Unless I dreamed about it, I think I saw on Google Books an edition of the Iliad with parallel Attic text. Does anyone know? Thanks!
Εὕρηκα, εὕρεκα. 
Εὕρηκα.
You sure have.
I cannot tell you how happy I am that you have found this. I had long suspected that an Attic (or Koine?) paraphrase of Homer must exist somewhere, just as, for example, a Homeric paraphrase of the Gospel of John was written by Nonnus. I am thrilled to finally find it.
For the last year or so, I have been intrigued by the potential of using simplified Greek paraphrases as an alternative to Grammar-Translation pedagogy. A few books have come out recently which use levelled readings of Ancient Greek texts, and I have been posting my own levelled readings here on Textkit. To the extent that Homer remains a difficult text, especially to those of us who began studying Greek with Attic or Koine, an Attic paraphrase is a de facto levelled reading. It is also an alternative to looking up rare Homeric vocab in a lexicon. It is an alternative to a grammatical note in English. It is an alternative to looking at an English translation. All these these things may be helpful or even necessary in the early stages of learning Greek, but I have come to despise them. I yearn for a way to improve my Greek without ever leaving Greek, and this is exactly what the Attic parallel text of Homer does.
I have only had a chance to read a dozen or so pages, but I can already tell that this will be a wonderfully helpful text for me. The Attic paraphrase cannot really be called easy, but because I already know the Homer text well, I can read it smoothly and quickly, and it will help me further master Homer while at the same time giving me much reading practice in Attic which is comprehensible input.
Again, thank you so much for tracking this down. I’ll post some further thoughts down the road as I read more. This is really an early Christmas gift for me. χάριν δὴ δίδωμι σοι!!!
Amazing, now if only I could download it…wow, thank you…this is…amazing.
Got them. Hm…the Greek is more modern than Attic in its word patterns etc, it has typical problems you see in Katherevousa everywhere, which is a shame.
The author was Theodorus Gaza (c. 1398 – c. 1475), a Greek humanist.
…the Greek is more modern than Attic in its word patterns etc…
The book was published in 1811, edited by one Nikolaos Theseus, but the paraphrase was written by the 15th century Native Greek Humanist Theodorus Gaza. It makes sense that his “Attic” would show some interference from what would become Modern Greek. To me the paraphrase is wonderful, simple but elegant, vibrant and full of intepretive insights. Some examples: πόδος ὠκὺς Ἀχιλλεύς becomes ὁ τοὺς πόδας Ἀχιλλεύς and δίος Odysseus is ὁ ἔνδοξος. πολυφλοιβος is πολυταραχος. The crux ὑπόδρα ἰδών is given a more specific interpetation ταυρηδὸν ἀπιδὼν. If you get thrown by a less contracted Homeric form like κέλεαί με, Gaza will help you out by giving you the more familiar προστάττεις με.
What makes Homer hard is the rare vocab and unusual forms, and what makes Attic hard is the long sentences with complicated syntax. The Attic paraphrase uses familiar vocab but the sentences, like the original, are short and syntactically simple. This makes the paraphrase easy to read and a wonderful “crib” for learning Homer. It’s a form of “cheating,” I suppose, but cheating with Greek.
A side note: I have been working on my own Koine paraphrase of the Iliad. I have not gotten very far, but here is my first line, which I wrote before seeing this text.
Markos: εἰπέ μοι, Θεὰ, περὶ τῆς κακῆς ὀργῆς τοῦ Ἀχιλῆος. (Ἀχιλλεύς ἐστιν ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ Πηλέως.)
And here is Gaza’s version of the same line:
Gaza: τὴν ὀργὴν εἰπὲ ἡμῖν ὦ θεὰ τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ Πηλέως τοῦ Ἀχιλλέως τὴν ὀλεθρίαν.
And here is the original:
Homer: μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην.
Great minds think somewhat alike. And then there is me.
In many ways, of course, reading Gaza is like reading the sxolia, but I find it more fun and less tedious and more helpful in building up both my Epic and Attic Greek.
I’m really surprised that Gaza is not more a part of the standard pedagogy for learning Homer. Again, I had never heard of him until Bedwere found him on google books. How well known is he? The wikipedia article, by the way, does not mention his paraphrase.
Scribo wrote:
the Greek is more modern than Attic in its word patterns etc, it has typical problems you see in Katherevousa everywhere, which is a shame.
Actually, having read more of the paraphrase, I do not find any traces of Demotic, but it appears to be a pretty pure, if somewhat simple, specimen of Attic. Are you sure you are not refering to the preface? That was written in 1811 by the editor, not by Gaza. That does seem to be a mixture of ancient and Demotic. I found it largely intellegible, although I do not read Modern Greek.
