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Question about Perfect Middle ending formations 22 Oct 1:54 PM (12 hours ago)

Or you could read Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, where the messenger recounts Oedipus’ self-blinding after Jocasta’s suicide:
ὁ δ᾽ ὡς ὁρᾷ νιν, δεινὰ βρυχηθεὶς τάλας
χαλᾷ κρεμαστὴν ἀρτάνην. ἐπεὶ δὲ γῇ
ἔκειτο τλήμων, δεινὰ δ᾽ ἦν τἀνθένδ᾽ ὁρᾶν.
ἀποσπάσας γὰρ εἱμάτων χρυσηλάτους
περόνας ἀπ᾽ αὐτῆς, αἷσιν ἐξεστέλλετο,
ἄρας ἔπαισεν ἄρθρα τῶν αὑτοῦ κύκλων,
αὐδῶν τοιαῦθ᾽, ὁθούνεκ᾽ οὐκ ὄψοιντό νιν
οὔθ᾽ οἷ᾽ ἔπασχεν οὔθ᾽ ὁποῖ᾽ ἔδρα κακά,
ἀλλ᾽ ἐν σκότῳ τὸ λοιπὸν οὓς μὲν οὐκ ἔδει
ὀψοίαθ᾽, οὓς δ᾽ ἔχρῃζεν οὐ γνωσοίατο. (1265-1274)

Here we have three future optatives in reported speech. The two -ατο endings in 1274, ὀψοίατο (elided) and γνωσοίατο, are grammatical equivalents of the -ντο ending of ὄψοιντο in 1271, differing both metrically and stylistically.

Question about Perfect Middle ending formations 21 Oct 10:39 PM (yesterday, 10:39 pm)

If you want to know more about this, you could have a look at these grammars (in German!)

Schwyzer, I 671 § 3

Kühner-Blass. II 74ff.

Indirect speech in Greek and Latin 21 Oct 2:25 AM (yesterday, 2:25 am)

Thank you so much! Now everything is clear. On my own, I would have drowned in these grammatical subtleties.

Question about Perfect Middle ending formations 20 Oct 10:21 PM (2 days ago)

Smyth might give the answer (Greek grammar : Smyth, Herbert Weir, 1857-1937 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive)

§465 f:

Stem ending in a Consonant + νται > Stem Ending in Consonant + αται.

Question about Perfect Middle ending formations 20 Oct 4:21 PM (2 days ago)

Hello, I’ve been learning the Perfect Middle and had a question regarding the verb θάπτω. I noticed the 3rd person plural is τεθάπαται. I can’t seem to find an explanation as to why this formation occurs–my textbook only discusses the changes consonants undergo which yield another consonant and I don’t understand why the alpha appears in the ending here.

Can someone please help me understand what I’m missing?

THANKS

Indirect speech in Greek and Latin 20 Oct 3:44 PM (2 days ago)

Yes their dying would precede their handing over their arms! (That’s the whole point, of course.) In the first sentence I meant to write not tradimus but tradamus. It has to be subjunctive (indefinite or potential), would be indic. only if they do in fact hand them over. Thanks for catching that.

As to “se morituros priusquam arma tradant,” priusquam introduces a clause (finite verb), so an infinitive won’t do, and subjunctive is called for. (With “Mori velimus priusquam arma tradere” velimus is understood with the second infinitive, as I think you realized.)

And your questions are far from silly, they’re right on point.

Indirect speech in Greek and Latin 20 Oct 1:46 PM (2 days ago)

Thank you for this clarification! I probably didn’t understand well your previous commentary.

In these sentences “Moriemur priusquam arma tradimus” is fut. (Moriemur) priusquam praes (tradimus). I thought dying was preceeding to surrendering the arms. I’m a bit puzzled.

As for the second option, I think, I understand. Velimus - subjunctive and two infinitives. We would prefer to die before surrendering arms.

Did I get it?

In indirect speech, your first option is clear to me, accusative with infinitive of volo and another infinitive depending on it.

