Problems in Greek Syntax 9781463222086

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Problems in Greek Syntax

A n a l e c t a Gorgiana

375 Series Editor George Anton Kiraz

Analecta Gorgiana is a collection of long essays and

short

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Problems in Greek Syntax

Basil Gildersleeve

l gorgias press 2009

Gorgias Press LLC, 180 Centennial Ave., Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2009 by Gorgias Press LLC Originally published in All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2009

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ISBN 978-1-60724-624-4

ISSN 1935-6854

Extract from The ^American Journal of Philology 23 (1902)

Printed in the LTnited States of America

AMERICAN

JOURNAL

OF

PHILOLOGY

VOL. X X I I I , I.

W H O L E NO. 89.

I.—PROBLEMS IN G R E E K S Y N T A X . 1 I. INTRODUCTORY.

Some nine years ago I conceived the plan of collecting my own studies in Greek syntax, together with those that had been set on foot at my suggestion, and of publishing the whole under the title of'Problems in Greek Syntax.' While I found little to retract, there was not a little to add by way of further illustration and ' I n an address delivered in December, l8gg, on the ' P l a c e of Philology,' President W h e e l e r of the University of California made public lamentation over ' the exaggerated attention paid to syntax in American class-rooms of Greek and L a t i n 1 as constituting ' the severest menace to the usefulness and therefore to the continuance of classical s t u d y ' . This warning was duly echoed by the editor of the Classical Review, himself a g r a m m a r i a n ; but as no names were mentioned and as, of late years, other American scholars have flooded the philological world, and, for aught I know, their class-rooms, with a fertilizing Nile of syntactical studies, I might have failed to take the lesson to myself. T r u e , I have worked at syntax and if I have not ' t u r n e d up the field of Aphrodite or the Charites' with my grammatical ploughshare, as Pindar would say, I have, at least, like T e n n y s o n ' s Northern Farmer (Old Style) ' s t u b b ' d ' or helped to stub ' T h u r n a b y waaste.' But in order that I might not comfort myself with the thought that I had done some decent work and that at any rate I was not the greatest sinner in the land, the editor of an English educational journal proceeded to point President Wheeler's moral and to reinforce Professor Postgate's comment by holding up Professor Gildersleeve as one who had exercised a deleterious influence on cis-Atlantic classical studies. What a sad return for the patience with which I have k e p t my arrows within my quiver for all these years! fiii rig in npoippuv ayafoc Kai 1

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explanation, and the volume would have bulked largely enough to arrest the attention of the scholarly world. F o r no obiter dicta, no pregnant aphorisms, will avail nowadays. If the chips are not sent in with the table, the table cannot be accepted as a specimen of joiner's work. T o this collection I intended to prefix an introductory essay which should set forth my point of view and indicate some lines of research that could, in my judgment, be profitably pursued. In the preparation of this essay I made use of no works of reference, in the hope that I should thereby gain in readableness, a hope which proclaims me to be still in the bonds of literary iniquity. 1 N o true grammarian has any right to be readable. Being called on unexpectedly to say something at the Chicago meeting of the American Philological Association, in 1893, I availed myself of the opportunity to air some of the notions embodied in the essay, so that a few of the phrases here used may be familiar to some of my readers and in the time that has elapsed some of the points made have been more fully developed, now in the Journal, now in special treatises by my students, and haply by others. O n reviewing this performance I cannot help thinking that while it was well to abandon the projected volume of syntactical studies, the introductory matter IJTZLOÇ EGTO). But the p u b l i c a t i o n of this series of p a p e r s will show how little I a m d i s t u r b e d b y these criticisms, w h i c h I m e n t i o n by way of e n c o u r a g e m e n t to m y fellow-syntacticians a n d I resume my lucubrations in c h e e r f u l mood. oaa ôpûv evcppaLve $v[j.óv, says Bakchylides. A n d should I ever n e e d h e a r t e n i n g , I will read a n d re-read w h a t W e i l , who is no syntactician à outrance, h a s w r i t t e n on the subject of G r e e k Syntax in the J o u r n a l des Savants for M a y , igoi. ' < L e > don < de sentir et de faire s e n t i r les n u a n c e s les plus délicates > , nécessaire à tout g r a m m a i r i e n , l'est p a r t i c u l i è r e m e n t à celui qui e n t r e p r e n d d ' é c r i r e u n e s y n t a x e grecque. R i e n n e ressemble moins à un code : elle obéit, il est vrai, à des lois que l'on peut dégager, mais dès qu'on essaye d e f o r m u l e r ces lois, elle résiste, elle réclame sa liberté : c e t t e liberté n ' e s t c e p e n d a n t pas la l i c e n c e ; si elle semble e n f r e i n d r e la l e t t r e d e l à loi, c'est p o u r m i e u x se c o n f o r m e r à son esprit. C'est que la langue grecque, p r o d u i t n a t u r e l d'un p e u p l e a d m i r a b l e m e n t doué, n' a pas c o n n u p e n d a n t des siècles le joug étroit des g r a m m a i r i e n s de profession ; i n s t r u m e n t d ' u n e merveilleuse souplesse, elle s' a c c o m m o d a au c a r a c t è r e des g e n r e s littéraires, au génie des poètes, des orateurs, des écrivains qui savaient en jouer, c a p a b l e de r e n d r e les plus fines n u a n c e s du sentiment et de la p e n s é e . Mobile et variée à l'infini, tout en r e s t a n t la m ê m e , c e t t e l a n g u e fait, par son a p p a r e n t e indiscipline, le désespoir d e s g r a m m a i r i e n s rigides et les délices des esprits qui savent la goûter.' 1

