Yes, the Colloquia of the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana contain quite practical materials for learning your Latin from the Greek. What is the reference in Augustine?
From Book I of the Confessions. I’ve only read parts of it in English:
Why then did I hate the Greek classics, which have the like tales? For Homer also curiously wove the like fictions, and is most sweetly vain, yet was he bitter to my boyish taste. And so I suppose would Virgil be to Grecian children, when forced to learn him as I was Homer. Difficulty, in truth, the difficulty of a foreign tongue, dashed, as it were, with gall all the sweetness of Grecian fable. For not one word of it did I understand, and to make me understand I was urged vehemently with cruel threats and punishments.
I may take this for a new sig:
Let not either buyers or sellers of grammar-learning cry out against me.
Here’s the Latin:
Cur ergo graecam etiam grammaticam oderam talia cantantem? nam et Homerus peritus texere tales fabellas, et dulcissime vanus est, et mihi tamen amarus erat puero. credo etiam graecis pueris Vergilius ita sit, cum eum sic discere coguntur ut ego illum. videlicet difficultas, difficultas omnino ediscendae linguae peregrinae, quasi felle aspergebat omnes suavitates graecas fabulosarum narrationum. nulla enim verba illa noveram, et saevis terroribus ac poenis, ut nossem, instabatur mihi vehementer.
nulla enim verba illa noveram may be an even better sig
Perhaps Joel would like to start a new thread to discuss his sig. This one has wandered all over the map, and is now grotesquely mistitled.
I won’t weigh in on the (dis)advantages of reading Homer before Attic, which have already been well aired. Homer is foundational but Attic and koine are quite a distance from him, and more populous. Your choice, I’d say.
And I won’t add anything on the use of Homer for Latin speakers learning Greek (or on the use of Cicero for Greek speakers learning Latin).
But I feel almost duty-bound to get back to Pharr for a moment. I seem to be alone in my disapprobation, but he should have been junked long since. The trouble with Pharr—the truly ginormous trouble, as I see it—is that he basically treated the Homeric poems as if they were written in prose, which they emphatically are not. They’re extended compositions in the traditional meter of epic, and the best way to read Homer (I don 't dare say the only way) is to read metrically, phrase by phrase, verse by verse. The poems are built up of metrical chunks imbued with meaning, each following up the one before. The versification is paramount.
μηνιν αειδε θεα (“Wrath sing, goddess,”) is the first half of the first verse of the Iliad; Πηληιαδεω Αχιλληος (“of Peleid Achilles”) is the second half of it. That’s how it asks to be read. And so it goes on, continuously expanding verse by verse. Until eventually it stops.
The words on the page can of course be torn apart and grammatically dissected as Pharr does. (αειδε imperative singular, θεα vocative, μηνιν accusative, object of αειδε, etc.etc.) Greek being the highly inflected language it is, grammatical analysis at some level is necessary. But Pharr’s exclusive focus on it is perverse. It distorts from the outset the very nature of Homeric verse and its compositional history. Homer fundamentally consists of an ongoing succession of epic hexameters, and as the first step to understanding how Homer works and to developing reading proficiency we need to get the rhythm fixed in our heads and learn to read the verses metrically just as they come. It’s not that hard, and it contributes immeasurably to appreciation of The Poet.
—But if using Pharr has worked for Sean and Aetos and others (including Paul Derouda even), that’s all to the good, and I gladly put my notorious litigiousness in abeyance. Different strokes for different folks, as Sean didn’t quite say. So I’ll now get down off my hobby horse, and encourage you to simply to enjoy, one way or another. Unlike poor Augustine.
But the focus isn’t exclusive. Pharr presents the meter and metrical context from the very beginning chapters. In fact, I’m not sure how he could present it earlier or faster, or by the end, more completely.
OK substitute “primary” for “exclusive” if it makes you happy. But as so often, Joel, I’m afraid you miss the thrust of my post. I’m not going to get sucked into an argument with you.
I seem to be alone in my disapprobation, but he should have been junked long since. The trouble with Pharr—the truly ginormous trouble, as I see it—is that he basically treated the Homeric poems as if they were written in prose, which they emphatically are not.