But I don’t understand the second option “se morituros priusquam arma tradant”, “future infinitive priusquam present subjunctive”. Shouldn’t it be two infinitives? Or is it because “arma tradant” is regarded as an independent clause?

I’m sorry for having so many silly questions and making such clumsy translations. Thank you very much for your patience and help!

Indirect speech in Greek and Latin 20 Oct 12:29 PM (2 days ago)

Moriemur priusquam arma tradimus.
Or better Mori velimus priusquam arma tradere.

Cleanor respondit se mori velle priusquam arma tradere (or se morituros priusquam arma tradant).

Indirect speech in Greek and Latin 20 Oct 10:25 AM (2 days ago)

Thank you very much for your reply and corrections! They were extremely helpful!

So the corrected version would be:

Greek
Indirect: ἀπεκρίνατο Κλεἀνωρ, ὅτι πρόσθεν ἄν ἀποθάνοιεν, ἤ τὰ ὅπλα παραδοίησαν.
Direct: πρόσθεν ἄν ἀποθάνοιμεν, ἤ τὰ ὅπλα παραδοῖμεν”.

Latin
Indirect: Cleander respondit se potius moriturus esse quam arma tradituros?
Direct: Mortui erimus antequam arma trademus. (fut. perf. ind. - antequam - fut. ind.)

Indirect speech in Greek and Latin 20 Oct 6:00 AM (2 days ago)

1. Yes your direct speech version is fine, except it should be παραδοῖμεν (accent).
2. The Latin equivalent to Greek opt. + ἄν would be present or perfect subjunctive. But Potius moriamur quam arma tradamus is awkwardly ambiguous (“Let’s die …”), so maybe better to use indic., fut. or fut.perf. And since the Greek uses πρόσθεν, which is strictly temporal (like Eng. “sooner”), you’d best use antequam in the Latin. The illogic is rhetorical.
   In indirect speech se rather than eos, and you meant morituros.

Indirect speech in Greek and Latin 20 Oct 1:20 AM (3 days ago)

Hi! Could somebody help me understand how this sentence works in Greek and Latin?

I came across this phrase from Xenophon. ἀπεκρίνατο Κλεἀνωρ, ὅτι πρόσθεν ἄν ἀποθάνοιεν, ἤ τὰ ὅπλα παραδοίησαν. - Cleanor answered that they would sooner die than surrender their weapons. (By the way, can I translate it as “rather die than”?)

1. Would it be in Greek direct speech the same optative aorist? Is it “modus potentialis" or “modus irrealis”? So I imagine Cleanor saying: “πρόσθεν ἄν ἀποθάνοιμεν, ἤ τὰ ὅπλα παραδοίμεν”.

2. How would this phrase, as indirect and direct speech, look in Latin?

a) For indirect, I used acc.+inf., but I’m not sure about the pronoun:

Cleander respondit eos (or “se” if he includes himself in this “we”) potius moriturus esse quam arma tradituros?

b) And how should it look in direct speech? Is it correct to use present subjuntive, as for expressing potentiality?

Potius moriamur quam arma tradamus.

Tom Sawyer 19 Oct 11:17 AM (3 days ago)

Thank you very much for the link, paveln! And thank you again, bedwere, for this wonderful work!

Say his name: Stephen G. Daitz 19 Oct 5:20 AM (3 days ago)

For whatever it is worth, it is pronounced as “dates” on the copyright lead-in audio of his Bolchazy-Carducci recordings.

Say his name: Stephen G. Daitz 18 Oct 5:06 PM (4 days ago)

Does Daitz rhyme with bates or bites?