T h e notes are all a f t e r t h o u g h t s .

PROBLEMS

IN

GREEK

SYNTAX.

3

may not have lost all its interest. A s editor of the American Journal of Philology I have imposed on myself a self-denying ordinance, and when after the first ten years, the supply of copy for the department of original communications became ample, I withdrew into the narrow confines o f ' Brief Mention.' But in the volumes that are yet to be issued under my management I expect to try the patience of my subscribers more seriously than I have done heretofore, and with this number I make the beginning. It is a droll fate that a man whose ambition for all his early years was to be a poet, or, failing that, to be a man of letters, should have his name, so far as he has a name at all, associated with that branch of linguistic study which is abhorrent to so many finely constituted souls. But when I renounced literature as a profession and betook myself to teaching, I found that there was no escape from grammar, if I was to be honest in my calling. Every teacher must spend much time in the study of grammar, if he is to do his duty, for no teacher finds any grammar satisfactory at all points. Each author has a grammar of his own, written or unwritten. Each student has a grammar of his own, has his ways of adjusting the phenomena to his range of vision or vice versa, less frequently vice versa. A s soon as one begins to handle the language practically, to set exercises, to correct exercises, even in the elementary form of retroversion, problems are sure to arise. T h e rules will not work; the facts will not fit into the scheme; analysis will not yield synthesis; the prepositions and the cases are rebellious ; and the moods and tenses will not reproduce themselves, when the test of retranslation is applied. It is in the very beginnings that the troubles show themselves. In Greek verse composition, in Latin verse composition, the problems are not so obtrusive. T h e y are veiled in phraseology, and hence in the mosaic of Greek and Latin verses there are much fewer errors in grammar than might be expected from the very slender knowledge that the artists display when they come to write on grammatical subjects. One is reminded of the way in which Aristophanes mimics epic syntax. True, in almost all modern productions of this kind the eye of the student of historical syntax will detect absurd lapses, absurd anachronisms, absurd violations of sphere; 1 but if we are 1 So in running my eye over a volume of G r e e k verses to w h i c h I owe some pleasant half-hours, I notice tlaiv in A t t i c verse as a p r e s e n t ; 2nd pers. pres.

