Whom the gods love die young!!!

[zoobinshid]

Hello everybody,
I saw this proverb and I was wondering why it`s not (Whom the God loves die young)?Are we talking about more than one God here?

Thanks in advance,

[osenglish]

This quote ia attributed to Herodotus (c. 484-425 B.C.), a historian from Ancient Greece. At the time of writing, the Ancient Greek pantheon of God[B]s[B] was pretty big. Think Zeus, Hermes, Dionysus etc. and you get the picture.

If it were to be translated to a monotheist religion, we would lose the "The".

eg. "Whom the Gods love die young" becomes

"Whom God loves dies young"

This second version sounds a little awkward due to the need for the extra plurals...

[matilda]

i think that the original sentence you 've heard is much better.
although God is one , but some times ,specially for respecting more, they use (GodS) , and off course it doesn't mean that we can have more than one God.
we use it in iran ,too.sometimes we say for example: Ali is the God of Grammer.) Of course that doesn't mean he should be the creator of grammer.but it means that he is the best in this field.
By the way, Don't you think that there may be a type mistake?
may be there was a mistake when they published the book .


hope it helps
matilda

[zoobinshid]

Originally Posted by matilda

By the way, Don't you think that there may be a type mistake?
may be there was a mistake when they published the book .
hope it helps
matilda

Well I`m sure there is no mistake.because the dictionary I found this sentence in, is very famous all around the word (NTC).

Anyway, thanks for the reply.

[matilda]

dear zooninshid

hello

for this question, i asked one of my professors and he searched the NTC 's web site and after he couldn't find a proper result, he sent an e-mail to that publication anf afterwards , they told that it was certainly a mistake in the publication,as i told you. So , be sure that it is possible for a famous publication to have such a big problem.

Hope it helps


Matilda

[HaraKiriBlade]

I hate to be such a prick, but if you understood what osenglish said, this quote came from Ancient Greece, and back then they served more than one god, hence the use of plural. And you'll know it's not a typo either if you google it.

[matilda]

dear zoobinshid

Sorry to say that .but as i saw your question in this site, i asked every one about it. the thing i told in my previous post wasn't mt teacher's. AGAIN SORRY it was one of my classmate's.SORRY
i'll tell you my proferssor's reply from ntc's site
he told " as ( whom Gods love) is the subject, it is the noun clause of this sentence. so there can be no grammatical mistake about that. but about the word Gods, that is used as a plural vocab, we can say that 1- it may be a quote, from an important person that seems to be Greek more. 2- because of the numerous number of Gods in the ancient Greek , this God ( with capital G at the beginimg and an S added to the end ) is used. 3- it can also be a cite from Socrates or another famous man who believed in more than one God. 4- and finally, it can be a sentence from an old book like Homer's book. Again sorro because of my mistake


Hope that helps


Matilda

[MrPedantic]

"Whom the gods love dies young" ("hon hoi theoi philousin apothneskei neos") – this appears in a play by the Greek playwright Menander, but is perhaps better known in Plautus' Latin version: "Quem di diligunt adulescens moritur". The English version can be found in Canto IV of the poem Don Juan, by the poet Byron.

As has been said, there were many Greek gods: hence the plural. (There is no need for a capital G in "gods".)

The whole clause "Whom the gods love" serves as the subject of "dies". The use of this structure with a object pronoun is a little unusual in English, though common enough in Latin and Greek, where no subject pronoun is required. Some translators prefer the perhaps more idiomatic "He whom the gods love dies young".

MrP

[MrPedantic]

PS: The comment in the story of Cleobis and Biton in Herodotus (Book 1) is a little different, but does contain the germ of the idea: "In this way, the god made it clear that it is better for a man to die than to live" ("diedexe te en toutoisi ho theos hôs ameinon eiê anthrôpôi tethnanai mallon ê zôein").

[Casiopea]

Originally Posted by zoobinshid

Hello everybody,
I saw this proverb and I was wondering why it`s not (Whom the God loves die young)?Are we talking about more than one God here?

Thanks in advance,

In addition, more than one god, yes. *the God is ungrammatical. God is a name.

Grammar Note, plural count-nouns take -s; e.g., a god, three gods, the gods, whereas singular count nouns, particularly names, never take determiners; e.g., *a John, *a Susan, *the God, *a God, unless specified: the God of War, a God of War.

Hope that helps.