AI as a Greek Tutor 17 Oct 4:33 AM (5 days ago)

Hi, I read the τά εἰς ἑαυτόν by Marcus Aurelius, I use the translation of Auguste Couat, the www.lsj.gr and https://logeion.uchicago.edu/ and Eulexis-web - Lemmatiseur et dictionnaires de grec ancien (Bailly, Liddell–Scott–Jones, Pape) | Boîte à outils Biblissima as dictionaries. I ask sometimes the freely available ChatGPT, lmarena.ai, Gemini and Claude chatbots. I do not mind them making mistakes. I do not need to beleive everything they say. They give me some ideas how I could read a passage, a sentence, what form of a verb I see. I check the answers looking up these suggestions in my other resources. I am happy there is AI, I find it useful.

Noun declension chart 16 Oct 2:10 AM (6 days ago)

Thank you. I’ll stop trying to over-simplify….Ancient Greek just doesn’t work like that!

Greek colloquies 15 Oct 4:56 PM (7 days ago)

I again recommend the pioneering study by Carlotta Dionisotti on the development of Latin colloquia: “From Ausonius’ Schooldays? A Schoolbook and its Relatives,” Journal of Roman Studies, 72 (1982) 86. This was followed up by Eleanor Dickey’s fine edition of the so-called Colloquia of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana (as they’re tongue-twistingly called), reviewed by Anthony Corbeill in BMCR 2013.

Greek colloquies 15 Oct 2:47 PM (7 days ago)

I actually found this years ago, but only today I reread this topic and remembered about it:

σταχυολογία τεχνολογική by
Βησσαρίων Μακρής

Noun declension chart 15 Oct 6:50 AM (7 days ago)

Your rule for the first declension works. But the chart doesn’t reflect several classes of second and third declension nouns. In particular, some masculine 3rd decl. nouns have nom. -ευς, gen. -εως; 3rd decl. fem. nouns with nom. -ις, gen. -εως; and 3rd decl. neut. nouns with nom. -ος, gen. -ους. These are important classes of nouns (and there may be other classes not represented in the chart that I’m not remembering offhand). But don’t worry about these noun classes yet; you will come to them eventually. For now, my point in mentioning them is just to make you aware that the chart is incomplete.

Noun declension chart 15 Oct 12:58 AM (8 days ago)

Thank you all. I remain a bit confused. I’m only half way through the Taylor Greek to GCSE course so very much a beginner. Our teacher hasn’t suggested yet that we worry much about accents, other than those for smooth and rough breathings, and the iota subscript. I think she’s concerned (with some justification) that we will be overloaded if we start trying to use the other accents, although she does always use them in her written Greek. I was trying to create a sort of algorithm for identifying the declension. So far I’d got to:
If the noun in the nominative singular ends in η α ης ας it’s first declension; if it ends in ος ον it’s 2nd declension and if the genitive singular ends in ος it’s 3rd declension.

Then with the 1st declension nouns I was going to record that you just remove the genitive ending and decline as set 5, unless the stem ends ε ι ρ in which case you decline as set 6.

And then I kind of ground to a halt. Will try and digest all your helpful comments and revisit!

Noun declension chart 14 Oct 9:49 PM (8 days ago)

The Germans can leave the sets 2, 4, 6 out, using for the sets 1,3,5 the so called “Eier”-rule (ειρ > is spoken as the word “Eier” (Eggs): All “Eier” keep the “a”. even better in my opinion the other rule: “Arie”-rule “(< αριε, Arie = Aria - from the Opera-Aria): A stays after ριε.

The Invisible Man 14 Oct 10:16 AM (8 days ago)

Page 15

But what devilry must happen to make a man invisible?

It’s no devilry! It’s a process and intelligible enough!

Quālī opus est fascinātiōne ut homō invīsibilis fīat?

Nōn est fascinātiō sed ratiō quæ intelligī saltem potest!

Ποίας δείται βασκανίας ἵνα ἄνρθωπος ἀόρᾱτος γένηται;

Οὐκ ἔστι βασκανία αλλὰ μέθοδος καὶ νοητή γε.

I’m wounded and in pain. Give me some food and drink!

That certainly beats ghosts!

Vulnerātus doleō. Dac mihi cibum et potiōnem!

Istud vērō larvās tollit!

