τί μήν; quid vero? ‘what then?’ i.e., ‘of course we must yield.’ Cp. Aesch. Ag. 672“λέγουσιν ἡμᾶς ὡς ὀλωλότας: τί μήν;” (i.e., it is only natural that they should do so.) So in Suppl. 999, Eum. 203.With Plato “τί μήν” is frequent in assenting replies, as Phaedr. p. 229 A, “ΦΑΙ. ὁρᾷς οὖν ἐκείνην τὴν..πλάτανον; ΣΩ. τί μήν;” Cp. Phileb.p. 17 B and 44 B, Polit. 258 B, etc. The reason for preferring τί μήν to τί μή here is that the former is well attested, whereas there seems to be no certain example of τί μή in the Attic of this period. With “τί μή” (quidni?) we should supply “ὑπείκωμεν;” cp. Plat. Theaet.p. 161 E “πῶς μὴ φῶμεν;” Dem. or. 21 § 35 “ὁ τοιοῦτος πότερα μὴ δῷ διὰ τοῦτο δίκην;”
This text is part of:
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.