Sunday, April 28, 2024
Maybe He Should Have Listened to Her
Sophocles, Oedipus the King 1065 (Oedipus to Jocasta; tr. Hugh Lloyd-Jones):
Newer› ‹Older
You will never persuade me not to find out the truth!Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar, rev. Gordon M. Messing (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ©1984), p. 624, § 2745:
οὐκ ἂν πιθοίμην μὴ οὐ τάδ᾽ ἐκμαθεῖν σαφῶς.
Any infinitive that would take μή, takes μὴ οὐ (with a negative force), if dependent on a negatived verb. Here οὐ is the sympathetic negative and is untranslatable.See also William Watson Goodwin, Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb (Boston: Ginn & Company, 1890), p. 326 (§ 815, 2).
οὐκ ἂν πιθοίμην μὴ οὐ τάδ᾽ ἐκμαθεῖν σαφῶς I cannot consent not to learn this exactly as it is S. O.T. 1065.