Τετρωμένος ἀλγῶ. Δός μοι σῖτα καὶ ποτά.

Τοῦτο δὴ ἀφαιρεῖ τὰ φάσματα.

Now you’re being sensible ! Will you get me a dressing gown?

Underclothes, socks, and slippers would be a comfort.

Nunc mēntis compos es! Dabisne mihi pallium?

Subūcula, pedūlēs, soleæ placēbunt mihi!

Νῦν ἔμφρων εῖ. Ἆρα δοίης ἄν μοι ῑ̔μάτιον;

Ὑποδύτης τε ποδεῖά τε καὶ βλαύται ἀρέσκοιεν ἄν μοι.

Anything. But this is the insanest thing I was ever in my life!

Of all the strange and wonderful, but how is it done?

Omnia. Rēs autem ista īnsānissima in vītā meā!

Ō nova et mīra! Quōmodo autem fit?

Τὰ πάντα. Τοῦτο δὲ τὸ πρᾶγμα μανικώτατον ἐν τῇ ἐμῇ ζωῇ.

Ὦ καινὰ καὶ παράδοξα. Πῶς δὲ γίγνεται;

I’ve been through a lot, Kemp, but after this we will do things together. You and I! But first I must sleep! It’s been so long, so long!

But why haven’t you slept? Why?

Multa passus sum, Campe, posteā autem ūnā agēmus ego et tū! Prīmum autem mihi dormiendum est. Jam diūtius enim vigilō!

Cūr vērō nōn dormīstī? Cūr?

Πολλὰ πέπονθα, Κάμπιε, μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα συμπρᾱ́ξομεν ἐγὼ καί σύ. Πρῶτον δὲ δεῖ με κοιμᾶσθαι. Ἐκ πλείονος γὰρ ἀγρυπνῶ.

Τί δὴ οὐκ ἐκοιμήθης; Διὰ τί;

Noun declension chart 14 Oct 9:40 AM (8 days ago)

I think the chart is right. Set 4 consists of feminine nouns with short α in the nominative singular preceded by ε, ι, or ρ, such as γέφυρα, which keep ᾱ in the genitive and the dative. Μοῦσα belongs in Set 3, feminine nouns with short α in the nominative singular but η in the genitive and dative. Oops. Cross-posted with mwh.

Noun declension chart 14 Oct 9:34 AM (8 days ago)

It’s not so much a matter of the accents as of the quantity of the alpha. Any given α will be either long or short. The same goes for any given ι or υ. But it is a good idea to learn the accents along with the words.
bedwere’s advice is good: follow those charts. And Jean corrects me on μοῦσα: I meant μοῖρα.

Noun declension chart 14 Oct 7:08 AM (8 days ago)

Are you sure in respect of μουσα? According to LSJ and Smyth μουσα has the set 3.

Noun declension chart 14 Oct 7:08 AM (8 days ago)

I’d use this instead, if you want a safe chart.

Noun declension chart 14 Oct 6:56 AM (8 days ago)

Ah, thank you. I’m a long way from worrying about accents on alphas. If I deleted set 4, would it be a safe chart to follow…?

Noun declension chart 14 Oct 4:40 AM (8 days ago)

The most significant difference between sets 2 and 4 is the quantity of the alpha in the nom. and acc. singular (short unless marked long). But the chart appears to be wrong, for the endings given in set 4 do not follow ε, ι, or ρ. E.g. μοῦσα has the set 4 endings, with short alpha.

But these things are best learnt with sample words, along with the distinction between “pure” and “impure” alpha.

Noun declension chart 14 Oct 2:59 AM (8 days ago)

Hi - I’m trying to get my head around the various declensions, and have found what looks like a useful chart:

However, I can’t see what the difference is between set 2 and set 4. Is this an error? The website it comes from is Ancient Greek I - First Declension Short Alpha Nouns

Impersonal Use of Unexpressed Esse in an Ablative Absolute? Reginald Foster's translation of an ablative in Ossium Carnes Multae (Cicero) 13 Oct 12:59 PM (9 days ago)

No present participle, but it’s common to have constructions like “Caesare duce,” “with Caesar being leader,” which are sometimes translated as “with Caesar as leader.” But we can drop the participle in English too (“with Caesar the leader, …”).

