My journey through the exercises of Athenaze

Textbooks Greek Textbooks and Study Groups
21

Ο ΚΛΗΡΟΖ

Read the following passage and answer the comprehension questions.

μακρός ἐστιν ὁ πόνος καὶ χαλεπός. ὁ δε αὐτουργὸς οὐκ ὀκνει ἀλλ᾿ ἀεὶ γεωργεῖ τὸν κλῆρον. καλὸς γάρ ἐστιν ὁ κλῆρος καὶ πολὺν σῖτον παρέχει. χαίρει οὖν ὁ ἄνθρωπος· ἰσχῦρὸς γάρ ἐστι καὶ οὐ πολλάκις κάμνει.

Rough translation: long/large is the work and hard. and/but the farmer not shirks but always cultivates the farm. beautiful for is the farm and much/many food provides. rejoices so/then the man; strong for is and not often tired.

Final translation: The work is long and hard. But the farmer doesn’t shirk but always cultivates his farm. For the farm is beautiful and provides much food. So the man rejoices; for he is strong and not often tired.

  1. What is the farmer not doing? What does he always do?
    He doesn’t shirk his work. He always cultivates.
  2. What does the farm provides?
    It provides much food.
  3. Why does the man rejoice?
    Because he is strong and not often tired.

@Aetos: No, I was told in my first days of using the internet that the standard for creating an e-mail is to use a combination of place, color and animal in it. So I chose randomly and used them.

22

Ὁ Κλῆρος- Looks good! Thanks for typing it out. I notice you used the perispomene (circumflex) to show that the υ in ἰσχῡρός is long. If you’ve installed the polytonic font for Greek, you’ll find the macron (long vowel marker) on the key that’s labelled with an underscore (_) on top and hyphen (-) on the bottom. This works fine so long as you don’t have to put an accent mark above it. If you do need to place an accent above it, there’s a way to do this, but it’s beyond my technical abilities. Bedwere can give you more guidance. It’s a good habit to learn vowel quantity while you’re learning a new word. That’s why the textbook has you do it. It’ll help in applying the accents and later on in reading poetry, but when you start reading unadapted texts, you’ll see that as a rule, the “doubtful vowels- α, ι, υ” are not marked long or short and for most part, the posters here on Textkit don’t mark them (because of the typing difficulties) . Good dictionaries and lexica (like the Liddell, Scott and Jones), however will supply the markings.

23

Exercise 1y

Translate into Greek:

  1. Dicaeopolis does not always rejoice.
    ὀ Δικαιόπολις ἀει χαίρει οὐ.

  2. He always works in the field.
    ἀει πονεῖ ἐν τὸν κλῆρον.

  3. So he is often tired; for the work is long.
    πολλάκις οὖν ἐστι καμνει· ὁ πόνος γὰρ ἐστι μακρός.

  4. He does not shirk; for he loves his home.
    ἀλλά ὀκνεῖ οὐ· φιλεῖ γὰρ ὁ οἶκος.

24

Malo,
If you look at that page you sent me from the teacher’s handbook, you’ll see that the answers for questions 2,3 and 4 in exercise 1b in the 1990 edition match questions 2,3,4 in exercise 1γ in the second edition. The only question that is different is question 1. For questions 2-4 then, have a look at those answers and try to figure out what you need to change and why.

Looking at question 1, I noticed 3 things: the breathing mark for the article ὁ should be the rough breathing mark (I’m guessing this was just a typo). οὐ is a proclitic and normally placed before the verb it negates, so either “οὐκ ἀεὶ χαίρει” or “ἀεὶ οὐ χαίρει”. There are times when οὐ is placed after a verb, but we won’t go there quite yet. Lastly, what accent should ἀει take before χαίρει ?
I saw a number of issues with the other questions, but let’s see what you can glean from the teacher’s handbook first.

Malo, I should make something clear here at the outset: there are many people on this forum that are much better qualified than me to spot errors and offer corrections, so if one of them weighs in on a question you have, I will defer to them. I’m an amateur here myself. I’ve taught, but in a very different field (aviation)and so I know a thing or two about digesting large amounts of information. I will help where I can and only when I can confidently give you a correct answer.

25

For number two, huh, I misremembered which word is which.

For 3…if estin is before a word starting with a consonant, it loses the n right? Or is where I got things wrong the accent? I’m quite sure I used the right accent.

For 4..I should have used accusative instead of nominative case for oikos, and ou is in the wrong place. But isn’t the dropping the last letter which is a vowel because the next word starts with a vowel is only a ‘you can’ thing, not an ironclad rule you have to do all the time?

