[B-Greek] Martyrdom of Polycarp 9:1
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Mon Dec 29 14:06:01 EST 2008
On Sunday, December 28, 2008, at 04:26PM, "Bert de Haan" <dehaanaf at gmail.com> wrote:
>Τῷ δὲ Πολυκάρπῳ εἰσιόντι εἰς τὸ στάδιον φωνὴ ἐξ οὐρανοῦ ἐγένετο·
>Ἴσχυε, Πολύκαρπε, καὶ ἀνδρίζου.
>TWi DE POLUKARPWi EISIONTI EIS TO STADION FWNH EX OURANOU EGENETO:
>ISCUE, POLUKARPE, KAI ANDRIZOU.
>
>
>Rodney A. Whitacre in A Patristic Greek Reader says that TWi DE
>POLUKARPWi EISIONTI is dative for time. (Actually he says dative
>participle for time but I understand him to include the noun.) He
>cites Smyth 14989.
This should be §1498, but it is worth looking at §§1495-1498, all on
one Perseus page: http://tinyurl.com/ayf6ze
= http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0007&query=id%3D%231498&word=time
I think that the Smyth account as a whole makes reasonable sense.
"In expressions of time a participle is often used
>with the dative of the person interested in the action of the subject,
>and especially to express the time that has passed since an action has
>occurred (cp. "and this is the sixth month with her, who was called
>barren" St. Luke i. 36)."
>My problem is with this dative for time. First of all, I don't
>understand some of Smyth's examples;
>-In Luke 1:36 the time is specified apart from the dative and the
>dative makes sense without calling it a dative of time.
I'd agree: ... καὶ οὗτος μὴν ἕκτος ἐστὶν αὐτῇ τῇ καλουμένῃ στείρᾳ
KAI hOUTOS MHN hEKTOS ESTIN AUTHi THi KALOUMENHi STEIRAi
I'd even call this a dative of the possessor with ESTIN existential,
certainly not a "temporal dative."
>- His next example P. Pr. 321c, APOROUNTI D' AUTWi ERCETAI PROMHQEUS
>Prometheus comes to him in his perplexity.
>The dative here I understand to be a result of ERCETAI, coming to him.
> APOROUNTI could just be in apposition to AUTWi.
Well, ordinarily a dative of the person isn't used with a verb of motion; we would
sooner expect, I think, accusative of the person with PROS or PARA. This is
probably a good example for Smyth's explanation: dative of interest: "And to his
aid in his difficulty Prometheus comes to him."
>- X.A.6.3.10. XENOFWNTI POREUOMENWi hOI hIPPEIS ENTUGCANOUSI
>PRESBUTAIS while Xenophon was on the march, his horsemen fell in with
>some old men. The two words in the dative seem to be in an absolute
>construction. I would understand this sentence the exact same way if
>the two datives were genitives. Is it possible that a "dative
>absolute," unlike the genitive absolute, always refers to time? In
>this sentence I can't think of another reason for the dative other
>than time. This last example I think is like the passage from
>Martyrdom in that it is absolute. Is this construction so common that
>the datives from this sentence of Martyrdom of Polycarp likely are
>dative of time? And when/while Polycarp entered the stadium there
>came a voice from heaven: "Be strong Polycarp and courageous." Could
>it just indicate an indirect object? "A voice from heaven came to
>Polycarp entering the stadium: " Be strong Polycarp and courageous."
This example is certainly more like the passage cited from Polycarp. But
there is something of the dative of interest here: "As Xenophon traveled,
his horsemen encounter elderly men." In my version here "his" conveys
what I think is the sense of the dative: Xenophon is the person to whom
this event if of concern/interest. For my part, I really don't think this is the
same as an absolute construction su;ch as we have with a genitive
participle-substantive phrase that has no direct syntactic linkage to the
main clause.
George Somsel has cited material from BDF on the dative of time, but
it seems to me that none of what he has cited bears upon the matter
of the participial phrase in the dative that some might tentatively describe
as a "dative absolute" or "dative pendent." I wouldn't want to describe
it thus; I'd rather see these as datives of the person interested or concerned
about the event or assertion made in the main clause.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (ret)
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