But the implied “being” always joins the noun and the noun (or noun and adjective); it’s never used impersonally, outside the noun-noun (or noun-adjective) cluster, as Foster seems to want us to understand it (“there being these two spectacles”). In fact, it’s worse than that, because the games had clearly taken place already, and so it would have to be an understood perfect participle, which I don’t recall classical Latin ever allowing.

I’m coming across things like every few pages. I bought the book because I had been led to believe he had been the greatest Latinist alive. I have come to believe that this claim was probably just something put out by his enthusiastic and awe-struck students, because I know my college humble college professors would never have made goofs like that.

Impersonal Use of Unexpressed Esse in an Ablative Absolute? Reginald Foster's translation of an ablative in Ossium Carnes Multae (Cicero) 13 Oct 12:34 PM (9 days ago)

I agree with both of you. I’m wondering: In classical Latin, does esse even have a present participle?

I know that Latin later would have such a present participle, but in Cicero’s time, there was no such thing, was there? I don’t see how it can be “understood” in an ablative absolute if the word doesn’t exist in the first place.

Πραττε v. πραξον 12 Oct 11:33 AM (10 days ago)

It would be great if someone more qualified than me could fill the gaps on that page.

Πραττε v. πραξον 12 Oct 9:26 AM (10 days ago)

Feel free to fix that page, on wiktionary. They happily accept edits.

Wiktionary often has little errors, or more often, it misses items enitrely, as it did here. But as soon as you spot such problems, you can fix them.

Πραττε v. πραξον 12 Oct 7:09 AM (10 days ago)

Thanks for that. So Wiktionary simply didn’t list the aorist. Thought I might have missed something. I know τα δικαια is plural. I was just emphasising a “single act”.

Πραττε v. πραξον 12 Oct 6:45 AM (10 days ago)

πραξον is Attic, not Ionic. And πραξον τα δικαια wouldn’t mean “perform one just act,” since τα δικαια is plural.

Πραττε v. πραξον 12 Oct 6:13 AM (10 days ago)

πραττε τα δικαια – (habitual action) Keep living justly.

Wiktionary doesn’t list Attic aorist of πραττω. I assume there’s no alternative to using the Ion. aorist imperative, or am I missing something.

πραξον τα δικαια (single act) Perform one just act.

Thucydides 8.43.3 10 Oct 5:09 PM (12 days ago)

Thanks!

Larry

ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων

A man’s character is his fate (Heraclitus fr. B119)

Thucydides 8.43.3 10 Oct 5:07 PM (12 days ago)

Thanks! I couldn’t believe it was a noun.

Larry

ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων

A man’s character is his fate (Heraclitus fr. B119)

Thucydides 8.43.3 10 Oct 11:17 AM (12 days ago)

Yes it’s future indic. of the verb (aor.subj. -σῃ would be ungrammatical, and the noun wouldn’t make sense). He said it was outrageous (δεινὸν εἶναι) if he were even now to expect (εἰ … καὶ νῦν ἀξιώσει) to control all the land …. It could have been optative, since we’re in past sequence (ἔφη), but the indicative is more vivid.
(There’s no implied ὅτι. κρατεῖν is governed by ἀξιώσει, and the previous infinitives by ἕφη.)

Thucydides 8.43.3 10 Oct 10:53 AM (12 days ago)

I think it is future indicative active of ἀξιόω. If it were aorist subjunctive, it would be
ἀξιώσῃ. It’s the verb of the protasis introduced by εἰ.

