Lesson 7b: Third Paragraph

Translation

And Melitta says: Stop, Philip, stop: for your story is terrible. But tell me, how does Odysseus escape? Does the Cyclops kill all of his companions?

And Philip says: No, the Cyclops doesn't kill all. For Odysseus is a cunning man. So first he gives the Cyclops a lot of wine, so that he's soon very drunk. And when the Cyclops sleeps, Odysseus finds an enormous stake and tells his companions to heat it in the fire. When the stake is on the verge of catching fire, Odysseus lifts it out of the fire and drives it into the Cyclops's one and only eye.

Paragraph 3

πολύμητις cunning

πολύς, πολλή, πολύ a lot
So someone who's got a lot of ressources at his disposal is πολύμητις
The noun being μήτις, μήτιδος, ἡ: wisdom, counsel, cunning
ἆρα γιγνώσκεις ἄνδρα τινὰ πολυμήτιδα;
 

μεθύω I get drunk, am drunk
It is a verb, like κάμνω, not "to be" + an adjective like in English. A verb in its own right!

οὐκ ἐθέλω μεθύειν 
πολλοὶ ἄνθρωποι μεθύουσιν  on Friday nights
 

τὸ ῥόπαλον the stake

Now we've got ourselves a whole arsenal of primitive weapons:
   ἡ μάχαιρα 
   τὸ βάκτρον
   τὸ ξίφος the sword Theseus killed the Minotaur with and now
   τὸ ῥόπαλον 
in order to τύπτειν strike people, animals or things with.
 

θερμαίνω I heat, warm up

a thermos flask to keep the heat in, a thermometer to measure the heat
καίω πῦρ καί θερμαίνω τὴν οἰκίαν
καίουσι πυρὰ καὶ θερμαίνονται τοὺς πόδας warm up their feet (a little fire each)
 

ἅψεσθαι to catch fire

παπαῖ, οἴμοι ouch
We had, in lesson 2, page 16:
ἄγει τοὺς βοῦς ὑπὸ τὸ ζυγὸν καὶ προσάπτει τὸ ἄροτρον
comes from  πρός to, towards
comes fand  ἅπτω I attach, affix
comes friso  ἅπτω πῦρ I attach fire to, I light
comes fand  τὸ πῦρ ἅπτεται fire catches, starts
comes from  τὸ ῥόπαλον ἅπτεται the stake catches fire
So why  ἅψεσθαι and not ἅπτεσθαι 
The Greeks were clever, still are, and so are the Russians and other people too.
There's a difference between doing it once or over and over again, between:
doing, doing done against doing doing doing.
In Greek the doing-done form is called aorist (without limits) and since the stake is not going to go on catching fire, but just catches it once  ἅψεσθαι it has to be.
Present tense "they light" is a doingdoing form, what goes on in the present is obviously not done but only in the process of being done.
We'll come back to this difference again, and again. So if you find it confusing, don't worry, just remember that there is such a strange thing as aorist in Greek. Relax and it will come clear one day soon.