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to lay righteousness to the line and j u d g m e n t to the plummet, there will be no enjoyment of any artificial poetry, there will be no pleasure in the study of the Alexandrians or in the contemplation of the G r e e k A n t h o l o g y . T h e r e is such a thing as being too sensitive. O n e scholar tells us that Victor H u g o lost somewhat of his French touch by his residence in Jersey. A n o t h e r that L y s i a s had lived too long in the W e s t to be considered a safe guide in the matter of Atticism. 1 L e t us not be too hard to please ; let us not break the bruised ' R e e d s of C a m ' nor pluck to pieces the paper ' Garland of the Severn,' nor stop our ears to the ' W h i s p e r s of the Hesperides.' T h e advantage that comes to the individual from the close study of diction and versification is undeniable, and the cheap fun that has been made of Latin and G r e e k verse-wrights ought not to lead scholars w h o have not been b r o u g h t up under English influences to sneer at exercises that have a positive value. W h a t English scholar would be guilty of such quantities as German ' Gelehrte ' inflict on a long-suffering public ? 2 W h a t sterner demand for practice in verse-making could be made than has been made of late by W i l a m o w i t z — o n e of the most brilliant scholars of our day ? N o translator ' is he that cannot translate both w a y s . ' 3 But the advantage is an individual subj. with neg. as an imperative, which, by the way, may be found in Hug's Symposium 17g, B 5 (jiri 1-syVi); the articular infinitive used with the same freedom as in prose; irptv with pres. inf. as a normal thing and as many Set emov or emov ¿ya> ? A n d lo ! w e encounter at once t h e q u e s t i o n of hiatus, w e e n c o u n t e r the question of position, w e encounter the question of e x p r e s s i n g the subject at all, e v e r y o n e a stylistic p r o b l e m . 1 O u r g r a m m a r s tell us that the subject need not be e x p r e s s e d , n a y , is not e x p r e s s e d unless it is e m p h a t i c ; but it is e x p r e s s e d , n e e d l e s s l y e x p r e s s e d , e x p r e s s e d w h e r e w e c a n feel no special emphasis. T h e v e r b s of these subjects h a v e a certain r a n g e ; t h e y are v e r y often v e r b s of s a y i n g , t h i n k i n g , k n o w i n g , and with these v e r b s the first p e r s o n is v e r y often e x p r e s s e d w h e r e w e d o not feel the need. T h i s assertion of personality in e'ywSa, in eyov€vw involves o (fiowis, it involves also tov (faovov. No Xdyor without the two. But there is a difference which pole is presented, whether we say rj brjfioKpaTia Kare\v6r) (Lys. 13, 4), or Karikvo-av Trjv SrjfjLOKpaTiav (cf. § 12), Or TI)V SrjfioKpariav Karekvaav. In translation, it is true, we are perfectly right to sacrifice active to passive or passive to active as the case may be, in order to bring out the emphasis of position, but translation is a poor approximation and should not be allowed to efface, in our minds at least, the native distinctions. T h e accusative has far more primitive force, has far more passion in it than the nominative, and in all moments of excitement rushes to the head of the sentence, so that this reversal of the poles of the sentence is a mechanical device that cannot be considered a perfect success, and yet if we retain the original order and say ' Him ye have taken ' This Jesus hath God raised up,' everyone feels that the stress is overdone. This is a problem of perpetual recurrence and has not escaped our grammars, but involving as it does the order of words, it is either passed over lightly or answered by a mechanical formula that satisfies no one. It is, then, by no means a matter of indifference whether we express a thought actively or passively, whether the subject takes the place of the object or not — n a y , the rhetoricians tell us that in some circumstances it makes a difference whether we use the nominative with the finite verb or the accusative and the infinitive,2 but the distinction which they ' A r . Ran. 1212.

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Theon II 74 Sp.

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make is hardly a grammatical one. It simply amounts to saying that with the accusative and infinitive one shirks the responsibility and is therefore more modest. OBLIQUE

CASES.

T h e rivalry of nominative and accusative, though fairly recognized, is commonly relegated to the unsatisfactory category of emphasis, and so dismissed, but the real point, the rivalry between the oblique cases will not down and makes it hard to sit in the seat of those who are scornful of petty grammatical distinctions. No grammar can escape the registry of these rival uses and a certain differentiation is demanded. W h e n two cases have the same form, as dative and locative in Greek or as many datives and ablatives in Latin, how are we to tell which case is meant? Ordinarily in Latin the problem is simple enough, but sometimes it cannot be solved by grammatical tests. Sometimes the only test is the author's way of looking at things, just the same test that we apply to vocabulary in case of verbs, just as we say that in Pindar P. 2, 62: dvafjdo-ofiai arokov, it is more poetical 1 and consequently more Pindaric to take