Comprehension Under a Corrupt Clause
You are answering comprehension questions on an unseen passage in which a speaker argues that a city should not trust a general. One clause reads: οὗτος γὰρ οὐχ ὅπως ἐβούλετο ἀγαθόν τι πρᾶξαι, ἀλλ᾽ ὅτι μὲν αὐτὸς ἐκέρδαινεν, ἠμέλει. The idiom οὐχ ὅπως ... ἀλλ᾽ ὅτι is unusual, and a fellow student insists it means 'not only ... but also'. The next sentence says the general's men suffered, which either supports or contradicts that reading. You must decide the meaning before you can answer the comprehension question about the speaker's attitude.
1. Assess the student's claim that οὐχ ὅπως ... ἀλλ᾽ ὅτι means 'not only ... but also'. What is the more likely sense here?
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The 'not only ... but also' sense belongs to the correlative οὐ μόνον ... ἀλλά, and to οὐχ ὅπως with a following ἀλλά in some constructions, but it does not fit the syntax here. The first limb is οὐχ ὅπως ἐβούλετο ἀγαθόν τι πρᾶξαι, 'far from wishing to do some good', and the second limb ἀλλ᾽ ὅτι μὲν αὐτὸς ἐκέρδαινεν, ἠμέλει is a clause of cause: 'but because he himself was profiting, he was careless'. So οὐχ ὅπως introduces a rejected expectation ('far from ...'), and ἀλλά introduces the real explanation. The μὲν in ὅτι μὲν αὐτὸς ἐκέρδαινεν anticipates a contrast, probably with a following δέ clause about the men. The sense is: 'Far from wishing to do any good, he was careless because he himself was making a profit.' The student's reading would require a parallel positive clause after ἀλλά, not a causal ὅτι.
2. The next sentence says the general's men suffered. How does that confirm your reading, and what does it tell you about the speaker's attitude?
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If the general was careless because he was profiting, the men's suffering follows naturally: his self-interest produced neglect, and neglect produced harm. That causal chain confirms the 'far from ... but because ...' reading. Under the student's 'not only ... but also' reading, the sentence would merely add a second fact about the general, and the men's suffering would be an unexplained appendage. The speaker's attitude is hostile but calculated: he does not simply call the general bad, he frames him as a man whose motive (profit) explains his conduct (neglect) and its consequence (the men's harm). The μὲν ... δέ structure suggests the speaker will balance the general's gain against the men's loss, a rhetorical pairing that invites the audience to see the general's profit as taken at his soldiers' expense.