You’re not alone in this. “Homeric” prose is bizarre. In fairness, though, Pharr published his textbook in the 1920s, before the composite nature of Homeric “dialect” and the formulaic character of Homeric verse were fully appreciated.
Homeric Greek is just not that difficult to adjust to once you’ve worked your way through a textbook of Attic Greek. We capped off our first year of Greek (Crosby and Schaeffer) with Odyssey 9, way back when.
I’ve worked through the first four lessons of Pharr, and it seems fine. It’s obviously in a very old-fashioned style, very dry rather than lively like Athenaze, and there is a lot of focus on memorizing declensions. That’s fine. It’s actually quite a bit easier than Athenaze because he just starts off using an extremely limited vocabulary of nouns, plus “to be” and “to have,” to make artificial examples. I informed my wife that sea goddesses are beloved to many souls, for they are friendly. She thanked me for letting her know and told me she’d keep that in mind.
Hi Ben,
When you get to Lesson XIII, Pharr has you copying, scanning and memorising the first five lines (It’s a note in somewhat fine print -it becomes a numbered point in Lesson XIV). After that, you are to memorise 1 line a day until you’ve done the first 21 lines. You are also instructed to copy and scan the first 100 lines. I strongly recommend these activities. I’m sure you can appreciate the benefit it conveys to reinforcing what you’re learning. For that matter, one of your goals in reading Homer should be to read the poems metrically. After scanning 100 lines, you should be able to scan fairly easily and you’ll begin to appreciate the effects of metre in the poem. Just one other thing - always read the verses aloud. This poem was meant to be sung, so at least we should try to read aloud and metrically. Here’s Greg Nagy’s rendition of the first 16 lines:
https://soundcloud.com/harvardclassics/homer-iliad-11-16-read-in-greek-by-g-nagy
Hi Ben,
Good advice from Aetos. But I’m afraid you’ve misinformed your wife in telling her that sea goddesses are beloved to many souls. At least, Homer would never say such a grotesque thing, in or out of meter. The sooner you get away from Pharr’s fakery the better.
The “fakery” applies to most elementary practice sentences in any book that I can think of. I have some favorites from Dickey’s composition book that will put our beloved sea goddesses to shame. Getting beyond that and onto real reading is the only solution.
What beginners need far more than anything else – and by wide margins – is enjoyment and enthusiasm. If Pharr provides that (and he does to many) it’s worth more than any of his (exaggerated, I think) faults. And if we sap that enthusiasm here, we’re doing a disservice that does not make up for anything else we might add.
I have just been looking at Pharr for the first time in years. Aetos I am full of admiration that you managed to learn Greek from this book. Was this really your first Greek textbook? I don’t see how anyone could make use of it without a teacher. (If you have a teacher why not use Mastronarde in conjunction with Athenaze or some other simple text? ) I am also amazed that somehow you managed to survive this text with the love for Homer that you clearly have. I think Pharr was channelling his inner Gradgrind in writing it. (Homer for the dissection of) I think it shows that being a distinguished classicist and a good teacher of classics are not coterminous.
I read in the Preface that Pharr thought learning Greek through Homer would be more stimulating to students than using the then current Xenophon texts. I would have thought his book is far too difficult to give to young school children.
Pharr says this which is close to Barry’s formulation and may well be the source of this idea .
Quintilian actually says
Sed nunc genera ipsa lectionum, quae praecipue convenire intendentibus ut oratores fiant existimem, persequor.
Igitur, ut Aratus ab Iove incipiendum putat, ita nos rite coepturi ab Homero videmur. Hic enim, quem ad modum ex Oceano dicit ipse 〈omnium〉 amnium fontiumque cursus initium capere, omnibus eloquentiae partibus exemplum et ortum dedit.
I now list by genre the reading which I think particularly suitable for intending orators
As Aratus says “let us begin with Zeus,” so the proper place for us to begin is with Homer. Like his own Ocean, which he says is the source of 〈every〉 river and spring, Homer provides the model and the origin of every department of eloquence.
