Hi All,
Anyone have a recommendation for a good reader’s edition of Aristophanes ? I am going to need some vocab/idiom helps. I am coming from a B Greek background and working my way into classical, so my vocab is weaker for this sort of material. I’ve read a short bit of Frogs which seems a lot of fun from JACT, so I’d continue with that if I can.
Thx
D
I think you have a choice of Stanford or Dover. These won’t however give you the kind of help you got in JACT. Reading Greek has selections from the Birds, Wasps, Lysistrata and the Akharnians. I think you must have read the Frogs extract in A Greek Anthology which I did not know about until I started this reply.
If you finished the whole of JACT “Reading Greek” and “A Greek Anthology” then "A world of heroes " has substantial selections of Homer, Herodotus and Sophocles in the usual JACT style and might be a good reader after A Greek Anthology.
I don’t want to put you off Aristophanes but I personally have found him a difficult author both linguistically and culturally. Thats no reason not to try if his work appeals to you. I wish at university I had read more prose but I concentrated mostly on poetic texts which gives one a rather skewed sense of how Greek works.
Many thanx. Yes I read it in “A Greek Anthology”. “A World of Heroes” is on my list when I get through these (Reading Greek and the Anthology) and Morice’s stories, all of which I’m sort of alternating my way through. Thanx for the note about poetry etc. I’ll bear that in mind. I still have to get back to the Anabasis so hopefully that will provide some balance.
thx
D
Dover’s commentary on the Frogs is excellent. He later made an abridged version of his commentary for students that includes an appendix of vocab not included in JACT. That could be a good match for your background. You might also consider the Clouds—Laura Barnard’s Bryn Mawr commentary provides more elementary help.
Thanx for this. I was leaning toward Dover. I have his work on word order - which will take some working on to really grock. I see the student edition is readily available. And yes Clouds seems like fun too, from the short simplified snatch in JACT.
Thx
D
I think that Seneca’s advice to concentrate on prose before verse is right, but when you’re teaching yourself there is nothing preventing you from jumping ahead at times.
if you want to jump into Aristophanes, Starkie’s edition of The Acharnians may be exactly what you want. The Greek faces a translation on the right, and the notes take most of the spread across the two pages. In the paperback edition, the text is greatly reduced in size, so you may want to look for an old original edition.
Mark
Thanx Mark. This also could be good.
Thx
D