And for the accent for aei…ah, I should do away with the rising tone and replace it with a falling tone instead of placing a falling tone from out of nowhere and leaving the rising tone at the front.

Did I get all my mistakes?

26

I’m glad to see you’re memorising the vocabulary before attempting the exercises. If you’re not sure about a word or a form, though, it’s O.K. to go back and make sure. It’s always best to catch mistakes early on.
Now, sentence 2: ἀει πονεῖ ἐν τὸν κλῆρον. First, remember the accent for ἀει. Second, and to be fair, this does not appear to be spelt out in the first lesson, ἐν takes the dative case. You’re going to discover that prepositions are paired with the genitive, dative or accusative cases (sometimes just one, sometimes all three!), so you’ll need to learn which cases each preposition can be used with. Check Section 27 (at least in my book) of the Reference Grammar. Now armed with this knowledge, how would you write sentence 2?

Sentence 3: First of all, let’s look at the first half of the sentence-look at each word and ask yourself what kind of word it is (adverb, particle, verb?). Looking at your vocabulary, how does one say “he is tired” in Greek? In English we use 3 words to express this. In Greek, all we need is one! As far as the “νυ-movable” is concerned, you are correct. The νυ is usually dropped before a consonant, but do you need ἐστι(ν) in the first half of the sentence? The second half of the sentence, I believe, is technically correct, that is, everything agrees in terms of gender and number; however, to emphasise that it’s just not the work, but the fact that it’s long is best done by putting μακρός first in the clause, which I think is what you see in the handbook.
Also in this case γάρ takes the acute, as it’s followed by an enclitic.

Sentence 4: Good! You spotted the errors. There is just one thing-look at the sentence to be translated: “He does not shirk;”
Do you need ἀλλά ?

This is a very good question. Other members on this forum can give you a much more detailed explanation, but generally, you do drop the last vowel of a word that’s followed by a word beginning with a vowel; otherwise, you have a phenomenon known as hiatus, which was especially repugnant to the ears of the Ancient Greeks, so they elided the first vowel. There are other ways to avoid hiatus, but elision is the one you’ve seen so far. We drop vowels too ( but slightly differently) in English: how often do you say “he does not” as opposed to “he doesn’t” or “you are” rather than “you’re”? You do say “he does not” or “you are” occasionally, but usually to put emphasis on one of the words. There are a number of cases where hiatus is allowed( emphasis being one) and even cases in prose where the two vowels are present in the text, but someone reading the text aloud would go ahead and elide the first vowel anyway.

27

Chapter 2A

Vocabulary

ὁ Δικαιόπολις ἐκβαίνει ἐκ τοῦ οἴκου καὶ καλεῖ τὸν Ξανθίᾶν.

Rough translation: Dikaiopolis he steps/comes out of the house and he calls to Xanthias

Final translation: Dikaiopolis steps out of his house and calls out to Xanthias.

ὁ Ξανθίᾶς δοῦλός ἐστιν, ἰσχῦρὸς μὲν ἄνθρωπος, ἆργὸς δέ· οὐ γὰρ πονεῖ, εἰ μὴ πάρεστιν ὁ Δικαιοπολις.

Rough translation: The Xanthas slave is, strong on the one hand man, lazy and on the other hand; not for he works, unless he is present/here/there Dikaiopolis.

Final translation: Xanthias the slave is, a strong man on the one hand, and on the other hand lazy; for he works not unless Dikaiopolis is there.

νῦν δὲ καθεύδει ἐν τῷ οἴκῳ.

Rough translation: now and/but he sleeps in the house.

Final translation: And now he sleeps in the house.

ὁ οὖν Δικαιόπολις καλεῖ αὐτὸν καὶ λέγει· “ἐλθὲ δεῦρο, ὦ Ξανθίᾶ, τί καθεύδεις; μὴ οὕτως ἆργὸς ἴσθι ἀλλὰ σπεῦδε.”

Rough translation: so/then Dikaiopolis he calls him and he says; “Come! here, Xanthia. Why he sleeps? Don’t be so/thus lazy but hurry.”

Final translation: So Dikaiopolis calls him and says “Come here, Xanthias! Why sleep? Don’t be so lazy but hurry!”

ὁ οὖν Ξανθίᾶς βραδέως ἐκβαίνει ἐκ τοῦ οἴκου καὶ λέγει· “τί εἶ οὕτω χαλεπός, ὦ δέσποτα; οὐ γὰρ ἆργός εὶμι ἀλλὰ ἤδη σπεύδω.”

