this word is used to mean "faint", which you could pursue if you wanted to. Maybe "dumbstruck" might be better, but if we're going to attempt a translation at all, the poem requires something extravagant and exaggerated, in keeping with its tenor. "Gobsmacked by desire"? (We would use the singular in English.) Maybe there's a hint of irony, given the literal meaning of the components of this word, in that the hyperbolic, vociferous poet here is clearly not "speechless" or "dumbstruck". Or is that reading too much into it? "Struck speechless" might do the trick, consistent with the idea implicit in βαλλε and επιβαλλομενον, but "speechless" alone seems too weak and commonplace.

Instead of spending your time researching récherché words in TLG, I think you would be better off devoting more time and attention to grammar and syntax, which are areas where all too often you seem to be guessing. You also need to think harder about the coherence of the texts you're trying to translate. If your rough translation doesn't seem to fit together or flow naturally, you need to think about it again and ask yourself where you went wrong.

One other point: posting half-finished and less than fully coherent translations on Textkit, with gaps in vocabulary where you don't understand a word offhand and with gross errors in grammar and syntax, isn't helpful. It cries out for someone to step in and correct the errors and gaps, because an erroneous translation could confuse participants in Textkit and undermine one of its primary purposes, namely, to help people attempting the arduous task of learning ancient Greek. I'm not sure what purpose posting half-baked translations serves, but it makes the job of those who step in to correct the errors all the more time-consuming and difficult.

I hope you won't take this too harshly. Your contributions to Textkit are valuable and I hope you won't be too exercised at me for posting this. I hope you will continue to post your efforts at translation, which are often useful springboards for discussion. But when you post an error-ridden translation -- especially when you could do better with a little more attention to grammar and syntax -- I personally have to spend a lot of time going through it and trying to set it right. Not that I'm always right myself, as Paul and mwh showed me yesterday.
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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by jeidsath »

There are a few points to respond to here, with the most important last:

1) Why look at the TLG over a word I won't see again? Primarily so that we could have a thread and discussion. Normally, I'd move on and wait until I saw it again. Also, no, it wasn't wasted time. For one thing, I read a lot of Greek while I was doing it, which taught me things about a few different words. More importantly: No word is an island. Words are not random constellations of sounds. From ἀποαὐδάω I learned about possibilities for ἀπο in composition, about αὐδάω, and about a language that says of "out-of-speech" where we would say of "out-of-breath". Who knows where it will prove useful?

2) I didn't provide a perfect gloss. I'm not trying to translate, I'm trying to learn to read. Once I've read for a few years, and Greek is like English to me, then I can be bothered with translating. These Englishings are just so that we can have a discussion.

3) Nobody learns from this, and people are actively misled. The first is untrue, because I learn a great deal. The two mistakes on this thread that really stand out to me are taking πεπάλαικα for passive because of the dative beside it, and taking πείθων as passive because of the dative beside it. I wouldn't have noticed if it hadn't been explained to me. It wouldn't have been explained to me if I hadn't done a quick translation.

Unfortunately, it's not a problem of my not knowing the forms, it's a problem of not having the forms well enough internalized for my brain to pay attention to the right things when reading. Yes, I could correct this by doing a careful mechanical process of some kind for every sentence, but that's hardly helpful for internalizing the forms and sensitizing my mind to what is important.

But what about the people being misled? Am I corrupting the youth with my poor translations (not to mention innovating on tradition)? First, they have still got their Loebs. This is a learning forum, and not a textbook, and I don't pretend that my translations are anything other than what they are. Further, these threads always provoke a discussion about a wide range of points about Greek.

No one should view it as a burden to participate though. If it's really a burden to let something wrong stand on the internet, simply drop in with a "notice that πειθων is active", etc., and I'll do my best to do the heavy lifting, as the thread originator. But remember that this is supposed to be enjoyable, even if μηδαμοῦ ἄλλοθι ἐντεύξεσθαι αὐτῇ ἀξίως λόγου ἢ ἐν Ἅιδου.
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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Hylander »

it's a problem of not having the forms well enough internalized for my brain to pay attention to the right things when reading. Yes, I could correct this by doing a careful mechanical process of some kind for every sentence, but that's hardly helpful for internalizing the forms and sensitizing my mind to what is important.
What you call a "mechanical process" is a necessary part of learning Greek. You will never internalize the forms and the syntax unless you make sure you understand the grammar as you read. If you do that, eventually you will internalize the grammar. But if you don't -- if you keep guessing at the meaning and hoping you got it right -- I'm afraid you will never read Greek fluently and with accurate comprehension. Some of the time, your method works -- you do get it right -- but not as often as you may think, and not often enough.

