Do any of you know of an intermediate commentaries for any work of Aristotle. (If it were of one of his biological works that would be perfect.)
By Intermediate I mean something like the commentaries of Geoffrey Steadman or Bryn Mawr.
Sometimes a super-literal translation can work just as well as a meta-language commentary. This diglot seems to be fairly literal:
http://www.mikrosapoplous.gr/aristotle/nicom1a.htm
and of course a Modern Greek diglot can be helpful for cruxes:
Literal translations are the most useful, thanks.
But I don’t know any modern Greek or do you have some technique that works even if you don’t know modern Greek?
Maybe this?
There is also a Greek paraphrase of the Nicomachean Ethics that might be useful.
How would one format a beginner’s commentary? you have your text…do you just centre the text and then use footnotes? they normally look cleaner than that? is there some special formatting trick? I’m looking at Steadman now and its obvious he’s not just using footnotes.
Steadman uses line numbers, others use the section heading and of course it is normal to quote the bit of Greek that is being explained. With all that footnotes aren’t necessary (by footnotes I assume you mean numbers that appear within the text that reference the explanation) though what is used is awfully like footnotes.
I am definitely a fan of those writers who put their commentary on the page rather than shunting it all to the back.
No no I mean physically. I think I’ve cracked it anyway, been playing around on my word processor and it appears to be central justified text and then you put like…a line across the page to delineate the commentary which is formatted via columns. So, yeah, not foot-notes.
I think I might try to do something for a small, easy, text. It seems fun and would definitely be a lot quicker than the academic commentaries we’re taught to write. Gonna read through some Steadmans for inspiration.
I just thought that if your French is good enough, maybe you’ll enjoy using the following ‘juxtalinéaires’ (Greek text and French translation on the left page ; reorganized Greek text and word for word glossing on the right page) :
Wow! This is a great find. Are you aware of any other Ancient Greek paraphrases of Ancient texts? Too bad the font is so hard to read. Is a better font available?
The short answer is, no, not really. The long answer deserves maybe another thread.
At De Anima 402b in the page I linked two, the equation σκεπτέον → Πρέπει να εξετάσωμεν jumped out at me. More interesting than helpful, maybe. (And I could not help but think of a new phrase for the weather thread: σκεπτέα τὰ μετέωρα.)
The ideal format would be to have a large print Greek text. Opposite that is a super literal translation written specifically to help one unpack the Greek. Below the texts are glosses of rare words and brief grammar notes, kept separate in case one needs one and not the other.
I knew you would be interested 
Here is the text published in the Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca. More paraphrases are to be found in other volumes.
Look up Neophytos Doukas. He did a paraphrase of Sophocles and I don’t know what else.
Incerti autoris paraphrasis Aristotelis Sophisticorum elenchorum
This is the paraphrasis of the Sophistical Refutations
When you put it like that, it seems to me there are distinct advantages to footnotes because it connects the comment to the bit of Greek text you are interested in. Steadman tries to allot a fixed amount of space to Greek text and vocab+commentary and he has had problems when he has felt later that the commentary needed to be fuller. Footnotes would allow you to make your commentary as brief or extensive as you liked without having worry about it.
I would say that help in obscure datives or aorists is not nearly as useful as it used to be unless it is something unknown to Perseus. And even more so vocab lists are a lot less useful when words are so easy to look up online. What is really useful is things like why in a particular case the genitive is used. Points of syntax like pointing out cases of indirect speech and hints about how to make sense of odd (to modern readers) word order. Commentaries do sometimes tend to translate phrases rather than explain. Of course sometimes there are idioms/set phases that can’t really be easily explained - in which case flagging it up as an idiom and then giving a translation would make sense.
I was going to ask if you take requests but, of course, if you are going to take the time to do it you will want to choose something that you find fun to do. Any hints as to what you might do?
You bet I’m interested. Thanks, that is a very readable edition.
Thanks, Joel. I found a very nice on-line edition of his book where he not only paraphrases several of Sophocles’ play, but he also has helpful footnotes and introductions/summaries to the plays, all in Ancient Greek!
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101066089804;view=1up;seq=46
Somewhere it is said that his is a Modern Greek translation, but of course it is not. It is in very nice, easy simplified Attic/Koine on pages opposite the original.
Since (and really before) Bedwere found Gaza’s paraphrase of the Iliad, I had assumed that there existed other (more or less Ancient) Greek paraphrases of Ancient Greek texts, but until now I had not tracked them down. χάριν οὖν ὑμῖν Μᾶρκος δίδωσι.
David: no idea. I don’t want something too large (because that defeats the point) or that has been well covered at this stage before. I think for now I want to flick through these style commentaries to get a feel for them and play around with the format.
I’m thinking Aristotle on virtues and vices or the Old Oligarch or something like that. Maybe a less popular speech or something. I’m out of ideas.
This http://blogs.dickinson.edu/dcc/2013/01/21/classical-commentary-diy/ shows how Steadman (and others) mechanically format their commentaries.
More (and some of the same) works by Neophytos Doukas:
I had no idea there was so much of his work online. I am looking at his Iliad paraphrase right now, with scholia!
I know very little about Neophytos Doukas, except that he was the person that invented the term Katharevousa.
Hey, thanks for pointing out this entire site. A treasure of which I cannot believe I never knew was available.
You could always use this editor: http://cte.oeaw.ac.at//. The Premium version is under $1,000.00.