I also am looking for a good Greek prosody book. My Allen & Greenough has prosody in the back, but the H&Q doesn’t seem to cover it. I’m planning on writing something for my school’s literature magazine in the spring. Any good book/online reference recommendations?
Thanks!,
Titus Marius Crispus
[edit]Oh, and, I don’t really know anything about verbs or adjectives yet, but how is the grammar in [size=150]πᾶς γραικὸς ἐστί[/size]?[/edit]
Eeek! Don’t use the prosody from any of those old grammars! They were all desperate to make Greek poetry scan like a Waltz or a March, and all sorts of violence was done to make the complex a great deal more complex.
For books, M.L. West has an introduction to Greek meter (er, metre) that seems to be available from time to time. Raven’s introduction is also solid.
If I may make bold to offer my own work, the Introduction to Greek Meter is a good start. I’m in the process of turning that into a nice PDF file, and am refining and updating as I go. There used to be a beautiful site, “The Enchiridion of Greek Metrics” but it has gone the way of all flesh.
[edit]> Oh, and, I don’t really know anything about verbs or adjectives yet, but how is the grammar in [size=150]πᾶς γραικὸς ἐστί[/size]?> [/edit]
Well, the vocabulary choice is a bit spotty. What are you trying to say? To the Greeks the Graeci were very specific Greeks, not all of them.
I happened upon your “Introduction to Greek Meter” about an hour ago through Google. It’s great!
Looks like West’s book is out of print.. I found two versions of Raven’s book: one for $106.93 and one for $25.00. Strange… Guess I’ll just keep to learning from the internet.
As for that last bit, I was trying to say “It’s all Greek to me”. I forgot the personal pronoun, and probably bungled up the rest too.
Number error! Very common in beginners (and not so beginners). You have “the god educates the men.”
Everything else looks fine to me, though in 3 I might suggest the possibility of moving ἐκ τῆς νήσου to right after δῶρον, but only because that’s how I interpret the English.
Oh, and, I don’t really know anything about verbs or adjectives yet, but how is the grammar in pa=j Graiko\s e)sti/?
i don’t think you can translate this idiom literally into greek like this, it wouldn’t make sense. you might want to use an adjective for unintelligible:
and put it in the neuter plural (these things are…), and use e)sti with the neuter (nb in your example above, the grave in graiko\j is an acute before e)sti, i.e. Graiko/j e)sti).
I found two versions of Raven’s book: one for $106.93 and one for $25.00. Strange… Guess I’ll just keep to learning from the internet.