How do you prefer to read Greek?

Greek Learning Greek
1

I’m curious as to how others like to read their Greek. Personally, I feel there are so many options and yet all of them have some drawbacks. I’ll share what I think about each option and then I encourage people to share their thoughts.

Perseus
Extremely convenient, seems to have every text ever written, completely free. On the other hand, I feel the UI leaves something to be desired. Can perhaps be too much of a “hunch” with instant access to parsing of every word. Also requires an internet connection.

OCTs and similar
Entire text available in one or two volumes, has app. crit. if needed. However, I feel they’re too cumbersome and inconvenient as you need to have a physical dictionary beside you at all times unless you’re a whiz with vocabulary. Also can be pricey.

Greek text with included commentary
Personally, my least favorite of any of these. I took Greek and Latin in college and often used these editions in upper-level courses. I feel they’re pricey and yet, in physical editions at least, of cheap quality, and don’t offer much for what you pay. I usually felt like the commentary either explained things I didn’t care about, or just outright translated entire passages leaving little work to me. Of course, this is coming from someone who isn’t a Classical scholar and just reads Greek for fun.

Greek text with included vocab and grammar
I like these because they have essentially everything you need in one volume, but they only exist for a small number of texts. Also, I find they sometimes have incorrect grammatical explanations.

Loebs
Possibly the ideal compromise because they’ve been published for every Classical text under the sun and give convenient access to both the Greek text and a (usually) good English translation. The major drawback is the price: $28 for a single volume is a lot.

PDFs and ebooks on an e-reader or tablet
I included this separately even though you can usually read any of the above on an iPad or Kindle or similar device. I feel that this will be the great breakthrough if we could just get the technology to the point where everything is easily accessible. I have been able to get great results reading a critical edition of Homer in PDF with a PDF of Cunliffe’s lexicon. The Foxit Reader app for the iPad lets you switch between PDFs in tabs as on a desktop. I’m going to see if I can do this with other texts that may be available through archive.org. As far as I am aware, however, there is no way to do a similar thing with a Kindle or other ereader. The Kindle has an LSJ app but it’s been a complete nightmare to use for years. Perhaps Kobo makes it easier?

Again, curious to hear everyone’s thoughts. Please say which option(s) you prefer or dislike and why. Also let us know if there’s something I’m not including that you like to use.

2

I think I was your first vote! I prefer to read from OCT hardcopies, but I keep the Logeion and Perseus websites up on my desktop screen for vocabulary lookup and comprehension checking. After reading a portion of the text, I then supplement this by reading whatever commentaries I can find. If the commentaries contain translations of passages, fine-I’ve already made my own translation and they can either confirm or correct my understanding, but the real value for me is to supply information not present in the text that helps me to visualise the environment (Where is Counaxa, anyway?, Is a parasang a unit of time or distance?, How much is a silver talent worth as opposed to a gold talent?). Commentaries, especially more recent ones, also allow me to see current scholarship relevant to the text.
I guess you could say I use several resources, but for reading the original text I prefer OCT’s (even though their reprints are rubbish)

3

Not on your list, but I’ve been doing my Plato reading in a facsimile of the Clarke codex, when I am free from kids and in my office. Otherwise I have a Sony Digital Paper that I’ve stuck a bunch of OCTs and similar downloaded from Hathi Trust. In English, I generally like listening to books on tape, but only have one or two readers that I enjoy in Greek. (Bedwere needs to record more.)

Oh…speaking of books on tape, there is a wonderful new recording of Anatomy of Melancholy out. Unfortunately, it drops all of the Greek and Latin (translating to English). Otherwise it’s a real joy.

4

I voted, but the choices given do not really reflect the way I read. I usually have 2 or 3 texts open before me. I typically have a text with a commentary such as Cambridge Greek & Latin, but since it’s impractical to jump back and forth between the commentary and the text, I almost always only use them for the commentary and have an another text open before me for the text. This other text is typically the Greek text with a facing translation - the newer Loebs are ok, but the most of the old ones are not, so I often prefer the French Budé editions, which (almost) always have a good translation (even the very old ones), a more extended critical apparatus than Loebs, and often other material that is worth reading (although usually not as good as the Cambridge commentaries). For some texts, I might even have a couple of commentaries, although I don’t necessarily read every note in each of them. Sometimes I might also have several translations, typically into different languages (usually English and French). Translations help me when I’m stuck the grammar, and they also work as a commentary of sorts to see how a competent scholar has understood the text (translations into the same language typically copy each other, mistakes included, that’s why in my experience it’s more helpful to have translations into different languages, because they tend to be more independent of each other). Of course, sometimes as I progress with a text, I might come to the conclusion that a translator is not such a competent scholar after all, in which case I might stop consulting that translation altogether and perhaps try to find another one.

