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LESSON 3
HADES - From Homer's Odyssey

by George Valsamis

Ἑλένης μὲν ἀπωλόμεθ' εἵνεκα πολλοί͵ Homer writes.

In this sentence Ἑλένη is not just the most beautiful woman in Greece - she is the cause of the war and of our loss. She is placed first, in the start of the sentence, as the cause of so many disasters and so great an admiration, but she is not placed in nominative, because she is involved in our actions: we made her our object and cause. Although she had the power to satisfy our will, it is still our will that made her our purpose, and it is our will that is ultimately responsible for our loss. Therefore, we are in the nominative and she leans, she inclines in the genitive. 

Aristotle writes that (unlike a sentence, which is composed by and composes various concepts - e.g. man learns) "expressions which are in no way composite signify the essence (οὐσία), quantity (ποσόν), quality (ποιόν), relation (πρός τι), place (πού), time (ποτέ), position (κεῖσθαι), state (ἔχειν), action (ποιεῖν), or affection/passion (πάσχειν)" (cf. Caterogies 1b25-27).

In English we say, e.g. "I'm going to school". The expression "to school" signifies a place (πού=somewhere) to which I'm going, and it is formed by a preposition (to) and the name of the place (school).

Such expressions, prepositional expressions, are used very often in a sentence in order to define quantity (ποσόν), quality (ποιόν), relation (πρός τι), place (πού), etc.

A preposition (πρόθεσις) is a word that is pro-posed (προ-τίθεται), posed before some other word, in order to invest this word with the ability to express some of the categories of speech in a sentence.

The word εἵνεκα is a preposition (πρόθεσις).

Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/lessons/lesson3.asp?pg=12