| 16. Linguistic Exegesis The verse opens with the coordinated clause kai he polis tetragonos keitai {καὶ ἡ πόλις τετράγωνος κεῖται | kaì hē pólis tetrágō-nos keîtai} ‘and the city lies four-sided’, where the predicate adjective tetragonos precedes the verb to emphasize the city’s square shape. A second coordination, kai to mekos autēs hoson to platos {καὶ τὸ μῆκος αὐτῆς ὅσον τὸ πλάτος | kaì tò mḗkos autês hóson tò plátos}, uses the correlative pronoun hoson with neuter nouns to assert exact equality of length and width. The narrative aorist verb emetresen {ἐμέτρησεν | emétrēsen} ‘measured’ takes ten polin tō kalamō epi stadious dodeka chiliadōn {τὴν πόλιν τῷ καλάμῳ ἐπὶ σταδίους δώδεκα χιλιάδων} as its object and means, with the reed as the instrument and the compound numeral ‘twelve thousand stadia’ formed by an indeclinable numeral plus a genitive plural. The final clause, to mekos kai to platos kai to hypsos autēs isa estin {τὸ μῆκος καὶ τὸ πλάτος καὶ τὸ ὕψος αὐτῆς ἴσα ἐστίν}, repeats the article + noun pattern for each dimension, culminating in the predicative adjective isa to convey perfect uniformity. This deliberate structure underscores the imagery of a perfectly symmetrical, cube-like city. |