Some random thoughts as I read further on:
For the ἠύτε νέβροί of 4:243, Gaza gives καθάπερ ἐλάφρων γενήματα. I could not help but think of the γεννήματα ἐχιδνῶν of Mt. 3:7. So far, I have not seen any other Christian echoes, which tend to occur in these Byzantine scribes.
As a good paraphrase should, sometimes one word is rendered with two: πένθος in 4:197 is λύπη καὶ θρῆνος.
Ever helpful to the struggling Greek learner, Gaza changes a gnomic aorist into a present, and supplies a missing substantive:
Homer 4:161: σύν τε μεγάλῳ ἀπέτισαν…
Gaza 4:161: σὺν μεγάλῳ τόκῳ ἀποτίσουσι…
For some reason the unaugmented ἴδε of, for example, 4:149, is consistently retained in the paraphrase and not changed to εἶδε. I wonder if this is Byzantine orthography reflecting iotacism.
The random thoughts continue…
It’s all about variety. Gaza does a masterful job of always tweaking the text just enought to make the paraphrase a little different from the original. Sometimes (4:329) one Homeric word (πολύμητις) is replaced by another Homeric word (πολύβουλος.) An ιζω verb becomes a contract verb, and after a secondary sequence, the subjunctive is used instead of an optative:
Homer 4:300 ὄφρα…τις…πολεμίζοι
Gaza 4:300: ὅπως…τις…πολεμῇ
And sometimes there are just slight changes in word order to keep things interesting:
Homer 4:334 ὅππότε πύργος Ἀχαιῶν ἄλλος ἐπελθὼν Τρῳων ὁρμήσειε.
Gaza 4:334 πότε ἄλλος πύργος τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐπελθὼν ὁρμήσειε κατὰ τῶν Τρῳων.
The effect of this constant stylistic variety–the same effect one gets whenever one reads several versions of the same Ancient Greek text–is the conviction that the Greeks loved variety for variety’s sake, and more often than not, word order, the tenses, synonyms, connective/particles, et. al. are used not to create fine semantic distinctions, but for euphony and style, what I call semantic minimalism.
A good paraphrase helps you appreciate the original, as when a great pun is lost.
Homer 4:323: τὸ γὰρ γέρας ἐστι γερόντων.
Gaza 4:323 τοῦτο γάρ ἐστι γερόντων τιμή.
This is how I am using this remarkable book:
I read a few lines of the original. Now, I know Homeric Greek fairly well, but I have not mastered the entire Iliad. Often I can understand a sentence fine, but there may be a word or two that I don’t know (or have forgotten.) Sometimes I understand the essence of the sentence, but the precise grammar eludes me, and there are still some passages that I fail to process entirely. So, after reading the original. I scan my eyes over to the Attic paraphrase. So far, in almost every instance, the paraphrase answers my questions, and then I can scan my eyes back to the original, and now I understand it fully. Now, sometimes it works the other way around. I don’t quite understand every word of the paraphrase, but since more often than not, I DO understand the original, this helps me unpack the paraphrase. I guess it would be like someone who was learning both Greek and Latin and used a Greek-Latin diglot to improve both languages. I have found very few times where I understand NEITHER the paraphrase nor the original. After reading both texts, I rarely feel like I HAVE to look anything up in English, and that one cannot put a price on.
But beyond the incredible value (to me, anyway) of the text as alternative to Cunliffe and the Loebs and even Geoffrey Steadman, we can raise the question of the value of the paraphrase itself. Would I recommend it, for example, to someone who has no interest in learning Homer but wants some good reading in Attic or Koine? Yes, I think I would, because the paraphrase strikes me as fairly easy Greek and fairly good Greek, a combination which is always hard to find. But I wonder if the text only seems easy to me because I know Homer well, and I wonder if many people might find the artistic value of Gaza less than appealing. It is, after all, a type of translation, and we know that Homer does NOT translate well, into say, English. (Alexander Pope happens to be one of my favorite poets, but I find even his translation of the Iliad awful. I’ve never found a translation that works for me.) I wonder if some people will find Gaza’s prose, compared to the unmatched poetry of the original, disappointingly prosaic. Will some people–maybe folks whose Greek is better than mine–have the same reaction reading Gaza that I do when I read one of those paraphrases into modern English of Shakespeare?
