I (Walter Melvin Roberts III) am an African-American was born in Detroit Michigan in 1959. I earned degrees from Columbia College (B.A. Philosophy and Classical Greek, 1983 summa cum laude), the University of Chicago (M.A. Philosophy, 1990), and UC Berkeley (M.A. Latin, 2000; Ph.D. Classics 2006). In 2011 my dissertation, Cicero’s Political Imperative: A Reading of On Duties, was published by VDM Verlag. In 2012 I resigned my tenure-track position at the University of Vermont in order to found Detroit Greek and Latin and Greek in Glacier.
Detroit Greek and Latin (hereafter DGL) is a 501(c)(3) public non-profit dedicated to offering Greater Detroit area students the opportunity to learn Ancient Greek and Latin. In addition, DGL aims to fortify existing Latin programs, and to increase the rigor of classics and language arts curricula—especially within the Detroit Public Schools.
Greek in Glacier — a June to August Greek and Latin intensive in Glacier National Park, MT. — is the summer-time home of DGL. (I have regularly summered in Glacier National (Polebridge, MT) since 1993.) I am an avid chess player, cyclist, and outdoorsman. In 2013 I had the pleasure of serving as Amendments Coordinator for the Senate of the Montana Legislature.
I am presently finishing work on a commentary to Iliad I. Three Quarrels: Agamemnon vs. the Priest of Apollo, Agamemnon vs. Achilles, Zeus vs. Hera attempts to redesign the “school commentary”; it is a running vocabulary, teacher’s manual, and self-tutorial supplement to Pharr’s Homeric Greek: A Book for Beginners — following the texts of Monro & Allen and Bekker (ϝ) and, it is ornamented with copious references to Smyth’s Greek Grammar, Goodwin’s Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb, Denniston’s The Greek Particles, and Monro’s Homeric Grammar. For all but the most advanced readers of Homer, leaving no stone unturned, TQ exposes the nuances of Homeric diction, morphology, and syntax in situ. It is a labor of devotion to two of my most favorite texts: Homer’s Iliad, and Smyth’s Greek Grammar.
Three Quarrels (TQ) serves as the textbook of an online course offered on Google Hangouts. (Meeting 6 hours/week — using Pharr as a pace-horse but working predominately out of Smyth’s — participants reached the end of Book I of the Iliad in fourteen weeks.) A second iteration of the course will launch later this month, October 2014.
I had just returned home from a symposium at the University of Michigan — in honor of the recently deceased Kweku Garbrah — where I heard Martin West speak of his work on the text of the Iliad. I found on TextKit very useful (and very humbling) information about West’s approach and Homeric textual criticism in general. I very much look forward to engaging with the experts and scholars on this site — since I am, admittedly, something of a dilettante — and to helping novices progress in their ability and love of Homer, Greek, and Latin.
Two points from Professor West’s talk on his work in the Odyssey:
Odyssey I. 346-7
“Mother Dear, Why then do you grudge the trusty singer to sing in the way he pleases?”
μῆτερ ἐμή, τί τ’ ἄρα φθονέεις ἐρίηρον ἀοιδόν / τέρπειν ὅππηι οἱ νόος ὄρνυται;
In this passage West reads: τί ταρ αὖ, cf. 23. 264 δαιμονίη, τί ταρ αὖ με μάλ’ ὀτρύνουσα κελεύεις | εἰπέμεν· “Dear One, Why urging me so strongly do you bid me to speak?”
Professor West took exception to τ’ ἄρα. He considered it to be unacceptable as Greek — an unprecedented collocation of particles.
As entertaining as this was, the highlight of the talk was his assertion that by adopting μηδέ σφιν rather than μέγα δέ σφιν (at Odyssey 13. 158) He had saved an ancient peoples from destruction: namely, the Phaeacians from destruction by Poseidon as punishment for returning Odysseus to Ithaca. With the insertion of the negation Zeus forbids (rather than encourages) his brother to destroy them by covering their city with a mountain — Poseidon, the Earthshaker — god of earthquakes.
