You are. The fuller text of the clause in question includes:
TON MEN GAR PROS TOUS (RWMAIOUS POLEMON (HMIN TOIS IOUDAIOIS GENOMENON KAI
TAS EN AUTWi PRAXEIS KAI TO TELOS hOION APEBH PEIRAi MAQWN [EBIASQHN
EKDIHGHSASQAI DIA TOUS EN TWi GRAFEIN LUMAINOMENOUS THN ALHQEIAN, ...] The
bracketed part really belongs also with the foregoing, since the same
accusatives are also objects of EKDIHGHSASQAI, but you don't need that part
to understood down through MAQWN.
>I have a problem
>with the Loeb translation. There is no word for "having known" nor for
>"waged". GENOMENON should be accusative and go with POLEMON. I don't
>see any finite verbs here or a subject, yet the translation treats
>POLEMON as though it was the subject, even though it is accusative. So
>what lack I yet for understanding this clause? Thanks.
I've warned you previously that the Loeb translations are not literal; they
are an attempt to carry over the content of the Greek into normal patterns
of English expository prose, which may not reflect the structure of the
Greek very precisely.
In this instance, you should have continued on with the clause until you
reached at least PEIRAi MAQWN, for that is the source of the very literal
translation "having known by experience." MAQWN has three objects linked by
2 KAI's: TON ... POLEMON, TAS ... PRAXEIS, and TO TELOS hOINON APEBH: "the
war," "the actions/episodes," and "the (nature of the) final outcome."
Now, the phrase, TON MEN GAR PROS TOUS (RWMAIOUS POLEMON (HMIN TOIS
IOUDAIOIS GENOMENON, is quite adequately--but NOT LITERALLY--translated as
"the war which we Jews waged against the Romans." GENOMENON is indeed
accusative and does indeed construe with POLEMON so that this whole group
is the first object of PEIRAi MAQWN. There IS a little tricky idiom here,
however, which is the source, I think, of your major confusion: although
GENOMENON would, most literally, convey the sense, "that took place," it
quite commonly serves as the equivalent of a passive participle in the
sense "that was carried on." Moreover, it is standard prose convention to
use a dative of agent with a narrative passive tense or its equivalent (the
relevant section of the LSJ article on this is #3 under GIGNOMAI).Thus TON
POLEMON "the war"--PROS TOUS RWMAIOUS "against the Romans"--hHMIN TOIS
IOUDAIOIS "by us Jews"--GENOMENON "made to happen = waged."
The Loeb translation can be instructive about fundamental differences
between English standard usage and classical Greek standard usage in a
couple regards: (1) the Greek text tends to set that object out front where
it will be most prominent and eye-catching, and often will postpone the
verb governing the object until after it has set forth the object or string
of objects as here; (2) the Greek text tends to use passives with
corresponding agent constructions which would be very stilted in English
(if you've ever tried to use a grammar-checking program in a
word-processor, you know there are those annoying warnings, "this clause
may contain a passive voice form," the implication being that you should
avoid passives like the plague because the don't look good in the
advertising copy which, of course, is the only English text you ever
produce); at any rate English takes the Greek "the war against the Romans
by us Jews carried on" and turns it into "the war that we Jews carried on
against the Romans." That's not a complicated transformation, but it is
something that I've tried to emphasize in teaching essential differences
between ordinary Greek phrasing and ordinary English phrasing. If you DO
have to translate rather than just read a Greek text, awareness of this can
be helpful.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/