I think it PISTEUW has a powerful auxiliary force here and is used in an
indirect discourse construction with an implicit nominative subject:
"believes (that he may) eat anything (at all) ..." In older Greek verbs of
knowing, EPISTAMAI and GI(G)NWSKW and OIDA are used this way, at any rate,
in a sense of "be able to." (I've always believed that this idiomatic usage
of the Greek verb is a major factor in bringing Socrates to the proposition
that Virtue is knowledge--that knowing the good necessarily involves the
power to do it. But, of course, that's not what Paul tells us in Rom 7).
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/