This text is part of:
τὴν ἀκαιρίαν . . καιρὸν . . νομ., “regarding his time of need as your time for action.” ἐφ᾽ ἃ δεῖ, “for the necessary purposes.” πρὸς τῇ χώρᾳ, sc. τῇ ἡμετέρᾳ. πῶς οἴεσθε does not affect the construction of λογιζ. ἂν ἐλθεῖν αὐτόν, being merely a colloquial way of turning ἑτοίμως into a superlative. Cf. Av. Ach. 24 ὠστιοῦνται πῶς δοκεῖς; / ἐλθόντες ἀλλήλοισι περὶ πρώτου ξύλου. εἰ μηδ̓ . . . οὐ τολμήσετε. αἰσχύνομαι, like θανμάζω, ἀγανακτῶ, &c., may be followed by εἰ οὐ or εἰ μή. Euphony and habit produce εἰ μὴ here (as in ii. § 25), and we expect a positive verb to follow, εἰ μηδ᾽ ἃ being for εἰ καὶ ἃ . . . μὴ (τολμήσετε). But when that part of μηδέ which means “even” has done its duty, Demosthenes disregards the μή, and gives a more vivid picture with οὐ τολμήσετε. πάθοιτε = ποιῆσαι, “to treat him as he would treat you.”
Demosthenes: Olynthiacs I, II, III. H. Sharpley. 1900. W. Blackwood and Sons.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.