The Cases in a Menander's Fragment

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Curius
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The Cases in a Menander's Fragment

Post by Curius »

Hello,
I sometimes come across sentences I'm interested in but don't understand the grammatical complexities and I'd like to have the opportunity to ask questions about.
But I have just endeavored to learn Ancient Greek by myself and am just at the beginning of my training so I'm sorry if my questions may appear naive.

I came across this fragment (792) from Menander:
οὐκ ἔστι τόλμης ἐφόδιον μεῖζον βίου
The provided translation is: "There is no greater asset in life than courage".

I solicit some help in understanding the cases in this sentence.
Am I right in understanding that:

1) ἐφόδιον μεῖζον is in the accusative as direct object complement of the verb to be?

2) βίου is in the genitive because courage is an asset OF life?

3) τόλμης is in the genitive of comparison: no greater asset THAN courage?

So, literally, would the translation be:
no is than-courage (comparison-genitive) greater-asset (accusative) of-life (genitive)?

4) Would the following word order be also correct in Ancient Greek?
οὐκ ἔστι ἐφόδιον μεῖζον βίου τόλμης
Thank you.

mwh
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Re: The Cases in a Menander's Fragment

Post by mwh »

1. It’s nominative (predicate of verb to be)
2. Yes, more or less
3. Yes
4. Yes but unnatural (as well as unmetrical)

Curius
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Re: The Cases in a Menander's Fragment

Post by Curius »

Hello mwh,

1) Yes of course, big mistake I made: εἰμι being a copula verb, the predicate is in the nominative (identical in this case to the accusative). I'm ashamed.

4) I'm very curious and interested in this (because I perceive that this may be very important)!

What makes this word order unnatural?
I don't know with what keywords to google this: what should I search for?.
If I dared, I would even ask if you would have some web link for me.

About the unmetrical nature of this word order, this is clearly out of my league (about Ancient Greek, I don't even belong to any league by far…).

Thank you very much for your answer!

P.S. As is evident, English is not my maternal tongue : please forgive the mistakes (and the unnaturalness!).

mwh
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Re: The Cases in a Menander's Fragment

Post by mwh »

οὐκ ἔστι τόλμης ἐφόδιον μεῖζον βίου.

As to word order, ἐφόδιον βίου belong together (since βίου coheres very tightly with ἐφόδιον), and τόλμης, here given salience by its fronted position, would ordinarily follow μεῖζον, the comparative adjective to which it applies. But the existential οὐκ ἔστι would most likely stand together at the beginning in normal prose just as they do here.

So the most neutral order would probably be οὐκ ἔστιν ἐφόδιον βίου μεῖζον τόλμης (or τῆς τόλμης). But Greek word order is very flexible, as you’re clearly aware.

The meter is iambic trimeter, with caesura after τόλμης. It’s worth learning to recognize iambic trimeters (and also dactylic hexameters, the meter of Homer and all epic).

(And I couldn’t tell that English is not your native language.)

Curius
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Re: The Cases in a Menander's Fragment

Post by Curius »

Hello mwh,
οὐκ ἔστιν ἐφόδιον βίου μεῖζον τόλμης (or τῆς τόλμης)
Indeed your word sorting seams much more logical to me and it particularly solves the problem of the strange intercalation of μεῖζον between ἐφόδιον and βίου.

You also point to Menander naturally wanting to highlight τόλμα by moving it toward the beginning of the sentence.

If, on top of that, metrical criteria are an issue we may end up with a word order far from logical…

In the meantime I've read (in Mastronarde) that, if no emphasis is being sought, the common word order would be subject (if expressed), direct object, indirect object, and verb.

This make sense to me: first who are the players (who or what is acting, who or what is acted, and in what manner) and second what is the game (the action). Any change would then mean emphasis on one the terms.

I knew of the existence of the dactylic hexameter (because of Homer) but not of the iambic trimeter. Scansion on the other hand is very complicated for an amateur and I have enough trouble trying to learn the basics of Ancient Greek…

All this is very interesting and useful; I thank you very much for your answers!

MattK
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Re: The Cases in a Menander's Fragment

Post by MattK »

Mastronarde knows a lot more than I do, but maybe "a common word order" would be better than "the common word order", as you'll find plenty of other structures as well.

Practically speaking, I think it's good to write a lot of sentences in a word order that's different from that of your native language - so for me, as an English speaker, I try to make sure I'm not using subject - verb - object too much.

I really like the word order chapter in the Cambridge Grammar because it provides a framework for deciding how to structure sentences and clauses that's based on quite a few different factors (the key ones being topic and broad/narrow focus).

Curius
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Re: The Cases in a Menander's Fragment

Post by Curius »

Now, be aware that I didn't quote Pr Mastronarde literally and I don't want to misquote him!
Actually he says exactly the same thing as you do because he indeed does insist on the variability of the word order in Ancient Greek.

So the literal quote (p.49 of the second edition) is:
« 11. Word Order. The word order of a Greek sentence is very flexible. In a majority of sentences in which no special emphasis is being sought, the normal order is subject (if expressed), direct object (if any), indirect object (if any), verb. But in fact speakers and writers are more often than not trying to convey some special emphasis, and they adjust the word order to suit. Shifting the order of the example in §9 changes the emphasis:

τῷ ἀγγέλῳ οὐκ ἐπιτρέπουσιν τὰ βιβλία.
They are not entrusting the books to the messenger. »
The previous occurrence of the example was:
τὰ βιβλία τῷ ἀγγέλῳ οὐκ ἐπιτρέπουσιν.
They are not entrusting the books to the messenger.
Pr Mastronarde is always very precise and exhaustive, making place in his expositions for the subtleties of a problem.

MattK
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Re: The Cases in a Menander's Fragment

Post by MattK »

I don't know his book but I do know it's highly regarded - I'm glad you're finding it helpful!

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jeidsath
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Re: The Cases in a Menander's Fragment

Post by jeidsath »

Had I been leaning over our gnomic list-maker's shoulder, I would have suggested this as clearer:

οὐκ ἔστι τόλμης μεῖζον ἐφόδιον βίου

In this ordering, when you hit μεῖζον, the verb instantly mentally resolves as existence, not copula, and the genitive as comparative.
“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

mwh
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Re: The Cases in a Menander's Fragment

Post by mwh »

Schoolkids were endlessly force-fed this kind of pablum, dozens of insipid one-liners dished out for copying.

Here’s another of the same sort, with word order approximating Joel’s: οὐκ ἔσθ’ ὑγιείας κρεῖττον οὐδὲν ἐν βίῳ. They tend to be extremely misogynistic, but this one is innocuous enough.

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