This entry was discussed on Atelaes’ talk page; here is the discussion that ensued:
- Ἀρκάδες Ἀζᾶνες βαλανηφάγοι, οἳ Φιγάλειαν Νάσσασθ᾽, &c. — Orac. Pyth. ap. Pausan. Arcad. c. 42.
Hi Atelaes (or would you prefer Jesse?). How would you translate Ἀρκάδες Ἀζᾶνες βαλανηφάγοι, οἳ Φιγάλειαν Νάσσασθ᾽? Also, what does "Orac. Pyth. ap. Pausan. Arcad. c. 42." refer to? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 16:52, 27 January 2011 (UTC)Reply
- Atelaes is fine. The first part is simply an appositive. 'Ἀζᾶνες' means those of 'Zan', which is apparently just another name for Arcadia, so I would simply drop it in a translation (it would be like saying 'the Americans from the US', fine in Ancient Greek, horrible in English). So, it could either be considered a full clause: 'The Arcadians are acorn-eaters', or a introductory phrase: 'The acorn-eating Arcadians.' The second part is something like, 'those who inhabit Phigalia.' So, the full thing would be, 'The acorn-eating Arcadians, who dwell in Phigalia...'. Looking at the full work, it looks like it's part of a larger introductory clause (Ancient Greek positively loves page-long sentences), so it's not really supposed to be grammatically complete. If you wanted to include 'Ἀζᾶνες' in the thing, you could say 'The Azanian Arcadians', as they've done here, but the word 'Azanian' isn't really meaningful in English (or at least not referencing the Arcadian region), so I'd just leave it myself. Then again, proper nouns are rather more flexible as to whether they 'exist' in any language or not. So, yeah. Any questions, let me know. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 23:32, 5 February 2011 (UTC)Reply
- Oh, great, thanks! That's a footnote to a citation I've used. If it's all the same to you, I'll use that "official" translation, rendering "Azanian Arcadians, acorn-eaters, who dwell in Phigaleia, &c.". I see that's from a work by Pausanias, which I'm guessing is the name for which the abbreviation "Pausan." stands; what about the rest of those abbreviations? Could you expand the abbreviated citation into its full form please? Lastly, could you offer any reason why Ἀρκάδες, Ἀζᾶνες, Φιγάλειαν, and Νάσσασθ᾽ all have initial majuscules, whereas βαλανηφάγοι and οἳ have initial minuscules? –Ἀρκάδες, Ἀζᾶνες, and Φιγάλειαν are all proper nouns (right?), but Νάσσασθ᾽ doesn't make the same sense… Thanks again, and any help you can give would be most appreciated. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 13:55, 10 February 2011 (UTC)Reply
- Νάσσασθ should not be capitalized, and in many of the other versions of this work that I've seen, it's not. I suggest uncapitalizing it in our cites. I'm not entirely sure what the abbreviations stand for. It's from the 'Arcadian' chapter of Pausanias' 'Description of Greece.' I can only suspect that the abbreviations are for the Latin version of that information. You might run it by EncycloPetey and see if he can guess what words could be thus abbreviated and mean that. Sorry. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί
- Hello. These words belong to a Pythia's prophecy mentioned by Pausanias in Arcadia, 42 (full text here). So we could read the abbr. as Oraculum Pythiae apud ... (or something like that). --flyax 15:43, 11 February 2011 (UTC)Reply
- @ Atelaes: The original source for that footnote is this, which is why I used ϱ and ϰ in Ἀρκάδες, rather than ρ and κ. Since it's an English quotation with an Greek footnote, I don't think it would be appropriate to uncapitalise Νάσσασθ as we would for an Ancient Greek quotation. On that topic, I'm not entirely certain whether the βαλανηφάγοι in that footnote has an initial minuscule or whether it is in fact Βαλανηφάγοι, but it looks more like a minuscule beta to me; what do you reckon?
- @ Flyax: Excellent. So shall I expand the footnote we have to "Ἀρκάδες Ἀζᾶνες βαλανηφάγοι, οἳ Φιγάλειαν Νάσσασθ᾽, &c. — Orac[ulum] Pyth[iæ] ap[ud] Pausan[ian] Arcad[ian] c[aput] 42." (assuming my case endings are correct) and translate it as "Azanian Arcadians, acorn-eaters, who dwell in Phigaleia, &c. — Oracle of Pythia in the writings of Pausanias in Arcadia chapter 42."?
- — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 19:59, 11 February 2011 (UTC)Reply
- I asked Caladon about this (EncycloPetey was unavailable, having not contributed here since the 15ᵗʰ of December). In the light of our discussion, I shall expand the footnote to "Ἀρκάδες Ἀζᾶνες βαλανηφάγοι, οἳ Φιγάλειαν Νάσσασθ᾽, &c. — Orac[ulum] Pyth[iæ] ap[ud] Pausan[ian de] Arcad[iâ in] c[apite] 42." and translate it as "Azanian Arcadians, acorn-eaters, who dwell in Phigaleia, &c. — Oracle of Pythia in the writings of Pausanias on Arcadia in chapter 42.". — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 10:40, 21 February 2011 (UTC)Reply
Hi Atelaes. Could you judge that beta, please? Is the word βαλανηφάγοι or Βαλανηφάγοι? — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 15:10, 1 April 2011 (UTC)Reply
- Sorry about that. It does look like a lowercase beta, as uppercase betas typically don't have the tail, rather they look basically identical to Latin capital B's. However, I can't shake the feeling that it looks bigger than it should for lowercase. -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 12:56, 2 April 2011 (UTC)Reply
- Yes, its size is one of the things that made me unsure, too (the other is the fact that every other Greek word bar οἳ in that footnote is capitalised). Still, if you're leaning toward seeing it as a minuscule, I'll go with that. Thanks. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 14:06, 3 April 2011 (UTC)Reply
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