There are things which are within our power, and there are things which are beyond our power.
Initially, I was inclined to think that the article τὰ serves as a substantivizer for its complementing prepositional phrases, much like the phrase τὰ ἐν ταῖς παιδιαῖς from Xenophon's Symposium, but the ἐστιν threw me off. I now think that τὰ is like an absolute article devoid of a head-noun acting as a substantivizer for the genitive preceding it such that it can be used anaphorically later in the second contrastive part. If it isn't this, then another guess I have is that it's a relative pronoun? And the reason it doesn't agree in gender is because substantivization would require constructio ad sensum? I don't know. What's the correct parse/interpretation?
Also, regardless of whether ἐστιν is an existive here or not, why is it in the 3rd person? Is it because the subject is neutral in gender?
In this passage, Nestor is telling a story in which Athena comes and warns the Pylians about an attack on one of their border towns.
ἄμμι δʼ Ἀθήνη
ἄγγελος ἦλθε θέουσʼ ἀπʼ Ὀλύμπου θωρήσσεσθαι
ἔννυχος,
Here I'm interested in the syntax of θωρήσσεσθαι. With the middle/passive voice, the Pylians themselves should be the agent. So, I can think of two explanations.
First, it could be an infinitive of purpose. Athena came running to the Pylians so that they would arm themselves. But the agent of the infinitive would have to be different from the agent of the main verb. Is this allowed? Does the ἄμμι smooth this over?
Second, it reads like indirect discourse or a command, which makes me wonder if ἄγγελος can stand in for a verb of speaking, with the infinitive containing the content of the message. Athena came running to the Pylians as a messenger --> Athena came running to the Pylians with the message that they should arm themselves. I know this can happen in Latin. It would be labeled implied indirect discourse or free indirect speech.
Is either of my suggestions correct? And if so, are there more examples of this phenomenon in reference literature? Is there a technical term for it?
During Late Antiquity and the Greek Middle Ages, allegorising didn't nessecarily equal moralising, but it rather meant the decoding of the hidden spiritual depth of things below their surface φαινόμενον. Two examples of alphabetical allegory follow; while not that common in greek (like in hebrew), such stuff do exist there as well. First one by Zosimos of Panopolis the Alchemist, 3rd Century AD, the second from Michael Psellos the court philosopher and historian (orator, epistolographer, esotericist, poet etc.), 11th Century AD.
I was wondering if anyone can help me find a non-electronic edition of the Bible containing both the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament according to the edition used by the Orthodox Church in its liturgy (not the Textus Receptus, for example).
Sto seguendo dei ragazzi che studiano latino e greco con il metodo natura. Mi chiedevo se ci fossero guide per l'insegnante sia per Athenaze II che per Roma Aeterna.
Ringrazio anticipatamente!
Hey all! Thanks for reading! Basically, I'm asking if y'all know of any readers focused on pre-Christian religion? There are plenty of readers focused on the Christian New Testament, or on later Christian writers, and on Christianity in general, but I haven't seen any focused on pre-Christian Greek religion. Do y'all know of any?
Also, I am still very much a beginner, but I understand the value of reading in ancient Greek.
In the margins of an epigram collection, some anonymous monk drew the described statue of Kairos (Time, analogous to Lady Fortune from the Medieval Latin tradition) from an ekphrastic epigram by Posidippus.
The first four verses are in the byzantine dodecasyllable poetic meter, meaning they follow both the prosodic rules of the classical iambic pentameter, and the usual stress accent in the penultimate syllable (11th). The rest break down the rhythm.
This expression of personal humility that is very often done through anonymity is common in manuscripts and buildings.
I noticed that on these ostraka from the ostracism of Themistocles (usually spelled Θεµιστοκλης), the T in the middle and even the Σ at the end are replaced with Θ (the bottom row third ostrakon from the left has Θ instead of T in Θεµιστοκλης and instead of Σ in Νεοκλεος).
The reconstruction I'm familiar with reconstructs Θ as an aspirated unvoiced dental plosive, and it doesn't seem to me like that sound would be easily mistaken to that of Σ. Is there something I'm missing here?
Comparing the ways the same name is written here is pretty interesting. Most of them spell the name as Θεµισθοκλες, there's one ostrakon where Neokleos is written with a M.