And I should also admit that maybe the reason the Attic paraphrase works so well as a way for me to brush up on my Homer without ever leaving the target language is because I have already read most of the books of the Iliad several times using the traditional methods–looking up words in LSJ, reading the grammatical notes of Benner and Draper, using the Loebs. I wonder how well Gaza’s crib would work at the beginning stages of learning Homeric Greek. Is it, that is, a real alternative to grammar-translation or something that one graduates to from grammar-translation?
Well, I am playing the devil’s advocate here. I am convinced that this is the single best Homeric resource I have ever seen. But I wonder about the lack of its use. As far as I can tell, the only edition of the text is this one, done just about two hundred years ago. I, for one, have never seen Gaza’s glosses referred to in the standard references works, even though he is more useful than, for example the sxolia, because Gaza helps unpack the difficult text rather than adding extra arcane information. I can find virtually nothing about him on-line. And what about the other Byzantine paraphrases of Homer? I cannot find ANY edition of these.
I suspect the lack of Gaza’s popularity is a result of the pedagogical bias against using anything other than “real Greek” to teach Greek. Purists, rather than pragmatists, still dominate Greek pedagogy.
To make use of Gaza means one has to trust him to explicate the text via paraphrase. Reading him I get the sense that he deeply understands Homer, that he, like me, struggles and rejoices in the poet. I don’t really know WHY Gaza wrote his paraphrase. I can only imagine how much work is was and I thank God for him. I cannot help but feel that he wrote the text, somehow, for people like me in mind.
By the way, you can get the text printed by the Expresso Book Machine for around $15.00 a volume.
http://net.ondemandbooks.com/google/QSE-AAAAcAAJ
The font size is larger than the Loebs, though predictibly blurry in spots. To make use of parallel text like this, you really have to have it in your hands so your eyes can scan back and forth.
Wow there is…a lot here, if you’re still interested in my opinion, to respond to. I think I’ll have to take some time and formulate a coherent response of decent length with some examples, fortunately I’ve kept some of my notes on him.
A few minor points though about the level of pragmatism in current methodology: it depends, its very good at its major point, that is training philologists. For those who just want to read Greek without needing to learn about syntaxis, morphology and phonology to a deep level and who won’t need to go onto semantics, lexicography, metrics, textual editing etc then yes I agree its severely outdated. But then I teach would be Classicists and, say, those just interested/Theology students with different methods.
Th.G vs the Scholiasts: I disagree, from an academic and contextual pov, as for just picking up and reading it depends on how good your Attic is. For beginners who are being trained mainly on Homer I suspect this would be confusing. I’ve tried using Attic paraphrases of the Odyssey to teach those who started in Attic…it kind of works but I think its better to keep going over the text until they naturalise it, always asking questions e.g “who amongst the gods dislikes Odysseus?” “why does Odysseus not walk back with Nausicaa?”, that forces people to pay attention.
Wow there is…a lot here, if you’re still interested in my opinion, to respond to. I think I’ll have to take some time and formulate a coherent response of decent length with some examples, fortunately I’ve kept some of my notes on him.
A few minor points though about the level of pragmatism in current methodology: it depends, its very good at its major point, that is training philologists. For those who just want to read Greek without needing to learn about syntaxis, morphology and phonology to a deep level and who won’t need to go onto semantics, lexicography, metrics, textual editing etc then yes I agree its severely outdated. But then I teach would be Classicists and, say, those just interested/Theology students with different methods.
Th.G vs the Scholiasts: I disagree, from an academic and contextual pov, as for just picking up and reading it depends on how good your Attic is. For beginners who are being trained mainly on Homer I suspect this would be confusing. I’ve tried using Attic paraphrases of the Odyssey to teach those who started in Attic…it kind of works but I think its better to keep going over the text until they naturalise it, always asking questions e.g “who amongst the gods dislikes Odysseus?” “why does Odysseus not walk back with Nausicaa?”, that forces people to pay attention.
Scribo wrote:
…if you’re still interested in my opinion…
Yes, absolutely, Scribo, I would love to hear what you think.
…Th.G vs the Scholiasts…:
Well, as I’ve said, there is considerable overlap between what Gaza is doing and the what the Scholiasts do. In fact, as I understand it, some of the other Byzantine paraphrasers of Homer were themselves Scholiasts. But if nothing else, having the glosses directly opposite the text, without having to go to a separate book, is invaluable. I hate breaking up the flow of reading Greek by having to go to lexicons and commentaries and translations. For some reason, switching back and forth between Homer and the paraphrase does not have that same feel, since it is all reading in Greek. It’s what advocates of Reader’s Editions call “arm chair Greek.” And of course the Scholists, due to their elliptical style, are not themselves easy reading.
…as for just picking up and reading it depends on how good your Attic is. For beginners who are being trained mainly on Homer I suspect this would be confusing.
