Help me to sketch a plan of reading to this year

Greek Learning Greek
1

I’ve finished the Odyssey this week, and maybe because of the end of the year, maybe because of the comment above, I feel a little nostalgic so as to post my usual questions. I’d just like to say that I’ve enjoyed very much the last books, maybe in part because of the incidental reason that at that point of the poem I’ve started feeling a little more comfortable reading Homer than at the beginning, but in greater part because the action become very exciting in those culminating chapters!

I didn’t give thanks on my last post, so I use the occasion to give thanks to all the people that have give to me so serious and helpful answers all this time.

But there is another reason for this post. Homer has encouraged me more than ever to continue reading classical literature. I’m sketching a “plan of reading” for this year, and I would like to take your advice.

I’d like to listen your suggestions, of readings that you have enjoyed -and that you think that could be available to someone at my level of learning- that you would recommend to me. I have no further requirements, I just read for pleasure and curiosity, though I don’t mind if you recommend me a text book, an history book, or whatever you think that could help to the appreciation of classical literature. (Please consider that the only modern languages that I know are Spanish and English, and maybe Italian that I’m just learning not along ago myself, but if you would like to recommend me books in other languages please post them anyway, maybe I would like to consider them in the future!).

Here are some books that I’ve been reading the last months (so that you get the idea of the style of annotated editions that I’m looking for, in the case of literature books):
Latin:

  • Juvenal: Satire 6 (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics)
  • Horace: Satires Book I (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics)
  • Virgil: Aeneid Book XII (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics)
    As you see, I’m becoming very fond of Cambridge Greek and Latin collection, I’ve found the notes very useful. I’ve liked specially that they made a lot of references to Homer, allowing me to appreciate Homer’s influence in other classic authors.
    Greek:
    I’ve started this week reading a little of Plato: Apology of Socrates, just for curiosity and because I’ve encountered in textkit.com a free edition with notes (http://cdn.textkit.net/DL_Plato_Apology_Crito_AR5.pdf). The first thing that I’ve noted was the complexity of the long sentences, while the lexicon and regular morphology do not seem to represent a problem at all (just the opposite that happens with Homer!). For other part, I’ve take a look to an annotated poem of Sappho which I’ve encountered here http://www.aoidoi.org/poets/sappho/, and I’ve encountered the same difficulties that I had with Homer (I mean, there are a lot of dialectical forms), but to my surprise I’ve encounter no further problems with the vocabulary, which I’ve found very near to the Homeric (though maybe I didn’t read enough and I got the wrong impression). Do you think that I could continue by this way, with the lyric poets?

I know some one that will travel and could bring me some books, so I am considering to abuse of the good predisposition of this person and order a bundle of books, so I encourage you to add books to the list! Here is my shopping card till the moment (with a recommendation that I’ve remembered that Qimmik made on an old post):

http://www.amazon.com/Greek-Lyric-Poetry-BCP-Texts/dp/0862920086/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395441484&sr=1-1&keywords=campbell+greek+lyric+poetry#reader_0862920086

I think I will reserve the first read of the Iliad for later, like the special dish.

2

Hi, I hope you won’t find any (minor) corrections to your English insulting - I certainly don’t mean to be - but we really would just use “reading” here instead of “lecture” and we, erm, wouldn’t use “faggot” there either. Maybe something like bundle? a bundle of books.

Anyway, I’d say it doesn’t matter. So don’t worry! Sure you can only read the Odyssey or the Iliad for the first time once but who wants to only read them once? Reading them early is actually a good idea because so much later literature depends upon them.

I will say though, judging from your list, you really should read Juvenal book I. Considerably better than the women obsessed satire six and with an EXCELLENT Green and Yellow commentary to boot. If you like Roman satire why not go through a good deal of it? Horace (both Saturae and Epistles) are brilliant. Persius is great too but for me amongst the most difficult of Latin literature to really “get”. If you’re reading a lot of Latin it might be worth getting Elaine Fantham’s “Roman Literary Culture”. It’s less sophisticated, but newer than, many rivals but gives a good period by period breakdown and you’ll get LOTS of ideas of what to read.

But, honestly, just start reading. Enjoy immersing yourself and wading through what takes your fancy. Start up discussions here on textkit as you go.

3

Congratulations! The end (but not the very end) is thrilling. And shocking too: think about what was done to the handmaids (Scribo’s favourite bit (no, just joking…)) and Melanthios.

Yes, why not. But remember that life is short!

I agree that Sappho is easier than you’d think and that resource on aoidoi.org is simply great.

It’s a funny coincidence that I also have ordered that Greek lyric book by Campbell and started to read it today for the first time. It seems very good. It will also have Sappho, about everything that’s worth reading, although a couple of fragments have been found since then. But I would advice you to see if you can find an old used copy of the book, because the reprint you are linking to is probably very bad in quality. Campbell’s book does not include translations, so you might want to get some. You have, for instance, (who else?) M.L. West’s Greek Lyric Poetry. You have also Loebs, but the material in spread in several volumes. Campbell + West would probably get you pretty far. And I would suppose that there are some translations into Spanish as well.

Personally, I enjoyed John Burnet’s commented edition of Euthyphro, the Apology and Crito. But you might do very well with what you’re already reading.