Rough translation: so/then Xanthias slowly he steps/comes out out of the house and he says “Why so/thus hard, o master? not for lazy I am but already hurry.”

Final translation: Then Xanthias slowly comes out of the house and says “Why so hard master? I am not lazy but already hurrying.”

ὁ δὲ Δικαιόπολις λέγει· “ἐλθὲ δεῦρο καὶ συλλαμβανε· αἶρε γὰρ τὸ ἄροτρον καὶ φέρε αὐτὸ πρὸς τὸν ἀγρόν. ἐγὼ γὰρ ἐλαύνω τοὺς βῦς. ἀλλὰ σπεῦδε· μῖκρὸς μὲν γαρ ἐστιν ὁ ἀγρός, μακρὸς δὲ ὁ πόνος.”

Rough translation: and/but Dikaiopolis says; “Come here and help! lift for the plow and carry it to the field. I for drive the oxen. But hurry; small on the one hand is the field, large/long on the other hand the work.”

Final translation: And Dikaiopolis says; “Come here and help! Lift the plow and carry it to the field. For I will drive the oxen. But hurry; on the one hand the field is small, on the other hand the work is large.”

28

ὁ Ξανθίᾶς δοῦλός ἐστιν

The ἐστιν applies to what comes before, not what comes after. He’s a slave.

τί καθεύδεις;

Why do you sleep?

τί εἶ οὕτω χαλεπός

Why are you harsh like this?

The “on the one hand/other hand” in where you use it is not precisely the impression, but you mostly get the meaning.

29

Three words.

Tongue. Infections. HURT. :frowning:

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Word Study

  1. What do despotic and chronology mean? What Greek words do you find embedded in these English words?

  2. What does a dendrologist study?

  3. Explain what a heliocentric theory of the universe is.

  4. What is a chronometer? What does τὸ μέτρον mean?

  5. Despotic means like a despot. The Attic Greek word I find in it is δέσποτα, which means master.
    Chronology is the study of arranging events in proper occurrence. The Attic Greek words I find are λόγος, which means word/study and χρόνος, which means time.

  6. Dendrologists are scientists who study trees.

  7. A heliocentric theory of the universe means the universe exists with the sun at its center.

  8. Chronometer is a device that measures time extremely accurately even under extreme conditions. So τὸ μέτρον should mean measure.

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  1. Maybe I’ll sound pedantic, but we normally refer to Greek names in the nominative, not the vocative. Hence, δεσπότης.
31

Your word study answers look good! Hope you’re feeling better soon. Bedwere’s right of course about using the nominative case.

32

A question.

If I started encountering Attic Greek words that weren’t used in any of the chapters before or the chapter I am on, I am allowed to just look up the unseen before word instead of going forward in the dark and making a most likely hilarious mistake on the assumption every word being used is a word that must be used in a chapter before or the chapter I’m currently on, and the problem is I’m just not looking hard enough, and the book advertised that all the words they will use in exercises are only words whose meaning has been given in a present chapter or the chapters before that. Right?

Like…καλῶ is just καλὸς being affected by some rule I’m not aware of, and I’m just being paranoid in feeling maybe I shouldn’t just put beautiful in the translation.

33

Generally, authors make an effort to only use words that have been introduced in the current or preceding lesson, so there’s usually a good reason why you may see a word in a different form than what you see in the vocabulary. In the case of καλῶ, as opposed to καλός, ή, όν, there’s a very good reason. If you check the grammar section in Chapter 2(a) and section 28b in the reference grammar, you’ll see that καλῶ is a contracted form of καλέω. You may be thinking καλῶ is the dative singular of καλός or καλόν, but when you get to the dative case, you’ll see the ῶ is actually an ῷ, that is an omega with a circumflex and iota subscript.

34

So, apparently I got a fungal infection, not a bacterial one, on my tongue.

Still hurts, and seeing if this medicine will work.

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Exercise 2A

Read aloud and translate into English:

1.τὸν δοῦλον καλῶ

Rough translation: The slave I call

Final translation: I’m calling the slave.

  1. ὁ δοῦλος ἐν τῷ οἴκῳ πονεῖ

Rough Translation: The slave in the home he/she works

Final translation: The slave works in the home.

  1. τί οὐ σπεύδεις;

Rough translation: Why not you hurrying?

Final translation: Why are you not hurrying?

