Anabasis, Book 1, Ch. 9 - More about Cyrus

This is not my favorite section so far, essentially a hagiography of Cyrus. Also, I find the Greek to be more difficult than other sections, perhaps it is unfamiliar vocabulary or a slightly flowery style that is appropriate for a section of lavish praise.

Cities and individuals would ally themselves with Cyrus, because of his “carrot-and-stick” policies. And he punished criminals mercilessly; their eyes, hands, and eyes could be seen along the main roads. So both Greek and barbarians could travel without fear. In his first war against the Pisidians and the Mysians, he took part personally, and promoted his most loyal, bravest, and most reckless soldiers to be governors of the subjugated provinces.

And so on.

When I’m reading the Anabasis, some sentences I understand right away, perhaps looking up a word or two. Others require more careful parsing, checking variant meanings, the cases, etc. The book is heavily footnoted, and they help point out many tricky issues of grammar. So, sometimes, with a fair amount of work, I can tease out the correct meaning. (When I’m all done reading a page or two, I do double-check it against Dakyns’ English translation. While translated into a 19th Century style English, and can seem a little antiquated itself, it is presumably completely accurate in its meaning. I’d also say it is a relatively loose, rather than a literal translation.)

But despite my efforts sometimes I remained hopelessly fouled up, and find that out when I resort to Dakyns. For example, I came across one thorny sentence which I could only get this out of:

With respect to justice however, whenever someone became conspicuous, wishing to distinguish himself, he (Cyrus) considered it all-important to distinguish between the very wealthy and those seeking gain by unjust means.

The idea, as I figured it, was that if someone was being generous or giving gifts to Cyrus, he would make sure that the guy had not earned his wealth by crooked means, before he requited the fellow’s friendship. As it turns out, I wasn’t even close.

Dakyns says:

So again, wherever he might discover any one ready to distinguish himself in the service of uprightness, his delight was to make this man richer than those who seek for gain by unfair means.

So, if I take Dakyns’ meaning, and apply it to my literal translation, I get something like this:

With respect to justice however, whenever it was clear that someone wished to distinguish himself (positively), he (Cyrus) considered it all-important to make these ones wealthier than those seeking gain by unjust means.

So where did I go wrong? First, in translating “epideiknusthai” (to distingush oneself) I inferred that it could apply to someone more-or-less currying favor. Not at all. Dakhyns qualifies with the words “in the service of uprightness.” That makes it clearer in English; there’s no doubt that’s the meaning of the Greek, but those words just aren’t in the Greek source. Next, I missed the so-called “genitive of distinction” in reference to the “ones seeking gain by unjust means.” It’s a comparative, requiring “than” in the English. My first effort was close, but misleading. A related problem was the verb “poiew,” which can mean “make, do, fashion, put, arrange, form, appoint, allow, cause, carry out, act, etc.” It’s an all-purpose word, and I stretched it too far, with “distinguish between,” rather than it’s most common, most general meaning of “make.”

I got a little further, and will try to finish this digression into Cyrus’ life in the next day or two.

How did you spend your Saturday?

Comments

  1. Grim wrote:

    Some Aristotle might be clarifying here. In the EN, he outlines several virtues that amount to “rich people spending money for community goods.” I think the comment is that, when Cyrus discovers someone who does that reliably, he would make them even richer (and therefore freer to practice these virtues).

    Those who used their displays of wealth for purposes other than the actual good of the community — while seeking political office, say — would not be so rewarded. They were not practicing the genuine Greek virtues regarding the expenditure of wealth.

    Posted 29 Jul 2007 at 11:27 am

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