Arrian's Discourses of Epictetus, Arrian's Introduction

[zpkenney]

I recently picked up the Loeb Classical Library's edition of Arrian's Discourses of Epictetus, and I found even the first Greek sentence to have peculiar elements (to me). I was working these things out, and I wanted to be sure my thinking was correct here. The sentences reads as follows:

οὔτε συνέγραψα ἐγὼ τοὺς Ἐπικτήτου λόγους οὕτως ὅπως ἄν τις συγγράψειε τὰ τοιαῦτα οὔτε ἐξήνεγκα εἰς ἀνθρώπους αὐτός, ὅς γε οὐδὲ συγγράψαι φημί.

You can find it here on Perseus

I don't really have any problems here until the last relative clause:

ὅς γε οὐδὲ συγγράψαι φημί

It is here that I'm not sure why he decided to use a relative clause at all. I find it strange that ὅς is used to refer back to the same subject of the sentence, which is he himself. It almost seems like that relative pronoun is superfluous.

The other issue for me is the negative and the infinitive inside of the clause:

οὐδὲ συγγράψαι φημί

It seems to me that since the negative,οὐδὲ, is sitting next to the infinitive(συγγράψαι ), it is negating the the infinitive rather than the finite verb, right? So it should be:

"who affirms not having composed it"

rather than

"Who does not affirm having composed it"

(sorry for the quick and dirty translation)

So, if I had to categorize this infinitive, the best I can think of would be infinitive of indirect discourse. Does that sound right?

I'm not sure why I'm having trouble figuring this one out. It just seems strange to me for some reason.

Thanks for your help.

[Barry Hofstetter]

Yes, it's clearly indirect statement.