what original texts are u reading at the moment?

[chad]

it'd be interesting to know what everyone here is working through at the moment, and why you've chosen those particular texts

as well as working through pharr with the beginners mailing list here, i'm working through poets from the different greek dialects, to get comfortable in each.

pindar: working through the olympians. i've scanned the lot using the schemas in the French Academy's Pindar volumes and am reading olympian 1, having started with Professor Harris' intro to Olympian 1.

sophocles: reading aias. i've scanned the choral passages from an old prosody book, and i'm slowly scanning the iambic tri, and reading the text using perseus to help with any grammar probs.

aeschylus: reading persai. i've just started and i love the metre, particularly the short-short-long-long passages a few pages into it. i'm still reading the anapaestic intro.

sappho: reading all the relatively complete fragments: there's only a few of them. i've used will's aoidoi text of sappho 1, and the loeb versions for fragments 2 and the other complete ones: sappho is still my fav poet, her dialect is beautiful.

aristophanes: reading the knights. it's hilarious: the start is so disgusting. i'm only a few pages into it.

those are my poets. i'm also reading herodotus: i've done a chunk of the beginning: just because it's easyish greek. and then the philosophers which is my main long-term interest: i'm reading plato's parmenides and aristotle's metaphysics and topics: i'm a fair way through each of these.

i've got lots of other books on my bookshelf which i'm not working through: the ones i've listed above each get taken down at least a few times a week.

how about you guys? cheers, chad.

[annis]

Are you reading all of those in Greek?! If I tried to read that many authors in English I'd end up with a mess, much less in Greek.

By necessity I'm reading Pharr and also Odyssey 12. Between those and my general inability to say "no" to politely phrased requests for help I've not read much else recently. Aoidoi has had a horrible slowdown as a result. However, the last of the time-sucking obligations ended this weekend - and I play to say "no" more often - so I'll get back to Hesiod's Theogony, which I'm preparing for Aoidoi.

I have some fragments of Ibycus and Anacreon I want to work on, too.

Once the Odyssey 12 list is done I hope we can then move on to the other Odyssey texts available here.

But there's no way I could shift between dialects so much. I want to get through as much Epic as possible before moving on to later literature. My hope is to end up with some sensitivity to style and register changes.

[Paul]

Hi Chad,

I'm with Will - are you reading all those in Greek? If so, yikes!

There's no way I could do that.

I am translating Iliad B and Trachiniae. Why? Because it's Homer and Sophocles.

The 'rest' of my 'greek time' is devoted to the two reading groups and to
the software I am deploying at http://www.greekgeek.org, to maintaing that website itself, and to ancillary reading.

Cordially,

Paul

[mingshey]

(What am I doing?)

[chad]

i think it would be really good if we had a thread like this listing what everyone's reading at the moment: that way if someone has a question about a particular text, they can check here if one of us is reading it.

btw about reading a few texts at the same time in greek... i don't know if it's exactly analogous but it feels the same to me: if you start a musical instrument you spend a bit learning the basics, and then you spend a few years as an 'established beginner' where you work through lots of different songs by different composers: you don't focus on one composer/composition after doing 6 months of the basics say. working through different composers/compositions develops different sides to your skill, even at a beginners stage.

i've probably said this too often now but learning the sound/rhythm of greek is the most important reason i think for learning to read these texts in the original. even a complicated greek philosophical text can be carried over more or less effectively into an english translation, with lots of commentary about specific philosophical terms. the one thing which doesn't get carried over at all is the sound/rhythm of the original.

and a lot of the best greek works were closer to music than prose: e.g. homer, big chunks of the tragedies and comedies, lyric &c.

so at my kind of established beginners stage i'm trying to get a sense of greek sound/rhythm, rather than trying to understand a particular text.

and to do that you can't just concentrate on e.g. homer's dactylic hex: the greeks had a very sophisticated musical ear and expected different types of text to be in specific dialects and metres. i find it helpful to learn at the same time different types of texts in their proper dialect and metre, to try to develop an sense for the many types of texts which the greeks appreciated. i find it interesting doing it this way

[bingley]

Latin: Cornelius Nepos

Greek: Lysias I'm currenlty working my way through the Murder of Eratosthenes, and I also have collection of his other speeches, which I'll read next.

[mingshey]

I think I should begin reading Homer sooner of later, after reading the article chad has recommended here, and also remembering what William has said the other day.

[Emma_85]

Only Homer... the Odyssey and bit of the Iliad (but only a tiny bit).
Oh yeah, in Latin it's uh... dunno really. Just generally philosophical texts. One day it'll be Cicero, the next day we'll be reading someing by Augustinus . Mostly Cicero though.

[Kopio]

Apollodorus' Library Volume 1 (I'm about 3/4 of the way through)

And of course....the Greek New Testament, I'm in 2 Corinthians right now.

Unfortunately, I haven't been reading either one too consistently right now, I needed a mental break and I am reading a great sci-fi by a guy named Alan Dean Foster. Serious reading should resume soon though.

[Geoff]

I am still learning too much to read proficiently, but I pick up The book of Mark (NT) regularly and read randomly whether I understand or not.

[mingshey]

What about Euclid? I got to textkit while searching for a free Euclid text WITH figures. I'm too busy these days to afford much time for drawing the figures but the text is ever available on Perseus and the figures on David Joyce's Euclid's Elements site. Though the proper reading of it needs the aid of the figures, Euclid is good for getting your brain on the rolling: math at the same time interpreting Greek!.

[klewlis]

I've been slacking in my greek lately, to focus on Latin and adjusting to a new position at work.

However, when I *do* read:
- I'm working through the GNT, currently in Romans
- I started the Odyssey but have not gotten very far, and have not made a concentrated effort to make the transition from koine to homer... so that is going to take some time!
- I recently picked up Marcus Aurelius, but haven't started yet.

In Latin, I am reading a bit of Cicero, slowly!

[xon]

Heh, I'm still on First Greek Book. But I have been able to pick up some words from Greek NT book Philemon.

[messalina]

we (that is, my greek class) just finished Lysias' first oration last week (the murder of Eratosthenes), although we skipped the first bit and didn't have time to come back to it. once finals are over (this week) i want to finish that part (bingley, wanna talk? ), and then this summer i am going to try to work through the euthyphro, on the advice of my greek professor.

also, i picked up thirty-eight latin stories to try to refresh my latin knowledge, which has been idle and dusty for far too long..

all this on top of two math classes.. i may be being a *little* optimistic..

[Fair Terentia]

In Latin this year I've been reading some of Catullus' poetry and Tacitus Annals 15 (v. hard!). At the moment we've just started the Cupid and Psyche story from The Golden As-s by Apuleius. Next year we're going to be doing Aeneid 2 (yay!) and some Seneca.

In Greek I did Odyssey 9 (the Cyclops) and Plato Republic 1. Next year I'm doing Hippolytus (Euripides) and The Wasps (Aristophanes) which I'm really looking forward to.