Unseen Prose: Partitive Genitive and Genitive Absolute Under Time Pressure
Time-check: 8 minutes left in the unseen prose section. You have a five-line passage about a council of war, a glossary that gives στρατηγός 'general', λοχαγός 'captain', and σιωπάω 'be silent', and the instruction 'translate into clear English'. The Greek reads: τῶν δὲ στρατιωτῶν οἱ μὲν ἐφοβοῦντο, οἱ δὲ τὸν στρατηγὸν ᾔτουν λέγειν. τοῦ δὲ στρατηγοῦ σιωπῶντος, ὁ νεώτερος τῶν λοχαγῶν ἀνέστη. Your draft says: 'The soldiers feared the general and were asking him to speak. The general was silent, and the younger of the captains stood up.' You have already used six of your eight minutes; the mark scheme rewards accurate handling of participles and partitive constructions, not elegant style. You must decide whether to keep the draft, patch it, or rewrite the second sentence from scratch.
1. The second sentence begins τοῦ δὲ στρατηγοῦ σιωπῶντος. Explain why the draft's 'The general was silent, and...' is not a safe translation, and give a revised English version. In your answer, identify the construction and the reason for the case of the participle.
Read the worked answer
The construction is a genitive absolute: a genitive noun (τοῦ στρατηγοῦ) plus a genitive participle (σιωπῶντος) forming a subordinate clause. Its subject is different from the subject of the main verb ἀνέστη ('the younger ... stood up'), so Greek marks the whole phrase as detached from the main clause. The present participle is contemporaneous with the main verb: 'while the general was silent' or 'since the general kept silent'. The draft turns a subordinate circumstance into a coordinated finite verb ('was silent, and'), which changes the clause structure and may suggest two equally main events. Revised: 'While the general remained silent, the younger of the captains stood up.' A more literal 'with the general being silent' is possible, but the temporal or causal 'while/since' is better English. Check that you have not made the general the subject of ἀνέστη.
2. The first sentence contains τῶν στρατιωτῶν οἱ μὲν ... οἱ δὲ ... . The draft reads 'The soldiers feared the general and were asking him to speak.' Identify two distinct errors of construal and revise the sentence.
Read the worked answer
First error: τῶν στρατιωτῶν is a partitive genitive depending on οἱ μέν ... οἱ δέ, so the sense is 'some of the soldiers ... others ...', not 'the soldiers' as a whole. The draft makes one group do both actions. Second error: μέν ... δέ marks a contrast between two groups, not simply 'and'; it should be 'some ... while others ...'. The imperfects ἐφοβοῦντο and ᾔτουν are also durative ('were afraid', 'kept asking'), though the main damage is to the referents. Revised: 'Some of the soldiers were afraid, while others were asking the general to speak.' Note that λέγειν is the infinitive complement of ᾔτουν: 'asked the general to speak', not 'asked the general and spoke'.
3. You have two minutes left. What is the best use of the remaining time: checking the participle, checking the μέν/δέ pair, or polishing vocabulary? Justify your choice in terms of how the marks are likely to be allocated.
Read the worked answer
Check the participle first, then the μέν/δέ pair if time allows; leave vocabulary polish last. The participle controls a whole clause and can invert the relation between silence and standing up, so an error there is a structural error, not a stylistic one. The μέν/δέ pair controls who does what and is equally high-tariff because it changes the number and identity of the subjects. Vocabulary polish affects local meaning but is usually a smaller deduction and is riskier under time pressure. In the last two minutes, make one targeted correction to the genitive absolute, then scan for the partitive genitive and the contrast; do not rewrite the whole sentence for elegance.