Yes, as I’ve said, for a paraphrase to have pedagogical utility, it must be “leveled” appropriately to the learner. For me. Gaza’s level is a good one, and I suspect he woud work well for the many people out there whose Attic/Koine is better than than their Epic. (I do think a very simplifed Homeric Greek paraphrase opposite the original text woud still be good for beginners, and should be introduced right from the beginning as an alternative to the grammar-translation helps, but that’s another question.)
We’ve talked about this before on Textkit, whether there is “interference” between the dialects to the point that they should not be learned at the same time. I would only say that another advantage of this book is that it gives you a side by side comparision of Attic (or, really Koine, since Gaza’s “Attic” is very much simplified, and was of course written very late) and Homeric Greek. In doing this, I have concluded that Homeric Greek is harder than I had thought. Bottom line, the paraphrase is much easier to read in most instances. I know that Clyde Pharr argues the opposite, that Homeric Greek is easier than Attic, but comparing the sentences, on is struck with three things that make Homeric Greek tougher than Attic. 1. The word order. 2. the variety of forms, and the fact that more forms overlap. 3. the lack of the article which makes breaking down the syntax harder. 4. the more varied vocab.
Now, Homer’s Greek is of course indescribably better than Gaza’s Greek, but again it is surprising to me how much having the paraphrase does not distract one from Homer (as does, at least for me, grammar-translation,) but seems rather to be a natural way to expound him.
I’ve tried using Attic paraphrases of the Odyssey to teach those who started in Attic…
Cool, what text did you use and where can I find it?
I just wrote it myself, following clear Attic construction though having to admit Homeric/Ionic loan words in certain cases on the basis of recognisable they’d be.
Gaza’s expansive, explanatory, rendering of 6:336 gets the psychology of Homer just right.
Hector chides Paris’ for withdrawing from the battle after he loses the duel to Menelaus, a duel that would have ended the war. Hector says it’s not right for Paris to be mad at the Trojans—after all, he is the cause of the war. Paris replies that it is not anger that has caused him to withdraw, but something else is going on in his psyche. Homer uses just four words
Homer 6:336: ἔθελον δ’ ἄχει προτραπέσθαι.
“Rather, I wanted to turn myself towards grief.”
Gaza renders these four words with no less than 21 words.
Gaza 6:336: ἐβουλόμην δὲ ἐκ τῆς συμβάσης μοι λύπης ἐκ τῆς ἥττης παρατροπήν τινα καὶ παραμυθίαν εὑρεῖν, καῖ εἶξαι τῇ συμφορᾷ, καὶ ἡσυχᾶσαι.
"Rather, I wanted to find a certain distraction and consolation from the pain that came to me from my defeat, and I wanted to yield to the misfortune, and to be still.”
As with Achilleus, Paris shame and anger leads to withdrawal and inactivity—depression, really. Both heroes recognize that you cannot give in to grief, but Achilleus does so too late to save himself and his friend, and thus the tragedy.
Gaza reminds me of the Amplified Bible, a paraphrase and commentary rolled into one.
Reading through these volumes (How difficult a task on the computer!) I am struck by a very interesting idea, would it not be interesting to take en masse the Homeric type scenes, feasting, drinking, praying, arming etc and teach students those before sending them off into the poem? I wonder if that would make it easier, or harder. It struck me at TG’s handling of such scenes.
There is another paraphrase attributed to the Byzantine scholar Michael Psellos and printed as an appendix to Scholia in Homeri Iliadem by Bekker. It seems to be more compact, although I am not competent to judge its quality:
http://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/resolve/display/bsb10215158.html
I have digged into Michael Psellos version and it incorporates the D-Scholia into the text (ultimately derived from ancient attic schoolboy paraphrases).
It’s a pity that none such paraphrase survives for the Odyssey. It would be something like this:
ἄνδρα μοι εἰπέ, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ
ἐπλανήθη, ἀφ’ οῦ τὴν Τροίαν ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἑπόρθησεν:
πολλῶν δ’ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν πόλεις καὶ νοῦν ἔγνω,
πολλὰ δ’ ὅ γ’ ἐν θαλάσσηι πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ ψυχήν,
ἀντικαταλλασσόμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων.
ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ὣς ἑτάρους ἐσωσεν, καίπερ προθυμούμενος:
αὐτῶν γὰρ ταῖς ἐαυτων φρενοβλαβείαισ ἀπώλοντο,
ἄφρονες, οἳ κατὰ βοῦς Ὑπερίονος Ἠελίοιο
ἤσθιον: αὐτὰρ ὁ τοῖσιν ἀφείλετο τὴν τῆς ἀνακομι δῆς ἡμέραν.
