Doubts on Zuntz Lesson 9

Greek Learning Greek
1

Χαίρετε, πάντες!

I have been reading Athenaze, but chapter 4 got overwhelming with its endless new words (and unknow forms of verbs), so I decided to read some chapters of Zuntz before moving on. Here are my doubts on this one:

A1. Ὀδυσσεὺς ἔχαιρε τῇ φήμῃ τῇ θείᾳ

It seems “ἔχαιρε” means more or less what English “enjoy” means in “To enjoy freedom”, the dative being used to express what is enjoyed, or what Odysseus gets his joy from (his godly fame). Is my guess right?

A3. Ἐκ πολλῶν μνημῶν ἐμπειρία μία ἐστίν (Ἀριστοτέλους)

“A single experience is made from many memories”? The meaning of this is very opaque to me…

C1. Ἡ φιλία ἐστὶν ἀρετή τις ἢ μετ`ἀρετῆς, ἔτι ἀναγκαῖον εἰς τὸν βίον

“Friendship is a certain excellence, or is with excellence (μετ`ἀρετῆς), and is even necessary (lit. “a necessary thing”) to the life”? Another opaque passage for me.

D3. Πάμπολλαι ἀρεταί εἰσιν, τῶν δ`ἀρετῶν ἄλλη μέν ἐστι ἐλευθέρου, ἄλλη δὲ δούλου. (Πλάτωνος)

This one seems less troublesome: “There are many excellences, and among them some are of the freeman, and some of the slave”. What confused me slightly is that he uses ἄλλη instead of ἄλλαι, even though he is talking about πάμπολλαι ἀρεταί, in the plural. Why is that?

E3. Ἡ εὐδαιμονία ἢ σοφία ἐστὶν ἢ ἀρετὴ ψυχῆς.

He just defined wisdom as the excellence of soul (D2: Ἡ ψυχῆς ἀρετὴ σοφία), but if those are the same, why is ἢ used? Can it also be used to separate two things that mean almost the same thing, like Latin vel (e.g.: Ūnus annus duodecim mēnsēs vel trecentōs sexāgintā quīnque diēs habet. Familia Romana, XIII, 7-8), besides presenting two mutually exclusive alternatives (Lat. aut)?

F2. Τὰ μεγάλα δῶρα τῆς Τύχης ἔχει φόβον.

“The great blessings (presents) have fear of Fortune”? Does it mean one’s talents may be easily lost by bad fate?

G1. Σπονδαί εἰσιν Ἀθηναίοις καὶ Λακεδαιμονίοις

“Both the Athenians and Spartans to libations”?

G3. Ἐν ταῖς Ολυμπιακαῖς σπονδαῖς οὐκ έξεστιν ὅπλα εἰσφέρειν εἰς τὴνδε τὴν χῶραν.

“While the Olympiam libations (= libations to the Olympian gods?) happen one cannot bring weapons into this country”?

H. Εἲ τίς ἐστιν ἐν Μεγάροις, οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν Ἀθήναις. Ἄνθρωπός ἐστιν ἐν Μεγάροις· οὐκ ἄρα ἐστὶν ἄνθρωπος ἐν Μεγάροις.

A footnote says this is a joke. Can “ἄνθρωπος” mean “someone”? IIRC, I read once in a dictionary entry that Latin “homo” may mean that in colloquial languague (which I suppose means it is found in the comic playwrights), and I know “homem” was thus used in old Portuguese. I thought that, that being the case, “οὐκ ἄρα ἐστὶν ἄνθρωπος ἐν Μεγάροις” would mean “then there is no one in Megara”.

I think that is all.

Ἔρρωσθε,
Ἰωάννης Στέφανος.

2

A1 says Od. was rejoicing at the divine voice/utterance.

G1 means there’s a truce between them.

H gives examples of propositional logic associated with the Stoic Chrysippus. The first goes “If someone’s in Megara he’s not in Athens.” OK. The second looks like a misquoted restatement of the first. As reported here it goes “A person is in Megara; so a person isn’t in Megara.” This is defensible, at a pinch (unless it’s one and the same person, say), but I reckon the ending should simply be “in Athens.”

3

I think this is a good demonstration of why Zuntz doesn’t quite work as a textbook. It’s all isolated sentences with no context, which is always going to be opaque and ambiguous if you haven’t read a lot of idiomatic Greek already (or unless you recognize where the extracts are from). With only six or eight words to look at, you’re stuck with a grammatical puzzle. Reading a page of Plato or Xenophon or whatever, you can almost always figure out what a tricky sentence has to mean, and from there deduce (or look up) a grammatical feature you didn’t know.

4

I see… Indeed, the lack of context makes it difficult to understand most passages. He despised “made up” Greek, but if he wrote easy prose following classical usage (i.e. what Ørberg made in LLPSI, as far as I can tell) it would be much better. Have you any readers you could recommend? So far Athenaze, Thrasymachus, Ancient Greek Alive and Valpy’s Greek Delectus have caught my attention (but I have only tried Athenaze and AGA). I mostly prefer reading to dull grammar study, but if you have any grammar textbook you think would be useful, I am also open to suggestions.

Much thanks!

5

Of those you mention, I’ve only used Athenaze. I studied it in parallel with JACT Reading Greek, which I overall found more enjoyable. I tried Rouse’s old A Greek Boy at Home after that, but found it difficult, not so much grammatically but because he introduces new vocabulary with almost every sentence. Since then I’ve mostly been reading Geoffrey Steadman’s editions of Plato (where it helps that I’m familiar with the content from reading it in translation).

Not to speak too harshly of Zuntz; I did follow his book for quite some time, and his grammatical appendix is excellent.

Grammar study may be dull on its own, but I do think you should follow through with a textbook before you move on to reading texts only! There’s a lot to unpack in Greek.

6

Since then I’ve mostly been reading Geoffrey Steadman’s editions of Plato (where it helps that I’m familiar with the content from reading it in translation).

Steadman’s editions have also caught my atention, and I have downloaded some of them (not because I can read them, but to have them when I get able to).

Oh, what I meant was that studying only grammar (and translating meaningless fragments) is dull! Here in Brazil there is a popular textbook (as popular as a Latin textbook can be) which, having 104 lessons, gives you its first reading at all in lesson 79! It is intended to be a Latin primer, but it is so packed of information that it is much better used as a reference book (as I still do from time to time). And Zuntz’s grammar are indeed excelent: very concise, and I like his exposition of historic linguistics.

Thanks for sharing you thoughts!