καίπερ κακοῖς δουλεύοντες ἐχόρευον ὅμως ταῖς γε θεοῖς ὡς σωθείησαν

[Jorsay]

Our best guess is:

Although being slaves to the bad men, nevertheless they were dancing with the godesses in order that they might be saved.

Questions:

Is our translation correct?

What kind of dative is "ταις γε θεοις "?

Thank you

[billberg23]

Is our translation correct?

  It may be.  The transcription, however, may have run afoul of the original.  Please recheck the spelling to make sure we're dealing with a viable text.

What kind of dative is "ταις γε θεοις "?

Excellent question.  If it really is a dative, I'd love to discuss it with the author of the Greek sentence (apparently a contemporary American classicist).  But let's recheck the text first.  Treating θεός as a feminine noun is O.K., especially in the singular in inscriptions, but a bit unusual otherwise.

[Jorsay]

the sentence is the same as in the book.

The text is "Greek, An Intensive Course" by Hansen and Quinn. 

[vbd.]

I'd say it's "dancing to the goddesses" (in honor of the goddesses) rather than "with" the goddesses. The rest is correct. Don't mind "ταῖς γε θεοῖς". It is no "new" or "different" kind of dative. Just the feminine article with a masculine (gramatically) noun, so as to show that the nouns quality in this case is feminine. The author could just as well have written "θεαῖς", but he went for the "weirder" "θεοῖς". Fair enough, I guess.

[billberg23]

the sentence is the same as in the book.
The text is "Greek, An Intensive Course" by Hansen and Quinn. 

I haven't seen this textbook.  Do they actually misprint χ for κ in the first word?  And do they print no accents or breathing marks?

[oberonsghost]

I haven't seen this textbook.  Do they actually misprint χ for κ in the first word?  And do they print no accents or breathing marks?

The textbook is published by Fordham University Press. Hardy Hansen is Professor of Classics at Brooklyn College and at the Latin/Greek Institute of City University of New York.  Dr. Gerald M. Quinn is Dean of the College at Lincoln Center, Fordham University. (from the www.fordhampress.com).

I haven't seen it either.  I learned my Classical Greek using JACT's Reading Greek, which has recently been updated and comes with a separate self-study guide/teacher's notes with the key to the exercises and additional notes on the grammar.... :)

[Jorsay]

I have to aplogize.  I did print the first word incorrectly.  It is "καίπερ".  I don't know how to print accent and rough breathing marks.

The text is from my Ancient Greek Class at Columbia University in 1991.

thank you for your help.