[1] (i.e. with accusative.) One can find many occurrences of similar meanings: "chase", of enemies or hunting (
Homer,
Iliad 22.199
feu/gonta diw/kein, 5.223
pedi/oio diwke/men "to chase over the battlefield"); "drive away" or "banish" (
Homer,
Odyssey 18.409
diw/kw ou)/tin' e)/gwge "there is nobody I am forcing away";
Herodotus 9.77); "urge" or "compel" (
Sophocles,
Electra 871
u(f' h(donh=s diw/komai […] su\n ta/cei molei=n "my pleasure is urging me to go rapidly".
diw/kw is also used of weapons or musical instruments, as "impel"; cf.
d. be/los xeri\, "wield a weapon with the hand" in
Pindar,
Isthmian 8.35;
fo/rmigga pla/ktrw| "sweep the lyre with a plectrum"; id.
Nemean 5.24.
2The quotation of the following passages from Demosthenes' oration 18 On the Crown (56 and 59, see web address 1) as examples of a rule requiring a genitive with diw/kw is an instance of an incorrect grammatical interpretation by the Suda (or its source). The verb diw/kw is indeed followed by a genitive whenever it is used in such expressions as "accuse of", "prosecute for" (see the note at delta 1228), but this meaning is not to be applied to these Demosthenic passages, where the genitives yhfi/smatos and yhfisma/twn are partitive. This is self-evident in the second passage, 18.56 (on diw/kei depends the relative pronoun a(/); and 18.59 reads in full o( ga\r diw/kwn tou= yhfi/smatos tou= le/gein kai\ pra/ttein ta\ a)/rista/ me, "the decree’s claim that my action and words are the best [in the interests of the community]". Whenever it means accuse/attack/prosecute diw/kw is used with an accusative: see e.g. Antiphon 2.1.5, grafa\s; [Demosthenes] 59.69 grafh/n tina; Hyperides, On behalf of Euxenippus 9 ei)saggeli/an; etc. ↩3Aeschines (alphaiota 347, alphaiota 348). ↩4The decree moved by Ctesiphon, that the community should bestow a civic crown on Demosthenes for acting and advising in the best interests of the demos. (Aeschines is pursuing Ctesiphon with a graphe paranomon, i.e. charging him with having proposed an unlawful decree. See M.H. Hansen, The Sovereignty of the People's Court in Athens↗ in the Fourth Century BC and the Public Action Against Unconstitutional Proposals (Odense 1974) no.32.) ↩5(This plural, tw=n yhfisma/twn, is wrong; read tou= yhfi/smatos.) At the beginning of chapter 56, Demosthenes demonstrates the legal fitness of the yh/fisma by a partitio, reviewing point by point the reasons alleged by Aeschines to impeach the decree: that is, the notion that Demosthenes’ political record really deserves the crown and the presumed legal defects of the decree. This last claim was that the decree was in conflict with a law forbidding an official to be crowned while still holding office. (Demosthenes was commissioner of walls and of the theoric fund at the time the crown was proposed for him.) A secondary claim attacked the theatre of Dionysus as the place chosen for the formal ceremony, since the law required that the proclamation of a crown bestowed by the demos should take place in the assembly (or in the council if the honour had been bestowed by the council itself).