QUINTILIAN, The Orator’s Education 10.1. 45-6 (Loeb)
So while it is true Q. recommends reading Homer first he does not say anything about how "old Romans " taught “their boys Greek”.
I love the way Pharr slips in “judicious old schoolmaster”. I think Q. would have been horrified.
Ben.
You have made up your mind to use Pharr and good luck with it. Dont hesitate to ask questions here people will be only too pleased to help you.
I’ve consulted several Greek textbooks but I think Pharr is the only one I’ve finished. While I’ve come to agree that it grotesquely misrepresents and distorts Homer, I still think it does the actual job it’s supposed to do pretty well – you get to read real Homer very soon. Pharr guides you through the first book of the Iliad, after finishing his book you’ll be ready to tackle book two, or the Odyssey, or Hesiod, or any other early hexameter poetry (actually, that’s about it…). I suppose it’s an awful book to use with children, but I think it can work for a motivated adult.
In my experience, most people fail most of the time when they set out to learn a new language (myself included). In a school setting I’ve seen fellow students attending a language class for years without learning anything beyond the most elementary things, and I’ve been there myself. The point being that if the language you’re trying to learn is just paradigms to memorize and mindless drills and not a means to end, you’re bound to fail. For a living language that end can be communication skills or the ability to read the newspaper and books, for Homeric Greek it can’t be anything but reading Homer in the original. All Greek textbooks will be full of made up Greek, and in that regard Pharr is probably the worst of them all; but, like I said, Pharr also has the whole first book of the Iliad, which is what you were supposed to be after in the first place; and the fact that it was there, for me to read as I worked through the book, is what really kept me motivated and helped me focus. So if reading Homer is really what you want, Pharr might be right for you. Work through the book, just skip the English-Greek translations. Like others have said, it’s poetry, pay extra attention to the meter, read it aloud – most importantly, remember that “sea goddesses are beloved to many souls” has absolutely nothing to do with Homer. Homer is infinitely better, but ideally you’ll be able to tell the difference yourself soon enough. Once you’ve finished Pharr, you’re not supposed to ever look back, burn it! Get something better to read, like Iliad book 2. You’ll be prepared.
Having said all this, if you have the slightest interested in other Greek literature than just Homer, you’re probably better off by starting with Attic. That’s clearly the more structured approach (“Homeric Greek” is a mess, an artificial mixture of different dialects). I started with Homer and Pharr, and later moved to other dialects, which I think would have been a lot easier the other way round. I’ll never know, however, if I would have been motivated enough to work through an Attic Greek textbook, because Homer is what I really wanted to read back then. So Attic Greek or Homer, it’s your call - life’s short!
One more precision: I meant that the second book of the Iliad is infinitely better than Pharr, not better than the first book the Iliad. My personal opinion is that the first book of the Iliad is the best of them all. Every bit of Homer is great literature and there might be many better episodes than what you find in the first book, but as a single, balanced, self-contained composition the first book is the best one and really hooks you in.
As Seneca mentioned earlier, the subject of Pharr’s efficacy has been heated and reheated here ad nauseam and I do not intend to defend Pharr, but Seneca did ask some questions which deserve an answer and my thanks for his kind words.
Was Pharr my first Greek textbook? For ancient Greek, yes. Bear in mind I had 7 years of classroom instruction in modern Greek, both Demotic (Δημοτική) and Purist (Καθαρεύουσα) prior to this.
Did I have a teacher for this book? First time around, yes. We (all three of us) had a different professor for each semester. Both seemed to have a lukewarm attitude at best toward the text, which seemed odd to me at the time. mwh’s reaction explains a lot. When it comes to love for Homer, I have the fine folks here at Textkit to thank for that and much more. They’ve taught me how to appreciate poetry far better than my professors of 50 odd years ago.
EDIT: Now I definitely have no need to defend Pharr-Paul has done it far more eloquently than I can!
This worked for me, and pretty much everyone I know that started with Attic. It’s just much easier to move backward to Homer or forward to Koine. But of course, Attic Greek needs no defense from the pragmatic, since it gives you access to lots of great literature all by itself.
Deleted, accidental duplicate.