What should we read?

[exactduckwoman]

Suggestions made so far (that I remember):

Plato: Either the Apology or one of his dialogues. I suggested the Ion
or the Euthyphro. For Plato I have only read the Crito and the
Symposium. The latter is at times really hard, so depending on what
people think they're up to we might want to just do selections.

Readings from the "A Greek Reader for Schools" : if this is the one
from 1916 published by Oxford, I think I have it too, oddly. It
contains tweaked readings from various authors and is designed for an
elementary or intermediate level. Could be good if people are looking
to improve from one or two year's worth of Greek. I don't mind typing
in selections from it.

Other ideas? A tragedy, some poetry, a speech, history? Homer?

How is everyone's Greek, for that matter? It makes a difference in
what we choose. I have had four years of it but I am not the strongest
reader despite that...

I am going to post a duplicate page to the one I put on the Latin
community with useful classics links, where you can find dictionaries
and texts of many authors, including Plato.

[Bel_Canto]

I'd absolutely love to read the Apology. My Greek is alright and
getting better; the last three weeks of my intro course were spent
working through Xenophon's Apology, which was pretty good. I had a
lot of trouble at first, but gradually I got better at it. I still
sometimes run into sentences that I have absolutely no clue about,
which definitely slows me down.

[Thesaurus]

I'm still a baby in Greek, but I've been studying it as intensely as I
can for about two months now. I've covered all the grammar in
Mastronarde, and I've been spending a long time on some readings
courses. Needless to say, I'll be very slow and bad, but I think I'll
be able to keep up with some basic stuff.

I don't know anything about it, but this has looked very promising and
hopefully entertaining for people at a lower level of Greek--plus, it
includes a full and side-by-side vocabulary:

Xenophon of Ephesos
Ephesiaca, or, Anthia and Habrocomes Book 1
http://www.classicalmyth.com/greek/Ephesiaca1.pdf

Here is part of the description from the webpage: "Finished the first
year of Greek and hoping not to forget everything? Or trying to brush
up on things after some time away from Greek? Depressed trying to slog
through Pindar and looking for an ego boost? Read easy Greek with
vocabulary and some basic notes! Xenophon of Ephesos' Ephesiaka, one
of the five surviving Greek novels, is usually read in the original
Greek only by scholarly specialists. That's a real shame. Sure, it's
not the greatest literary achievement of the ancients, and the Greek
is pretty uninspired and repetitive, but that's what makes it perfect
for beginners! The language is a basic "literary Koine," so it's easy
to understand if you've studied Classical Greek, but close enough to
the simpler grammar of the New Testament that it makes a good
transitional text for people who started with the NT."
http://www.classicalmyth.com/greek/greek.html

[exactduckwoman]

Since some of you have only just finished beginning Greek, I would
suggest saving the Apology for the future. I haven't read it, but if
it's anything like the Symposium it will not be fun.

Does anyone have an opinion on this Xenophon of Ephesos text? It looks
fairly basic but interesting, which from the responses so far seems
appropriate. It looks like a good way to keep my Greek up without
maybe quite so many tears as a more eminent work, so I cast my vote
for it.

I know there are some lurkers in here, so if you have an opinion,
speak up!

On May 27, 2:52 pm, Thesaurus <thesau...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm still a baby in Greek, but I've been studying it as intensely as I
> can for about two months now. I've covered all the grammar in
> Mastronarde, and I've been spending a long time on some readings
> courses. Needless to say, I'll be very slow and bad, but I think I'll
> be able to keep up with some basic stuff.
>
> I don't know anything about it, but this has looked very promising and
> hopefully entertaining for people at a lower level of Greek--plus, it
> includes a full and side-by-side vocabulary:
>
> Xenophon of Ephesos

> Ephesiaca, or, Anthia and Habrocomes Book 1http://www.classicalmyth.com/greek/Ephesiaca1.pdf

[Faust]

The standard text for second year Greek at my university is the
Apology, and the Symposium for the advanced class. The Symposium is
most certainly more complex than the Apology, what with more difficult
grammatical constructions, a wider vocabulary used, and being several
times as long. I doubt that I'll have time to really contribute
anything due to work and a shitton of traveling, but if the Apology is
nominated as the text to try out, I'd be more than happy to offer any
part of my own translation which has been gone over and edited during
class.

Furthermore, I'd recommend using this edition:
http://www.amazon.com/Plato-Apology/dp/0865163480/ref=pd_bbs_sr_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212497012&sr=8-4

You're given up to ~45 lines of Greek at a time with footnotes for any
short complex or strange constructions, as well as a lexical entry for
any word used only once. There's a short dictionary in the back for
most other words as well as a list of all the principle parts for most
of the verbs used. The greatest benefit, though, is a breakdown of
the few really fucking long conditionals, making them a million times
easier to translate and understand.

Anyways. Just my opinion.

[Pullarius]

Chiming in here, and excited to have found this! I have some years of
classical Greek under my belt, but a lot of it was independent study
under a professor while I was working on my Master's in Ancient
History. I think I have an okay command, but I need to expand my
reading corpus. I would be interested in doing whatever anyone else
wants, I could benefit from almost any category, though Homer or
Xenophon might be fun and useful.

I found out that upon arriving to my PhD. program in the fall I'll
have language exams for class placement, one in Greek, one in Latin. 3
hours for each. Each has 6 passages of 20 lines each, three passages
of prose, three of poetry, no dictionary. So I am really looking to
build my vocabulary, as well as improve on either prose or poetry
sight reading. I used Athenaze, and the combination of Athenaze's
focus on larger blocks of text, and with the fact that I studied at
home, means that I have good reading comprehension, but I am not
always great at picking out forms or sometimes I blank on the tenses.
It really screws me up on the sequence of tenses, and the subjunctive
and optative.

[xthnru]

I do apologize for my extended hiatus and the seemingly flaky nature
of my "attendance", if you will. Life happens, and all that, blah blah
blah...

As for my personal background with Greek, I don't have much to say.
I've studied it for about 2 semesters in a small study group with a
volunteer teacher who was majoring in comparative linguistics, and
will be taking my first for-credit class in the fall. We've been using
Athenaze and got about halfway through it, and the only worthwhile
thing I've done with it so far is translate and read parts of Richard
Wellsley's poem in Greek for a public reading.

In regards to what we should read, and the format of this group, I
would like to propose the following: Post whatever you would like to,
and the rest of us will each take a crack at translating it, and
compare them. Perhaps think of it as like a challenge of sorts.

I, personally, have the Oxford Greek Reader, and is indeed the one
Exactduckwoman was talking about. I'll get to putting bits and pieces
of that in here this week, as I'll be stuck at my parents' place
babysitting their dogs. I'll probably post some of the fables from
Aesop and then, for you big boys, some Herodotus.

How does that sound?