i just took my final ancient greek exam of the semester yesterday and have been avoiding studying for my microbiology exam all day. so let's talk about these three devastating lines from anne carson's translation of herakles
and by talk about i mostly mean here's a bunch of different translations
Ἡρακλῆς μαινόμενος - Herakles by Euripides, lines 1398-1400
c. 416 BC.
original text in Ancient Greek via the Perseus Digital Library
Euripides. The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. in two volumes. 1. Heracles, translated by E. P. Coleridge. New York. Random House. 1938.
Herakles translated by Anne Carson in Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides (pg 81-82) 2006
Internet Archive
H of H playbook by Anne Carson (not a direct translation but a reimagining of Herakles, 2021)
Euripides: Herakles, translated by Tom Sleigh, Oxford University Press, 2001
Ian C. Johnston, 2020
Heracles, translated by William Arrowsmith, from Euripides III: Heracles, the Trojan Women, Iphigenia Among the Taurians, Ion (The Complete Greek Tragedies - Euripides III, University of Chicago Press, 2013 (Arrowsmith's translation itself is from 1956)
my own translation with notes under the cut
* everywhere that I have used [] I have inserted a word that does not technically appear in the original text.
Theseus
Stop! Give [your] hand [to me], [your] servant [and] friend.
*more literally: Stop! Give [your] hand to a servant/helper [and] friend.
* Ancient Greek uses different punctuation, though the : symbol is used roughly the same way as it is in English and exclamation points are not used, verb conjugation in English does not differentiate the imperative mood, which παῦσαι (sg.2.aor.imperat.med-pass) is in, and often the way we show imperative mood in written English is with an exclamation point.
-The word δίδου (sg.2.praes.imperat.act.) is also imperative.
-παῦσαι is said in reference to Herakles’ earlier lines, lamenting his - well, the plot of Herakles.
* The particle δὲ has been omitted from the translation. It’s usually translated as but, and, or then.
* The possessive pronoun your - σός - does not appear but is implied.
* χεῖρ᾽ is the short version of χειρός - hand
* ὑπηρέτῃ φίλῳ are both nouns in dative, here answering the question to whom? The word and - καί - does not appear between the two, likely because poetic language. The word ὑπηρέτῃ can also mean rower, an underling, servant, attendant, assistant, and is often translated here as helper. The word φίλῳ is a form of φίλος - friend, loved, beloved, dear
Herakles
No, lest I wipe off blood on your garments.
* Word order changed slightly. The first word is ἀλλ᾽ - poetically shortened version of ἀλλά - usually translated as but, however, here: lest.
* ἐξομόρξωμαι (sg.1.aor.med-pass.) means wipe off or wipe away, but stain is, in my opinion, not an inaccurate translation in regards to the meaning conveyed.
* πέπλοις means any woven cloth, here usually translated as garments, robes or clothes.
* αἷμα means blood and is grammatically either nominative or accusative, probably accusative, μὴ means not and σοῖς is a second person possessive pronoun in plural dative.
Theseus
Wipe it off, spare naught: I [do] not refuse [you].
* ἔκμασσε (sg.2.praes.imperat.act.) - wipe it off - is imperative again, so is φείδου (sg.2.praes.imperat.med-pass.) - spare.
* μηδέν I translated as naught as in nothing, οὐκ means not
* ἀναίνομαι is in sg.1.praes.ind. - so present tense would be the most literal translation, ie. I do not refuse you, but the meaning might best be conveyed in English with the use of future tense, ie. I will not refuse you. The word can also mean reject, deny, renounce and disown, or be ashamed. Possible other translations: I don’t deny you; I won’t reject you; I am not ashamed; I won’t renounce you.)
That's all on Herakles, the rest is me rambling about Ancient Greek grammar for interested parties (mostly myself). If I could put a second cut here, I would.
Some further notes on the grammatical cases and verb conjugation. You'll have noticed that I've followed verbs with parentheses with some abbreviations. I'll break those down a little for those not in the know: unlike English, Ancient Greek has different endings to denote the person in verb conjugation - 1.sg being first person singular as in I, and so on with 2.sg - you, 3.sg he/she/singular they, 1.pl - we, 2.pl - plural you, 3.pl - plural they. There's also technically an extant dual form in some texts (when speaking of a pair of two) but it's rare. Ancient Greek conjugation also varies a lot by the temporal tense, the ancient greek times are present (praesens - praes.), future (futurum and futurum III), imperfect (imperfectum), strong and weak aorist (aor. - this one doesn't exist in any modern languages and is a bit of a jeremy bearimy but is usually translated as either present or past, depending on the context), perfect (perfectum), and pluperfect (pluscuamperfectum) - all of these except imperfect and pluperfect (which only have indicative forms) then have various forms - indicative (ind.), infinitive (inf.), imperative (imperat.), optative (opt.) and conjunctive (coni.). Verbs also have an active (act.) and middle and passive or active and mediopassive (med-pass.) form, except some verbs only have mediopassive versions and are thus translated as either active or mediopassive depending on the context. This is as complicated (and fun!) as it sounds. (editors note: the fun! was not sarcastic - i am a medstudent who hasn't had to take two semesters worth of classes on this, nor do i have to keep taking ancient greek next semester but i'm going to)
Nouns in Ancient Greek also have grammatical cases, nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and vocative, as do adjectives. They also have genders, and adjectives of course have positive, comparative and superlative (good, better, best) forms.
Ancient Greek also uses a lot of participles, which is like a noun-ified verb. Participles are also a concept in English, just - a lot simpler in English, and also I think in English a participle is a verb that has some characteristics of an adjective or noun, whereas in Ancient Greek participles and verbal adjectives are separate concepts. Participles are derived from verbs and have the same grammatical cases as nouns, nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and vocative, and singular and plural versions, and have three genders, masc., fem. and neut. - they also have active and mediopassive forms, and differ based on the temporal conjugation of the verb, retaining its augment, reduplication, characteristic added letters (for example σ in the future tense, and θη + σ in the passive future) or lack thereof, also they can have different endings or roots based on the tense. So, yeah, "conjugate and translate this verb in part.fut.pass.sg.masc.gen. and II aor.part.act.sg.acc.fem." is what a test question might look like at my level of studying ancient greek.
Sentence constructions also differ from English, some of the most common ones are AcI, NcI, genitivus absolutus. accusativus duplex and nominativus duplex. They also will often skip words (particularly the verb to be they often deemed unnecessary) and poetic language is its own can of worms with its own theoretical dialects and prosody.
All of this is like, barely scratching the surface, there's also a bunch of different dialects, stuff varies by era, all of the noun cases have like, a Bunch of different uses, and it's all terribly interesting.
