Why accusative in μοῖραν δ ̓ οὔ τινά φημι πεφυγμένον ἔμμεναι ἀνδρῶν ?

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bcrowell
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Why accusative in μοῖραν δ ̓ οὔ τινά φημι πεφυγμένον ἔμμεναι ἀνδρῶν ?

Post by bcrowell »

Iliad 6.488 (Hector to Andromache):

μοῖραν δ ̓ οὔ τινά φημι πεφυγμένον ἔμμεναι ἀνδρῶν,
οὐ κακὸν οὐδὲ μὲν ἐσθλόν, ἐπὴν τὰ πρῶτα γένηται.

Why do we have the accusative for τινά ... οὐ κακὸν οὐδὲ μὲν ἐσθλόν? I would have thought you would use the nominative with εἰμί. Is the accusative used when εἰμί = "there is?" I guess it's true that in English, I'd say "there's me escaping fate," not "there's I escaping fate."
Ben Crowell, Fullerton, California
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Re: Why accusative in μοῖραν δ ̓ οὔ τινά φημι πεφυγμένον ἔμμεναι ἀνδρῶν ?

Post by mwh »

It’s a regular acc.&infin. construction with φημι: I say there’s no-one who has escaped fate. (πεφυγμένον is used transitively despite its passive form.)

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bcrowell
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Re: Why accusative in μοῖραν δ ̓ οὔ τινά φημι πεφυγμένον ἔμμεναι ἀνδρῶν ?

Post by bcrowell »

mwh wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 10:19 pm It’s a regular acc.&infin. construction with φημι: I say there’s no-one who has escaped fate. (πεφυγμένον is used transitively despite its passive form.)
I see, thanks, that makes sense. I was interpreting ἔμμεναι incorrectly. It's an infinitive, so this is like "I consider him to be honest," or "I consider no one to be above the law."
Ben Crowell, Fullerton, California
Ransom is an innovative presentation of Homer made with open-source software: https://bitbucket.org/ben-crowell/ransom

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Re: Why accusative in μοῖραν δ ̓ οὔ τινά φημι πεφυγμένον ἔμμεναι ἀνδρῶν ?

Post by H.E. Nightingale »

bcrowell wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 10:58 pm
mwh wrote: Fri Sep 09, 2022 10:19 pm It’s a regular acc.&infin. construction with φημι: I say there’s no-one who has escaped fate. (πεφυγμένον is used transitively despite its passive form.)
I see, thanks, that makes sense. I was interpreting ἔμμεναι incorrectly. It's an infinitive, so this is like "I consider him to be honest," or "I consider no one to be above the law."
What might have thrown you is the use of perfect participle + present infinitve of εἰμι in place of perfect infinitive (πεφυχθαι in this case). I suppose it's comparable to the 3rd pl. of the perfect passive, πεφυγμενοι εἰσι, rather than the mouthful "πεφυγνται".
Cf. Thucydides 6.29, where perfect participle + ἠν stands in for pluperfect.

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