| 2. Linguistic Exegesis The sentence opens with the imperfect verb elegon {ἔλεγον | é-le-gon} ‘they were saying’, which presents ongoing or repeated deliberation among the speakers. The conjunction gar {γάρ | gár} links this reasoning to the preceding plot, giving an explanatory nuance: this is why their plan is limited. Direct speech begins with the negative particle Mē {Μὴ | Mḕ} followed by the prepositional phrase en tē heortē {ἐν τῇ ἑορτῇ | en tē he-or-Tḗ} ‘in the feast’, which specifies the temporal setting they wish to avoid. The clause introduced by mēpote {μήποτε | mḗ-po-te} plus the future indicative estai {ἔσται | És-tai} forms a feared-result construction, ‘lest there will be’, conveying apprehension about a likely consequence rather than a mere possibility. The nominative subject thorybos {θόρυβος | THÓ-ry-bos} ‘uproar’ is further defined by the genitive tou laou {τοῦ λαοῦ | toû la-oû} ‘of the people’, indicating that the disturbance would arise from the crowd. In translation, the imperfect is rendered with a past progressive or simple past that still implies deliberation, gar is represented as “for” or left implicit in natural English flow, and the mēpote clause is expressed with “lest” in the formal reconstruction and “or there could be” in the dynamic reconstruction to capture the sense of anxious avoidance. |