This isn’t necessarily expensive, because I have access to a university library. But often I buy the books I like at some point if I find them helpful.

5

Regarding Joel’s comment, “(Bedwere needs to record more.)”, I wish there more more recordings of poetry, particularly elegy such as Theognis, so I can get the rhythms into my head.

6

Thank you for the responses, everyone.

My favored approach now is definitely going to be an iPad now that I’ve discovered that the LSJ has been transcribed into PDF and is available on archive.org for free. I now have this, Smyth’s grammar (made available by the great people of TextKit), and whatever text I’m reading at the time all in tabs on PDFExpert (I dropped Foxit because it was too slow).

Paul’s comment expresses my frustration with commentaries more eloquently. It is not so much what’s in the commentaries, which contain a lot of great stuff, but my own experience reading them. I have always read the Greek text and then constantly flipped to the back to see what the commentator has to say. That gets very tedious. Perhaps my approach now will be to read the Greek on my iPad (usually on my back porch), make notes where I’m stuck or interested in learning more, and then reference a commentary later.

7

all of the above, at different times

8

I’ve played around with this quite a bit in recent years. I prefer a hardcopy text with electronic resources at hand, so that I have the text on the computer for easy reference (particularly lexical if needed, but some commentaries). Having the hard copy seems to give me the best reading experience, although if it’s a text with which I’m very familiar reading it on a device works pretty well.

9

Aetos describes word-for-word how I go about it.

10

Thank you, Randy! It’s nice to know we’re on the same page…(I couldn’t resist!)

11

Instead of using the PDF, which seems like it would require a lot scrolling to find the correct word, I suggest you download the free Logeion app put out by U of Chicago from the App Store, as well as install a keyboard for your Apple or Android device. At least on an iPhone, it is very easy to toggle between keyboard languages. The Greek keyboard is not polytonic, but you can still get close enough in spelling to have the dictionary entry appear in the search results. You can also use the Logeion website, but if you download the app, all the dictionaries are available without an internet connection and I think the app is actually easier to use than the website. This single app includes all the following dictionaries:
Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon (1940)
Liddell and Scott’s Intermediate Greek Lexicon (1889)
The Diccionario Griego-Español (DGE)
Autenrieth’s Homeric Dictionary (1891)
Slater’s Lexicon to Pindar (1969)

It also includes a handful of Latin dictionaries.

I have rarely used my hardcopy of the Middle Liddell after beginning to use this app on my phone.

12

Interesting - I have had the Logeion app for a long time but did not realize you could use the iPad’s split screen feature to have both the PDF and Logeion on the screen at the same time. That is a huge time saver! The PDF of the LSJ that I was referencing actually doesn’t take too long to scroll through as they have bookmarked each letter and letter pairing, but typing in the word is still going to be much easier.

13

I’m a newbie: What’s an OCT?

14

Oxford Classical Texts. Nearly every Ancient Greek work has been published in them. Unfortunately, you usually need to find an older one if you want a high quality product. The newer prints tend to have poor binding and the text has merely been photocopied from the originals, so the print is very hard to read.

15

Thank you so much!

16

I like using Loebs, Steadman-style volumes, and texts with traditional commentaries, as well as old school editions with vocabularies when I can find them. I think each of these types offers different advantages - for instance, I can read more and faster using a Loeb but don’t have to work as hard, so I may not be improving my skills as much. So I mix it up: right now I’m reading Plato’s Theaetetus in Campbell’s 19th-cent. text with English notes, as well as Euripides’ Hippolytus in the Loeb, while I have a new Steadman-style text of the Philebus on order from Amazon.

I don’t use websites or apps to read Greek. I’ve tried it and I hate it.

17

Personally, I prefer to read with an included vocab and grammar, but I’m slowly transitioning to reading more of the Cambridge books. I just started Plutarch’s Life of Antony with a Cambridge edition and I’m enjoying the historical commentary. I’m kind of a noob so those are my two cents

18

Somewhere warm where there is no lockdown. Currently in my imagination.

19

Agree about the temperature (brutally cold April here right now in the Northeast USA), though I can’t hate the lockdown too much as I’ve read more Greek in these last few weeks than I have in the last two years.

20

I only wish that were true for me. Apparently everyone is staying at home to play with their iphones just now, which means that my life the last few weeks has been consumed by constant video calls with teams on several continents, some in the hard hit areas, but all concerned about the virus locally, trying to avoid too many millions leaking out as we try to ramp up. οἰόμεθά τι ποῖεν οὐδὲν ποιοῦντες. I’ll need a vacation from this soon, I think. We haven’t cancelled our UK trip for later in the year, but it seems unlikely now.

I have been sneaking in Greek where I can. Some Herodotus and Alclestis and the Life of Aesop. But I would give a lot for a few uninterrupted hours.