AI as a Greek Tutor 10 Oct 9:43 AM (12 days ago)

Yes, LLMs are stochastic word (token) prediction engines. They do not have any sense of true or false, they just figure out the next most likely “word” or “character” based on its training data and context. Hallucination is a pejorative term to define undesirable model outputs. But there are strategies to mitigate hallucinations. When it hallucinates, it means that its training data and its context cannot appropriately weight the model to accurately predict the expected outcomes. That’s why I said the model, prompt, and context matter.

Models are trained on different sets, have different context windows (the ability to retain more or less information in its mind when answering), and different post-training refinements. So model selection matters a lot.

Prompts set the initial pattern and conditions of what the model is doing. And you can derail an LLM easily through a bad prompt.

Context speaks to all the things the model has at its disposal to actually answer the question of the user. If you just open ChatGPT or Claude and throw a succinct question without providing it context, the chances of the model being able to accurately answer your question significantly increases. But if you provide it context around your question (a pdf, a website, a document with additional information, etc.) the model’s ability to answer your question accurately goes up significantly and in most cases crosses the threshold of reliability.

Hallucinations just reveal the models lack of training data in the particular field it is being consulted.

All that said, I completely respect and understand your perspective. I really appreciate your push back! I think we are aligned on the concerns, I am just a little more optimistic in their use than you? Model outputs should not be trusted blindly or uncritically. Having a knowledgable human in the loop makes a big difference.

Thucydides 8.43.3 10 Oct 9:25 AM (12 days ago)

is ἀξιώσει a verb or a noun in the following sentence?:

ἀλλὰ δεινὸν εἶναι εἰ χώρας ὅσης βασιλεὺς καὶ οἱ πρόγονοι ἦρξαν πρότερον, ταύτης καὶ νῦν ἀξιώσει κρατεῖν·

What is the syntax here? It looks to me like a 3rd person aorist subjunctive but the Thucydides lexicon says it is a noun.

AI as a Greek Tutor 10 Oct 8:01 AM (12 days ago)

You misssed the point. My LLM claimed that this particular deponent participle had an active sense… and then immediately translated it as a passive. This definitively shows that the LLM has no idea what it is actually saying. It’s unable to distinguish truth vs. falsehood vs. outright nonsense.

If a model hallucinates, its either a model quality, prompt structure, or context issue

Nope, this is definitively wrong, and bad advice. Hallucinations are a severe problem and an intrinsic problem. You cannot eliminate them by tweaking prompts or customizing the input or switching to a new model. It’s not accurate to claim “you’re holding it wrong,” as Steve Jobs famously said about one old iPhone version. We are not holding it wrong. AIs hallucinate. They make things up.

AI in its current form categorically cannot detect what is “true” on even the most basic level. It cannot even be self-consistent from one word to another. Unfortunately, sometimes it seems to be able to do this, so even clever users are fooled. Users become complacent and too trusting with it.

The claim that “well, I’ve been using it a long time and it gave me good answers” is not evidence that AIs work well, it’s evidence that the user is careless.

AIs are useful, but only on the understanding that they frequently tell falsehoods that are sometimes overt, and sometimes subtle and difficult to see, but still very real.

Günther Zuntz's Griechischer Lehrgang: A Review 10 Oct 7:20 AM (12 days ago)

FYI for anyone who wanders to this thread–note that Christopher Alderman has produced some helpful resources–especially the complete lessons reader with Zuntz’ vocab embedded beneath each section (correcting errors in accents and spirits): https://christopheralderman.wordpress.com/

For those of us interested in Zuntz and teaching from Zuntz, this is a boon.

@rmedinap in addition to the reviews you posted so long ago above, did you ever come across Walter Burkert’s review? It is hard to find in its original form but can be accessed for free in the following collection of Burkert’s short writings: (PDF) Burkert Kleine Schriften/Collected Essays X: Varia (pp. 823-826)

AI as a Greek Tutor 10 Oct 7:06 AM (12 days ago)

No, hallucinations are an inherent part of the model, as researchers broadly agree.

“AI hallucinations are a feature of LLM design, not a bug”

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00662-7

Even OpenAI themselves have admitted this.