  1. οὐκ εἰμὶ ἆργός.

Rough translation: Not I am lazy.

Final translation: I’m not lazy.

  1. ἰσχῦρὸς εἶ.

Rough translation: Strong You are.

Final translation: You are strong.

  1. τὸ ἄροτρον φέρει.
    Rough translation: The plow he/she carries.

Final translation: He carries the plow.

  1. πρὸς τὸν ἀγρὸν σπεύδω.

Rough translation: Towards the field I hurry.

Final translation" I’m hurrying towards the field.

  1. τί καλεῖς τὸν δοῦλον;

Rough translation: Why you calling the slave?

Final translation: Why are you calling the slave?

  1. ὁ δοῦλος οὐκ ἔστιν ἆργός.

Rough translation: The slave not is lazy.

Final translation: The slave is not lazy.

  1. ὁ δοῦλος ἐκβαίνει ἐκ τοῦ οικου.

Rough translation: The slave he comes/steps out of the house.

Final translation: The slave steps out of the house.

35

At least it’s treatable! Hang in there!
Now:
Sentence 4:Translation is correct. I notice that you copied the Greek as “οὐκ εἰμὶ ἆργός.” Have a look at the section on enclitics and proclitics in your Reference Grammar. In this case, because οὐκ, a proclitic, precedes an enclitic (εἰμι) it takes an acute accent. So:
οὔκ εἰμι ἀργός. There is one case where apparently this rule does not apply and you’ll see it in sentence 9.
Sentence 8: Translation is correct. Out of curiosity, though, did your book use τἰ by itself, or was it preceded by διἀ (διὰ τί)?
Sentence 9: “ὁ δοῦλος οὐκ ἔστιν ἆργός” As you can see, in this sentence ἐστι(ν) takes the acute and does so because it follows οὐκ. MWH can tell you more about this; I’m not 100 % certain, but I believe it’s the only form of the verb εἰμι that does this.

I see you’re using a circumflex plus smooth breathing over the first vowel in ἀργός. The key for smooth breathing, assuming you have a US keyboard, is labelled with the apostrophe on the bottom and the quotation mark above. This key yields the smooth breathing, shift plus this key gives the rough breathing. Here is a link to an article on key mapping for the Greek polytonic keyboard in Windows:
http://www.dramata.com/Ancient%20polytonic%20Greek%20in%20Windows.pdf

36

I just copied what was in my copy of Athenaze. The mistake is probably the publisher’s. As for the circumflex and smooth breathing, whatever order I type the signs for the circumflex and breathings in type greek, it always turns into circumflex at the top, breathing below.

37

Assuming it’s a publisher’s typo, how should the word “lazy” be written in Greek?

38

ἆγρός? I thought you are referring to οὐκ? And uh…because ἆγρός is at the end of the sentence, and οὐκ and ἐστίν are before it thus affecting only each other because estin should only mess with the word before it and ouk should only mess with the word after, ἆγρός should stay unchanged…I think?

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Exercise 2B

Translate into Greek. Do not begin your sentence with an enclitic. When necessary, apply the rules for proclitics and enclitics given above and in Chapter 1, Grammar 5, page 9.

  1. He/she is not hurrying.
    σπεύδεῖ οὐκ ἔστιν.

  2. Why are you not working?
    τί οὐ πονεῖς;

  3. I am carrying the plow.
    τὸ ἄροτρον εἰμί φέρει.

  4. You are hurrying to the field.
    πρὸς τὸν ἀγρὸν σπεύδεῖς.

edit:
5. He is lazy.
ἆργος ἐστίν.

  1. I am not strong.
    ἰσχῦρὸς εἰμί οὐ.

  2. You are not a slave.
    ὁ δοῦλὸς ἐ῀ι οὐ.

8.The slave is not working.
ὁ δοῦλὸς οὐκ πονεῖς.

  1. The slave is carrying the plow to the field.
    ὁ δοῦλὸς φέρει τὸν ἄροτρον πρὸς τὸν ἆγρόν.

edit:
10. He is not lazy.
ἆργός ἐστιν οὐ.


Well. I’m still not sure what I’m doing regarding the mood and person of the verbs, same for the accents. Did I do it right or hilariously wrong?

39

ἀγρός - field (think agri-culture)
ἀργός - lazy (Really a contraction from ἀ-εργός, and you might already know that ἔργον means work.)

40

What the…argh! I typed wrongly. Thanks. Are there other grammatical or punctuation mistakes?