I’m on my second fable now. My reaction is that this is more helpful, at my level, for language study than Plato has been. The Aesop stories are simple and brief. With Plato, I’m apt to be sidetracked by questions about the philosophical issues, but I think about philosophy in English. I’m constantly asking, is Socrates serious here? Is this a joke? What can be the purpose of these sentences?
But Babrius helps me focus on elementary Greek. For example, when Babrius used the aorist passive of a deponent verb, I wondered, “Why aorist passive?” A google query found this line in Smyth: “Deponents usually prefer the passive to the middle forms of the aorist.” (Smyth, 356c) If I ever knew that I forgot it.
I gave up on Babrius. The syntax wasn’t hard, but the number of new words imposed a lot of dictionary work. Right now, I want to read many sentences with less dictionary work.
So, to get some easy reading, as well as needed grammar & forms practice, I now work on the JACT Reading Greek book.
I recommend the prose versions for exactly the reason that you’re asking about: the vocabulary of the prose versions is much closer to Attic/NT standard authors. There should be less dictionary work. I come across words that I don’t know all the time in Babrius, but rarely in the prose versions.
That said, if you find Babrius syntax easier, you’re doing better than me. Plenty of sentences in Babrius require me to read through a couple of times, even when I know the words. Ex., pulled at random:
Thanks for the comments, Joel. That passage would have baffled me too. But you have been studying this longer, and more carefully, than I have, and as one’s power increases, one also asks deeper questions of the text under study.
I must have had good luck on a few of Babrius’s fables. Dictionary work puts me through the wringer, because often I don’t get the correct secondary meaning until after reading a translation. OTOH, something like a NT lexicon is a big help.