AI as a Greek Tutor 10 Oct 6:10 AM (12 days ago)

I accept the "silly” label. 8) And I completely agree. Scholarly mistakes are different than LLM hallucinations. All I was trying to say is that you can learn things from LLMs. But it can involve some critical thinking. For LLMs, if you are getting hallucinations it is either because the model quality, the prompt structure, or the context you provided the LLM was insufficient.

AI as a Greek Tutor 10 Oct 6:08 AM (12 days ago)

Totally agree with you. I was just meaning to imply that there is value in using LLMs. But they should definitely not be used naively or blindly. If a model hallucinates, its either a model quality, prompt structure, or context issue.Were you using Claude or ChatGPT for that 2 Maccabees 15:17 feedback? What model? Would you mind sharing your whole prompt??? I am just curious. I asked ChatGPT 5 the following:

Here is the Vulgate translation of 2 Maccabees 15:17: 
Exhortati itaque Judae sermonibus bonis valde, de quibus extolli posset impetus, et animi juvenum confortari, statuerunt dimicare et confligere fortiter: ut virtus de negotiis judicaret, eo quod civitas sancta et templum periclitarentur.

I am trying to understand the syntactical function of "Exhortati". Is it passive in meaning, or active in meaning?

Think hard. Walk through your logic. And make sure to take important Latin grammatical context into consideration.

And this was its response:

Short answer: passive in meaning.

Why
	•	Form: exhortāti = nominative masculine plural perfect participle.
	•	Verb family: Latin has both exhortor (deponent) and exhortō (regular active). The participle exhortātus can therefore be either:
	•	deponent perfect participle with active sense (“having exhorted”), or
	•	regular perfect passive participle (“having been exhorted/encouraged”).
	•	Context decides. Exhortāti itaque Iūdae sermōnibus bonīs valdē… — the ablative sermōnibus (“by [Judas’] speeches/words”) is ablative of means/instrument, i.e., the thing by which they were encouraged. That fits a passive sense: “having been exhorted/encouraged by Judas’ very good words…”
	•	If it were active (“having exhorted”), we’d expect an accusative object (whom did they exhort?)—but there isn’t one. Instead we have the means by which they were exhorted.

Function in the sentence
	•	It’s a circumstantial nominative participle agreeing with the (understood) subject of statuerunt (“they resolved”), supplying background: “After being encouraged by Judas’ words… they resolved to fight…”
	•	You could paraphrase with a clause: cum Iūdae sermōnibus valdē bonīs exhortātī essent, statuerunt… or with a straightforward passive: exhortātī sunt… statuerunt…

Smooth rendering

“So, encouraged by Judas’s very good words—which could rouse their attack and strengthen the spirits of the young men—they resolved to fight bravely…”

Deponents love to mess with you; this isn’t one of those times. Here, the morphology is ambiguous, but the syntax ties it down: passive sense.

Now, I don’t know Latin… Do deponents always have an active sense? Or do they sometimes convey a passive sense in Latin based on the context?

Thanks for sharing your experience!

If you want to read Xenophon's Anabasis 9 Oct 9:33 PM (13 days ago)

The Caesar was the only one I skipped out on, as it put all the essays online, and the essays are the main reason I get the books in the first place.

AI as a Greek Tutor 9 Oct 9:29 PM (13 days ago)

Bingo. Early on I asked it to provide some paradigm tables for Akkadian, and I could easily see that the forms were gibberish. I tried it for some other Akkadian translation that I was struggling with, and again, it simply lied.

I agree with you. Anyone not fact-checking the statements is just not paying attention or inept at it.

AI as a Greek Tutor 9 Oct 9:26 PM (13 days ago)

This is silly. If you tell someone that Grayson p. 255 doesn’t say what he thinks he says, that scholar will go look it up and then you can hash it out. ChatGPT will simply continue to argue or make up something else. I know this because I just experienced it with the most recent ChatGPT (5).

Mistakes scholars make are categorically completely different from LLM hallucinations.