- Source
- Herodotus. Godley, Alfred Denis, editor. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann, Ltd., 1920-1925 (printing).
- Translation
- AI-generated (gemini-3.5-flash) — machine translation; may contain errors
- Languages
- 日本語 · English · 简体中文 · 한국어
- CTS URN
- urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0016.tlg001.humanitext-grc2:2.146.1-2.146.2
- Generated
- Humanitext Reader · reader.humanitext.ai · 2026-11-08
Herodotus states his own opinion on the genealogies of the Greek and Egyptian gods, arguing that the Greeks learned the names of Dionysus and Pan much later and only began tracing their genealogies from the moment they learned their names.
τούτων ὦν ἀμφοτέρων1 πάρεστι χρᾶσθαι τοῖσί τις πείσεται λεγομένοισι μᾶλλον· ἐμοὶ δʼ ὦν ἡ περὶ αὐτῶν γνώμη ἀποδέδεκται. εἰ μὲν γὰρ φανεροί τε ἐγένοντο καὶ κατεγήρασαν καὶ οὗτοι ἐν τῇ Ἑλλάδι, κατά περ Ἡρακλέης ὁ ἐξ Ἀμφιτρύωνος γενόμενος, καὶ δὴ καὶ Διόνυσος ὁ ἐκ Σεμέλης καὶ Πὰν ὁ ἐκ Πηνελόπης γενόμενος, ἔφη ἄν τις2 καὶ τούτους ἄλλους ἄνδρας γενομένους ἔχειν τὰ ἐκείνων οὐνόματα τῶν προγεγονότων θεῶν.
Therefore, of these two accounts, anyone may adopt whichever he is more likely to believe; but as for me, my opinion concerning them has already been declared. For if these also, namely Dionysus the son of Semele and Pan the son of Penelope, had appeared openly and grown old in Greece, just like Heracles the son of Amphitryon had done, one might have said that these too, though being born as mere men, had the names of those pre-existing gods.
νῦν δὲ Διόνυσόν τε λέγουσι οἱ Ἕλληνες ὡς αὐτίκα γενόμενον ἐς τὸν μηρὸν ἐνερράψατο Ζεὺς καὶ ἤνεικε ἐς Νύσαν τὴν ὑπὲρ Αἰγύπτου ἐοῦσαν ἐν τῇ Αἰθιοπίῃ, καὶ Πανός γε πέρι οὐκ ἔχουσι εἰπεῖν ὅκῃ ἐτράπετο3 γενόμενος. δῆλά μοι γέγονε ὅτι ὕστερον ἐπύθοντο οἱ Ἕλληνες τούτων τὰ οὐνόματα ἢ τὰ τῶν ἄλλων θεῶν· ἀπʼ οὗ δὲ ἐπύθοντο χρόνου, ἀπὸ τούτου γενεηλογέουσι αὐτῶν τὴν γένεσιν.
But as it is, the Greeks say of Dionysus that as soon as he was born, Zeus sewed him up in his thigh and carried him to Nysa, which is in Ethiopia beyond Egypt; and as for Pan, they are not able to say where he went after he was born. It has therefore become clear to me that the Greeks learned the names of these gods later than those of the other gods, and from the time when they learned them, they trace their birth and genealogy.
- 2.146.1τούτων ὦν ἀμφοτέρων
Partitive genitive modifying the following relative clause of choice (toisi... legomenoisi). Placed at the beginning of the sentence for emphasis, meaning "of these two accounts."
- 2.146.1ἔφη ἄν τις
The apodosis of a past contrary-to-fact conditional (with protasis 'ei' + indicative past 'egenonto'). The imperfect 'ephē' combined with the particle 'an' expresses a past possibility ('someone would have said'), governing the infinitive 'echein'.
- 2.146.2ὅκῃ ἐτράπετο
An indirect question clause. The Ionic form 'hokēi' corresponds to Attic 'hopēi' ('whither', 'where'). The verb 'etrapeto' is the second aorist middle of 'trepō' ('turned oneself', 'went').