ἀπό τινος μέρους, ὀπόθεν θέλεις, θεά, θύγατερ Διός, εἰπὲ καὶ ἡμῖν.
ἔνθ’ ἄλλοι μὲν πάντες, ὅσοι φύγον δεινόν ὄλεθρον,
εἰσ τὰ οἰκεῖα ὑπῆρχον, πόλεμόν τε πεφευγότες ἠδὲ θάλασσαν:
τὸν δ’ μόνον τῆσ οἴκαδε ἐπανόδου χρήιζοντα ἠδὲ γυναικὸς
νύμφη σεμνή κατεῖχεν Καλυψὼ δῖα θεάων
ἐν σπηλαίοις κοίλοισ, ἐπιθυμοῦσα ἄνδρα εἶναι.
There is another paraphrase attributed to the Byzantine scholar Michael Psellos and printed as an appendix to Scholia in Homeri Iliadem by Bekker. It seems to be more compact, although I am not competent to judge its quality:
http://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/re > … 15158.html
Thanks, chalimac, for finding this. With the help of your link, I was able to track it down on google books, through which one can get it printed on demand.
http://books.google.com/books?id=c64xAQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
The paraphrases of Gaza and Psellos are in the final analysis quite similar. Often the two produce wording that departs from Homer in nearly identical ways.
Homer 10:452: οὐκ ἔτ’ ἔπειτα σὺ πῆμά ποτ’ ἔσσεαι Ἀχαιῶν.
Gaza 10:452: οὐκέτι μετὰ ταῦτα σὺ βλάβος γενήσῃ ποτὲ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν.
Psellos 10:452: οὐκέτι μετὰ ταῦτα σὺ βλάβη ποτὲ γενήσῃ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν.
You are correct that in general Psellos is less expansive, and more likely to follow Homer in word order.
Homer 10:389: ἢ σαυτὸν θυμὸς ἀνῆκε?
Gaza 10:389: ἢ σε αὐτὸν ἀνὲπεισεν ἡ ψύχή?
Psellos 10:389: ἢ σὲ αύτὸν ἡ ψυχὴ παρέπεισε?
But sometimes Psellos is more expansive, and here he departs from Homer by slightly changing the metaphor.
Homer 10:457: φθεγγομένου δ’ ἄρα τοῦ γε κάρη κονίῃσιν ἐμίχθη. (“While he was still speaking, his head was mixed with the earth.”)
Gaza 10:457: τοῦτου δε λαλοῦντος , ἡ κεφαλὴ τοῖς χώμασι συμεμίγη. (“While he was still speaking, his head was mixed together with the dust.”)
Psellos 10:457: λαλοῦντος δὴ τοῦτου, ἡ κεφαλὴ τῇ γῇ ἡνώθη. (“While he was still speaking, his head became one with the dust.”
Quite often we have three different versions of a word or phrase, for example the monument of Ilius in 10:415: σῆμα (Homer,) μνῆμα (Gaza,) and τάφος (Psellos.)
Both paraphrases are great, both are exceedingly helpful. I personally prefer Gaza’s consistent habit of using two words to convey Homeric words which often have two shades of meaning. But this produces a style that is sometimes clunky and reveals itself as “translationese.” Some may prefer Psellos’ crisper style, at once closer to the original and probably of higher literary value as a stand alone work of art. Both texts, written hundreds of years apart and long after Attic was supposed to have died, strike me as perfectly good specimens of Ancient Greek, with little or no interference from Demotic.
Bedwere began this thread by referring to a dream he had of an Attic parallel text. My dream would be to have something like those multi-text parallel Bibles that they make. I have one that has the Greek text with seven facing translations. How about a volume that would have Homer and Gaza AND Psellos and several Modern Greek versions? An early Demotic version would almost be equivalent to a Koine version. Are there katharevousa versions available? Now, that would be a dream come true. As on demand publishing gets more sophisticated, this would become increasingly possible. But I’m grateful for what we have, and again thank you guys for finding these texts.
chalimac wrote:
It’s a pity that none such paraphrase survives for the Odyssey. It would be something like this:
ἄνδρα μοι εἰπέ, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ
ἐπλανήθη, ἀφ’ οῦ τὴν Τροίαν ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἑπόρθησεν:…
Very nice. My own experience has been that paraphrasing Ancient Greek texts is a very effective way to improve one’s own Greek. How to explain that we have several paraphrases of the Iliad but none of the Odyssey? It does seem that the Iliad was more highly thought of by the Byzantines, the school book of Greek par excellence.