Ancient Greek is not necessarily easy, but there's little point in puttering around with it if you're not willing to do the hard work of mastering the grammar. If you do the hard work, however, it's very rewarding.

So I'd encourage you to spend a little more time on thinking about grammar as you read and translate. You might also try working your way through Dickey's composition book.
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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by jeidsath »

Guessing? No, of course not. You have said this before, and it's impossible. If people could read Greek by guessing all of the forms, we would be wise to ditch all of the grammar books tomorrow.

I'm afraid that I can conjugate the perfect and the participles well enough. It would be impossible to read otherwise. πεπάλαικα is perfect active 1st person, and if I wanted it to be middle/passive it would likely be πεπάλαιμαι, though you can't always predict the middle perfect from the active perfect. πείθων is the present active participle, and πειθόμενος the middle/passive, from πείθω. (Though it's the confusion with πείσομαι active future from πάσχω that always trips me up on active/passive sense for various forms of πείθω.) ἔκεισε is 3rd person aorist of καίω, I believe, which doesn't quite get used like our English "burn" much of the time.

The problem is that, unless you get into habits like turning the words into English one by one, or searching head for the verb of a sentence, etc. -- which would kill any possibility of fluency, of course -- you have to read phrases and sentences all at once or they don't make sense. And I'm afraid that the above forms aren't always sufficiently internalized for me to do at the phrase level with no mistakes yet.

Michael mentions "carelessness", and no doubt I could be more careful, but to me it feels much more like standing on a surfboard. You fall off because you're trying to do fifty things at once and can't go slowly, not because of carelessness.

Also, I'll repeat my question:
But I am genuinely curious now. Isn't there anyone here, that when they got to the point that they could pretty much follow what all the characters were saying in a Platonic dialogue, or a tragic play, that simply read a few for fun? Or anything that they hadn't read yet before?
By "reading" though, perhaps I need to specify, "without turning them into English somehow."
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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by seanjonesbw »

jeidsath wrote: Sun Nov 03, 2019 12:08 pm Also, I'll repeat my question:
But I am genuinely curious now. Isn't there anyone here, that when they got to the point that they could pretty much follow what all the characters were saying in a Platonic dialogue, or a tragic play, that simply read a few for fun? Or anything that they hadn't read yet before?
I'm sure everyone here's done this, and not just in Greek, but there's a difference between enjoying the reading fluency you already have and expecting lots more reading at this level of fluency to significantly improve the accuracy of your reading.

The first novel I read in Italian was The Kite Runner (because it was for sale by the tills at the supermarket) - I was pretty pleased with myself that I got the whole way through and understood all the major events. I recently pulled it off the shelf and started reading it again and realised quite how much I'd missed the first time. The thing that changed in between was lots of work taking care to produce accurate, natural Italian sentences and memorise vocabulary (especially when it wasn't cognate with an English word, much less of a problem in Italian than Greek).

Yes, I read more novels as well and I picked up in-context vocabulary and learnt things about syntax that aren't so well expressed in textbooks, and I had a lot of fun, but I don't pretend that my Italian improved just from this. In fact, speaking the language more accurately improved my reading much more than reading it improved my speaking.

And that's not because I wasn't open to the idea. I read Kató Lomb's Polyglot and was fully ready for lots of reading to bring big benefits. Her great success is convincing you to read real texts early and not to worry about missing out words, but I realise now how much hard work is involved in her method alongside breezily reading a novel or two.

When you have moderate reading fluency, it can feel like listening to the radio with a jackhammer going in the background or watching a game of football through frosted glass. After a while I was just desperate to get rid of the jackhammer, so I did the hard work. If you enjoy the snippets you can hear, and you're really averse to 'mechanical' analysis of sentences that brings results for most people in embedding patterns, then I suppose you have to continue with your current method at least until you find it doesn't bring you any more progress (if you reach high fluency this way you should seriously write a book about it). It seems to me a better idea to spend some time in the simulator and learn what all the buttons do rather than repeatedly crash the plane until you learn how to fly it perfectly.

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Paul Derouda »

jeidsath wrote: Sun Nov 03, 2019 12:08 pmAlso, I'll repeat my question:
But I am genuinely curious now. Isn't there anyone here, that when they got to the point that they could pretty much follow what all the characters were saying in a Platonic dialogue, or a tragic play, that simply read a few for fun? Or anything that they hadn't read yet before?
By "reading" though, perhaps I need to specify, "without turning them into English somehow."
I have no doubt that someone like mwh can do it, and no doubt Hylander as well, even if out of modesty he'll deny it. I myself can pretty much do it with early epic (but not with Plato or tragedy), although there's little I haven't read (but I once tried that with The Shield of Heracles, which I've never read in translation).