For beginning Attic prose you have (beside the Apology) Xenophon’s Anabasis. On Textkit, you can find a commentary of the first 4 books and a very helpful “Illustrated lexicon of Xenophon’s Anabasis”, which were very helpful for me. These were originally published as a single book - if you want a paper copy, I would recommend to get an old second hand hardback copy rather than a reprint.

And since you’ve just read the Odyssey, you might enjoy West’s Making of the Odyssey. Not very cheap, but the book is very informative (and controversial, I’m waiting impatiently for reviews) and reads easily.

4

:laughing:, not at all, on the contrary, please correct me! I always have the fear of being insulting someone with a literal translation or of making an embarrassing mistake.

And I suppose this belongs to the last category :smiley:, sorry, I must have found it in one of those online dictionaries of synonyms, very dangerous for not English speakers for what I see.
(In my defense, I’ve realized now that there is a word in Spanish with a very similar sound that serves to mean an exaggerated quantity of something: “fárrago”, I suppose that the similar sound have inspired me to choose the English word from that deceitful list of synonymous! But the muses of foreign languages are completely dumb).

Stop you people of making me feeling sad on the end of the year, please!

It is a good point, I like Cambridge Latin and Greek editions specially because it helps me pointing out that influence. Just to put an example with the satires, it seems that it is a common resource the parody of epic style, Horace’s mock-epic reply to the molestus on the ninth satire came now to my mind.

I’ve liked the idea, of continue reading Roman satire, and I see that there is also the epigrams of Martial in Cambridge’s collection. I’ve tried once to read Persius, but without an annotated edition it was impossible to understand of what he was talking about. But it has been a time ago, if I find a good annotated edition I’d like to try again.

Yes, maybe that was a little severe :stuck_out_tongue: It is that I was reading Juvenal’s sixth satire by that moment and I had to put my principles and sensibility in a box. But I think one can take it in the same way that takes the end of a Perrault’s or Grimm’s fairy tale, that is what happens to the villains at the end!

If I were just an spirit… but there is the post office, and reality in general… But I promise that I will try to follow your philosophy whenever I can.

And since you’ve just read the Odyssey, you might enjoy West’s Making of the Odyssey. Not very cheap, but the book is very informative (and controversial, I’m waiting impatiently for reviews) and reads easily.

Sounds very good, and it seems that there is the digital edition, which makes it cheap in my case indeed.

Thanks both, you have given me a lot of good suggestions, in fact I think that I will take them all.

5

Personally, I’m not a big enthusiast for Horace’s Satires, which seem to me basically a long string of in-jokes no one understands. If you want to read some Latin, I’d recommend Vergil’s Eclogues. There’s a Cambridge Green and Yellow edited by Coleman.

6

This will sound ridiculously purist of me but I think you’d get a lot more out of bk.12 of the Aeneid if you read the rest first. Always start at the beginning, I say.

For greek lyric there’s a set of Loebs, also by Campbell, excellently done. But just when it seemed that we had all the Sappho we were ever going to get, along came several new pieces. What makes Sappho hard, apart from her dialect (which can in fact be quite tricky), is her fragmentary condition. There’s still only one complete poem, but we now have two more almost complete ones, one on her getting old (“the Tithonus poem”) and another on her family situation (“the Brothers poem”). So you might want to wait until these filter down into the mainstream. Or not.

Tastes differ. I can’t stand Roman satire myself.

I would recommend sampling a lot of different things and settling on whatever takes your fancy. Some authors you might take a look at: Plautus, Catullus, Cicero (letters or a short speech), Ovid (elegy or Metam.), Statius (epic; more difficult but fun if you’re into rhetoric and high Latin), Augustine; Hesiod, Herodotus, Euripides (not Aesch. or Soph.; let them wait), Callimachus (Hymns, but not till you’ve read Hesiod Theogony), the Life of Aesop, Longus, …. Finding suitable annotated editions is secondary.

For “faggot” you could consult the Urban Dictionary.

7

You’re right of course, tastes differ. But I can’t help but be a little bit of a defensor for Roman satire and since you’re also a fan of Plautus I’m sure you’ll sympathise . After all the same cleverness of language, some of the themes and set pieces are present in both genres.

Juvenal just gets to me. There’s something electrifying there. He combines the poise of Horace’s “stans pede in uno” with the bite of Lucillius and the clever philosophical shenanigans of Persius. Like a Greek iambic poet if they took a bath now and then.

I love his Latin, especially the early stuff. He employs metre like a whip. It crackles and snarls and leaps in your mouth and he’s just so funny. You can’t help but laugh at the clever way he turns Roman society and epic on its head in I and IV, if you’ve read III the second book of the Aeneid isn’t the same again. He turns men into women and women to men and it’s all done so deftly. Wonderful stuff.

In general I think Satire is a wonderful genre, I wish we had more, it’s just so unashamedly Roman it can’t help but interest you. Juvenal is just icing on a wonderful cake.

8

I’m sure you’re right, it’s a defect in me. I get Lucilius (you mean him rather than Lucillius?) and Horace and even Juvenal, but they leave me cold, and Persius is quite beyond me.

9

Tastes differ. Here’s what I think about Latin literature! Life’s short, Greek long…