Re: Grammar question: Imperatival use of participle

Thanks for the thoughts re: judging past scholars by present standards. I'm thinking a little beyond that: many years ago I took a course with Harry Avery on Pindar, during which Avery pointed out that Gildersleeve and Wilamowitz, both of whom had important things to say about Pindar, had both been on the wrong side in major wars -- Gildersleeve a Confederate officer, Wilamowitz a loyal Prussian during WWI -- the way Pindar had been on the wrong side in the Greco-Persian war of 480-79. How all three of them responded to their wrongness is interesting: Pindar honoring well-born, heroic athletes and thereby standing in some sense against Athenian democratic proto-nationalism; Gildersleeve and Wilamowitz acutely interpreting Pindar but also making pronouncements in favor of their respective lost causes. Princeton, from which Gildersleeve graduated in 1849, has been coming to terms with his record: https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fslavery.princeton.edu%2Fstories%2Fsimon-e-gikandi&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40LSV.UKY.EDU%7Cadc002b48f6846e0f2f508d678ba9221%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C636829140060754676&sdata=PL11yEDKkq7%2Bza79OUXr5wCmRH8xVF%2FmN6dyY4B0yPo%3D&reserved=0. Wilamowitz at war is investigated by Robert Norton in a fairly recent article: https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jstor.org%2Fstable%2F25691208&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40LSV.UKY.EDU%7Cadc002b48f6846e0f2f508d678ba9221%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C636829140060754676&sdata=cyUQ6M2wAsdRQ9DZsJiIEq6NGymAueEXKgDH%2BKKQh64%3D&reserved=0. Robertson, a devout son of North Carolina, remembered his father, who had owned "nearly a hundred" slaves, struggling during Reconstruction, and his own political awakening during the presidential campaign of 1876 when southern hopes resided in the Democratic candidate Tilden. This, and Robertson's enthusiastic support of Thomas Dixon's The Leopard's Spots (1902), a precursor of Gone With the Wind in novelistic presentation of the "Lost Cause," are discussed in the Southern Baptist Seminary's recent committee report on Racism and the Legacy of Slavery, which I cited the other day. https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sbts.edu%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F12%2FRacism-and-the-Legacy-of-Slavery-Report-v4.pdf&data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40LSV.UKY.EDU%7Cadc002b48f6846e0f2f508d678ba9221%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C1%7C636829140060754676&sdata=S6pQyszcWtNsCOZbvrDPVL7HUvo9MYy647LKpPwocJY%3D&reserved=0. If there's no question about the influence of Pindar's Theban citizenship on his poetic work, perhaps there should be less question about the influence of the upbringing and political convictions of the modern scholars on *their* work, though it takes a bit of work to tease out the traces of the Lost Cause in Robertson's Grammar of the Greek NT, or in Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar. I haven't done that work, so I'll stop here!
Owen Cramer 

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From: Classical Greek and Latin Discussion Group <[email protected]> On Behalf Of James Spinti
Sent: Friday, January 11, 2019 10:22 AM
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Subject: Re: Grammar question: Imperatival use of participle

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Thanks to Owen for the link.

And related to Barry’s comment on judging past scholars by present standards, I just read this the other day (I believe it isn’t behind a paywall):
https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F01%2F08%2Fbooks%2Freview%2Fedith-wharton-house-of-mirth-anti-semitism.html&amp;data=02%7C01%7CCLASSICS-L%40LSV.UKY.EDU%7Cadc002b48f6846e0f2f508d678ba9221%7C2b30530b69b64457b818481cb53d42ae%7C0%7C0%7C636829140060754676&amp;sdata=NNvyMsYc53xP%2FeJUz4TjKOz7AqA1A2FCIB%2BTSUsdBtE%3D&amp;reserved=0

Safelinks avoidance:
https://www [.] nytimes [.] com/2019/01/08/books/review/edith-wharton-house-of-mirth-anti-semitism [.] html

Enjoy!
James
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> On Jan 9, 2019, at 6:52 PM, Hofstetter Barry <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> That paper is fun. It basically says "The participles are imperatival, but they are not imperatival for the reason you think they are imperatival."
> I would conceptualize the grammar here by seeing such participles as essentially epexegetical -- they are explaining component actions necessary or involved with the main verb, which happens to be imperative. In English, we don't use participles that way -- we express the action in a series of imperatives instead, and context informs us how they fit together (as it really does in Greek as well).
> As for Robertson's not so closet racism, *yawn.* Does it detract from his scholarship? Then why bother to bring it up? Find me a white man born in 1863 without racist baggage -- now that would be news.
>
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