I think reading Greek is a trade-off: you can spend forever one line of Greek, analyzing and looking up everything, which is hardly the thing to do if you want to read the whole poem, play or book. I don't have patience for that. But there's a limit there. For example: you translated γεγύμνασμαι μὲν ἑταίρης "I've stripped for a whore". However, you have attained a level of Greek where you should know that even if γυμναζω meant "to undress", there's no way that it could take a genitive object to take the meaning "I've stripped for a whore"; it should have made you pause for a moment and think about what was wrong with your interpretation. This is an example of the sort of thing you need to pay conscious attention to, in my opinion; I think in children it happens automatically, but not in us grown-ups.

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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by Hylander »

I am genuinely curious now. Isn't there anyone here, that when they got to the point that they could pretty much follow what all the characters were saying in a Platonic dialogue, or a tragic play, that simply read a few for fun? Or anything that they hadn't read yet before?
Well, I can say that I read ancient Greek texts I've never read before for sheer pleasure. I have to work at understanding some things, and I usually use a commentary and a dictionary, and sometimes I even turn to a translation when I'm stumped. I don't read Greek as fluently as I would English, and I don't think I will ever be able to read, and more or less fully understand, anything in ancient Greek without some amount of effort and assistance from commentaries and the dictionary. But that doesn't mean I have to translate word by word or sentence by sentence. I think I can say truthfully that don't turn what I'm reading into English sentences, even when I have to make an effort to understand how the Greek text fits together.

Putting in the effort to understand what I'm reading to the fullest extent I can is half the pleasure, especially when the text emerges coherently for me. But it can't cohere for me unless I understand the grammar and structure. That doesn't mean analyzing each and every sentence, but rather relying on my internalized grasp of the grammar and vocabulary most of the time.

But I can't see how anyone can reach the point where they can read ancient Greek with pleasure without internalizing the grammar to the point where they don't need to resort to analysis most or at least much of the time. And internalizing the grammar (not just the forms, but the syntax, too) isn't necessarily easy and takes some work.

Sean Jones put it very well.
Bill Walderman

mwh
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Re: Anonyma from Epigrammata Graeca

Post by mwh »

jeidsath wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 12:45 pm
mwh wrote:I admit to having some sympathy with your method, but you take it much too far.
But I am genuinely curious now. Isn't there anyone here, that when they got to the point that they could pretty much follow what all the characters were saying in a Platonic dialogue, or a tragic play, that simply read a few for fun? Or anything that they hadn't read yet before?
Been there, done that, as no doubt most of us have. But there is the problem of noise, Sean’s jackhammer. Whenever I’ve read straight through a tragedy that I haven’t read before I always want to go back and do it properly, using LSJ and the best commentary I can find and a plethora of other resources. And then I would read it again, unaided but applying what I’ve learnt in the process. Even then, of course, I’d still be seeing through a glass darkly. I wouldn’t be able to read it properly, and nor would anyone else. We don’t have enough plays for that, and our knowledge of ancient Greek is severely limited by the repertoire. Even with Plato, wholly extant, we’re handicapped by the loss of contemporary dialogues and a whole lot else; but the problem with Plato is not the Greek but the thought. If by some miracle a previously unknown tragedy came my way, rather than just bits and pieces, I’d be very excited but I’d certainly not rush through it, guessing at what particular words meant. (You refuse to call it guessing, Joel, but that is what is, and there’s nothing wrong with that if you’re in too much of a hurry to check or afraid of falling off your surfboard if you do. I just wish you wouldn’t inflict your guesses on the rest of us.)

Of course it’s good to call to mind earlier contextualized occurrences of a word or construction that you come across, especially if there’s significant intertextuality. But taking a look at LSJ would give you an idea of the word's semantic range, which is even more useful. And take a common-or-garden word such as οὐδὲ, which you translated as “not.” That made sense, but it was not the right sense; and you shouldn’t have needed to search for the Homeric occurrence that you then remembered. You need better controls than random instances that you happen to recall.

And this is where I wax a tad indignant. You tell us that no word is an island, and that words are not random constellations of sounds. Do you really think we do not know that? And you inveigh against turning the words into English one by one, as if that is what the rest of us do. (How many times have I deplored translating?) And—this takes the biscuit—you talk of doing the heavy lifting, as if you are not in the habit of leaving that to others while you go on your merry way.

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