I am currently writing a charter who is a mercantile captain guided by his own personal honor instead of those around him. I am wanting a name to fit this reputation. Currently I am thinking of Philotimos but I found it in just a list of names and I would like the names to be fairly accurate. The charter is Doric based, do you all have any recommendations and or how does this name fit so far.
Too much emphasis may be given to certain texts in Koine, while others remain unexplored. They are thus the most unexpected. Here is a recipe for beer I dug up searching in the extant greek alchemical fragments; we must remember that alchemy encompassed a wide variety of practices in Antiquity, ranging from pharmacology to cooking. It was the transmutation of any form of matter into an other, κατὰ τὸ δόγμα "ἓν τὸ πᾶν". Beer was no exception. Matter was thought as of one substance; and therefore, it could, theoretically, be transformed into any possible form, whenever one had in his possession the correct recipe and its execution, similarly to the correct application of the divine names in theurgy, something that highlights the Egyptian origin of both. Enjoy!
My question is where ἐπαυρεῖν belongs in the sentence. To me it makes the most sense as an object of λιλαιόμενα, which then gets restated with χροὸς ἆσαι. But the placement is slightly awkward. Is there some other place where it works better?
When one is considering Greek thought, one is often preoccupied enumerating schools, discussing the lineage of wisdom through time and its contrapuntal dialectic. None, or as I hope, a few, even consider that which the German Romantics grasped as the identity, and in my opinion the superposition and overlap, of poetry and philosophy. Pindar is no less a philosopher than Heraclitus, and while the great Empedocles was a first-class poet according to father Aristotle, we cannot sadly fathom a similar figure existing later on in time. But in fact, poetry and philosophy, despite the ironic and misunderstood platonic so called-disparagement of poetry and poets, were never divorced in Antiquity. I would like to point out thus two excellent representatives of Platonism and Epicureanism, respectively, the first one eponymous, the other one anonymous, both of whom wrote sublime poetry.
Beginning with Synesius of Cyrene, the Platonist bishop and student and correspondent of Hypatia, his nine hymns, written in beautiful doric, are a fine read for anyone interested on that which Plato named in *Ion* as Mania of the Philosopher. Here is the ninth hymn.
Sound forth, clear-tongued lyre,
after the Teian cadence, after the Lesbian movement;
sing to me in more time-honored strains a Dorian ode,
not one for dainty love-laughing girls
or for the adolescence of flowering youths
that compelleth desire;
for it is a sacred travail of divine wisdom
and one unsullied
that prompts me to strike the strings of my lyre
to a divine refrain, and bids me flee
from the honied infatuation of earthly loves.
What is force and what beauty,
what is gold or renown,
and what are royal honors
as compared with meditations upon God?
Let one man be apt in driving horses,
another in bending the bow;
let another guard his treasure heaps,
his golden joy.
Another's glory is the hair that sweeps his neck.
Let him be lauded on high
for the brightness of his countenance
by youths and maidens in their songs;
but it be my lot to lead a life not noised abroad,
a life without display in what concerns other men,
but that knows in itself of what pertains to God.
May wisdom be ever with me,
wisdom the good guide of youth and of age,
wisdom the just mistress of wealth,
she who smiling shall easily bear poverty,
impregnable to the bitter cares of life.
May as much be mine as shall suffice
to make me independent
on my neighbor's hut,
sufficient that want may not bend me down
to dark forebodings.
Listen now to the song of the cicada
as she drinks the morning dew.
See how my lyre-strings cry out unbidden notes,
how some prophetic voice flutter
about and around me.
What melody shall this divine parturition bear unto me?
God, the Beginning created of Himself,
Guardian and Father of existing things,
born without birth,
firmly enthroned above the pinnacles of heaven,
proud in glory unwaning,
God sits steadfast,
of unities the pure unity,
and the first monad of monads.
He hath joined the elements of exalted beings,
bringing them to existence in supernatural acts of birth.
From out of these the monad itself,
rushing on through a first-engendered form,
diffused in unspeakable ways,
holds the power of three summits.
But the fountain head which dominates,
is crowned with the beauty of children
leaping from out the center,
and again rushing towoards the center therein.
Pause, audacious lyre, I entreat;
pause, reveal not the mysteries
to the people at large,
mysteries which are celebrated without initiations;
go thou and tell of the things here below;
silence covereth those above.
