I Want to Read Homeric Greek

Greek Learning Greek
1

Hello, I have been making what I feel is a great deal of progress in Latin and have decided to learn Greek, and I thought Homeric Greek would be the logical place to start. The problem is I know nothing about Greek, even the alphabet.

I know this site offers some material, but what would be the best (easiest) for me, since I will still be dedicating an hour or two a day to Latin. I wish to only dedicate roughly an hour a day to Greek, and I am sure people say this a lot, but something similar to Lingua Latina would be great. Also are there any good, hopefully free, audio files I can find, to better understand how the language sounds as I progress?

Thanks

2

I recommend A Reading Course in Homeric Greek. It is a very simple and straightforward approach to Homeric Greek.

3

This looks great. With a lot of free time coming up I hope I can get into this like I did with Latin and the Lingua Latina series.

4

If I may be the third Canadian to chime in, the online answer key to the above text (3rd edition, not 2nd!) may be found on this site:

http://www.catholicvoice.co.uk/classics/schoder.htm

5

Another alternative is to use the book “Homeric Greek” by Pharr. It is available for free as a pdf file on this site. It brings you quite quickly to the Iliad, by Lesson 13.

6

I’d like to be able to read both Homeric and Attic Greek, and I’ve been struggling a bit with Mastronarde. For beginners, I’ve heard arguments for starting out with one or the other. I wonder what the others here think.

7

It’s not really an argument that can be solved here. If you learn any one dialect well you can probably move to the others fairly easily. Homeric has fewer contractions, which can be an advantage, but because it is poetic it has some other problems, like dropped augments. I’m also not a big fan of Pharr’s book, referenced above. It is very hard to follow, and the grammar is not even presented in the text, but is stuck in a reference grammar in the back. I haven’t tried the other Homeric book, it might be better. However, Pharr’s essay in favor of starting Greek with Homeric is worth the read if you are interested in these arguments.

Don’t give up on Attic just because you find Mastronarde hard. Personally, I love his book, but people have different learning styles and there are many other books out there that might be more suited to your taste.

Jeff