Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.6 — The Shortest Instruction in the Book
Meditations 9.6 is three noun phrases with no verb in the Greek. Marcus wrote it to himself, and two later translators had to decide what to do with a sentence that refuses one.
The Greek: Ἀρκεῖ ἡ παροῦσα ὑπόληψις καταληπτικὴ καὶ ἡ παροῦσα πρᾶξις κοινωνικὴ καὶ ἡ παροῦσα διάθεσις εὐαρεστικὴ πρὸς πᾶν τὸ παρὰ τῆς ἐκτὸς αἰτίας συμβαῖνον.
Arkei — "it suffices" — is the only finite verb. Everything after it is three matched adjectival phrases: the present impression, already grasped; the present action, already social; the present disposition, already well-pleased. This video reads C. R. Haines's 1916 Loeb Classical Library translation against Gregory Hays's 2002 Modern Library translation, and uses the gap between them to show what happens when English supplies a verb that Marcus's Greek withheld.
Haines stays closest to the grammar: three participial phrases doing the same non-work as the Greek adjectives, ending on "these will suffice." Hays translates for effect instead of shape: three "now, at this very moment"s hammering the Greek's triple repetition of parousa ("present"), closing on a line — "that's all you need" — that isn't in Marcus at all.
Along the way: what hypōlēpsis meant in Stoic use (the mind's own act of taking up a view on an impression, not a neutral word for "thought" or "judgment"), Zeno's closed-fist image for kataleptic certainty, and why Marcus's own title for this book — Ta eis heauton, "the things, to himself" — is the reason 9.6 needed no verb in the first place.
Translations discussed:
C. R. Haines, Marcus Aurelius (Loeb Classical Library, 1916)
Gregory Hays, Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library, 2002)
Greek text and translation history cross-checked against Wikisource's Haines edition, the Loeb Classical Library, and the Archive.org scan of the Hays translation.
Chapters
See below.
This channel reads Stoic texts against their original Greek and Latin and against multiple named translations, and leaves the disagreements visible instead of flattening them into a single "correct" version.
0:00 The Hook: Haines's Translation
0:21 Marcus Writing to Himself
0:32 The Greek Sentence: One Verb, Three Phrases
2:02 Haines, 1916: Translating the Grammar
3:10 Hays, 2002: Translating the Effect
4:36 Hypōlēpsis: Taken Up, and Put Down Again
5:55 Two Translators, One Missing Verb
6:55 A Condition, Not a Command
7:53 What Comes Next
8:16 Ἀρκεῖ — It Suffices