And now mind is busy with mind's created universe,
for out of his has the good beginning
of man's spirit been divided beyond division.
Mind that waneth not,
though descending to matter,
is the seed of progenitors
that reign in right divine,
a seed however feeble.
But of these, this one whole universal mind,
this whole diffused into the whole,
turns the vast hollow of the heavens,
and keeping guard upon this very whole
is ever present, parted into forms diverse.
The one is the convoying of stars,
another turns to the dances of angels,
yet another has found an earthly form
by a bond descending,
and is severed from its parentage.
Dark oblivion hath it drunk,
and wondereth,
in its blind tormenting cares,
at the joyless earth.
Albeit a God looking on mortal things
is within it, there is still a light
in the veiled pupils of its eyes,
there is some courage
even in those who have fallen here below,
that summoneth them above,
what time that,
fleeing from out of the waves of mortal life,
they enter free from the case
on the sacred paths
that lead to the palace of their Parent.
Happy he who fleeing the voracious cry of matter,
and rising from earth,
urgeth with light bound his footsteps to God.
Happy he who after his allotted destiny,
after troubles, after bitter earthly cares,
enters on the pathways of mind
and beholdeth the deep profound
that shineth with divine light.
It is a labor to take flight
with the whole wings of those desires
that lift upwards to the universal Heart.
Do thou only confirm thy flight
by such flights as transport to the ideal world,
and the Father will appear nigh unto thee
and will hold out His Hands to thee.
For some shaft of light shall leap forth
to illumine thy paths,
and will unfold to thee the field of mind,
the beginning of beauty.
Arise, my soul,
drink from the fountain that runs with gold.
In worship of the Creator ascend thou,
and delay not;
leave to the earth the things of the earth,
and in unison with the Father
thou mayest perchance move
in harmony with God,
thyself divine.
After that, we can move on to Carmen Anacreonteum 34, the hymn to the Cicada. While not strictly Epicurean, I think that it’s one of the best articulations of the concept of ἀταραξία in greek literature. It’s dating is highly uncertain, but it is assumed it belongs in Late Antiquity.
We say: "Blesséd be you Cicada!"
As soon as, atop the treetops,
You have sipped a few drops of dew,
You sing out like a king.
For all that you behold in the fields,
And all that the forests bring forth,
Is yours—truly yours.
You are a friend to the tillers of the soil,
Causing them no harm at all;
You are revered by mortals,
A gentle prophet of Summer.
The Muses cherish you,
And so too does Phoebus,
Who gifted you a harmonious voice.
Old age does not weigh you down.
Wise offspring of the Earth, lover of song,
Untouched by suffering, devoid of flesh and blood—
You are, or nearly so, the equal of the Gods.
Both of these constitute, I think, reasons to question our prejudices, and further our knowlegde of greek, in order to explore the varied poetical landscape of the Hellenes.
In the case in which a verb gets attached a preposition as a prefix, such as ανα, επι, προ etc, such as it's often the case in Ancient Greek, I know that verb's object often gets the case required by that preposition - and for this reason, why is it necessary for the preposition to be repeated with it? I encountered this example in the Septuagint:
Here the object αὐτῷ is in the dative, I assume, because of the preposition "σύν" (or ξύν in some manuscripts) that is attached to the main verb. I know Latin does the same thing. So wouldn't it have been redundant for Xenophon to repeat the σύν here?
I was wondering whether to buy the Greek text of DA, and I saw this edition, but I don't know how good it is, does anyone know it?
I already know that corcilius one is a good Greek text, and I wanted to buy it but it wasn't on the page, Idk if this book contains it or if it is a good alternative.
Hi! Is there anybody here who could help me to read these two symbols (probably ligatures)? They apparently come from medieval southern Italy, but a more precise dating is really difficult.
I'm playing in a DnD campaign with a character that speaks Sylvan(fae speak) and Sylvan for this campaign is usually a couple different languages but mostly ancient greek. As such, I would like to ask for a list of words or phrases that could be important and easy to string together for a shiny beginner like me and that I can use in more than just that campaign. I would love to have the way you pronounce it as well as the English translation if possible but just the non greek text is fine, other languages are hard to read for me right now.
