Hi, I’m sorry if this has been asked a lot but I did some searching on prior posts and couldn’t find the particular answer I’m seeking.
I’ve done both Athenaze textbooks and sections of others and am at a place where I can read authors like Xenophon and Herodotus fairly comfortably, albeit I’m still at quite a slow pace.
I’d like to eventually move to Homeric. For those who’ve done this, do you recommend a particular textbook for the transition (i.e., a textbook for Homeric which assumes the student has an intermediate level of Attic)? I don’t want to have to start from the basics all over again if I don’t have to.
Or do most people just dive right in and learn along the way?
Homer is much easier than Xenophon or Herodotus, so it shouldn’t be too difficult, the main difficulty being the vocabulary. I’m not aware of the sort of textbook you’re asking about (Pharr starts from the basics), but many editions of individual books of Homer have a short introduction to the peculiarities of the Homeric dialect. Simon Pulleyn for example has made a commented edition of Iliad book I and another of Odyssey book I, either of which should be a nice place to just dive in. Just bear in my that the introduction to the language of Homer is very short, just a few pages, but if you’re already able to read Attic it should be enough. Probably at least some of the Cambridge Greek and Latin editions have something as well.
Post your queries here and someone should be happy to answer!
This should be even easier than your title lets on. Herodotus isn’t Attic, but Ionic, and Homeric is essentially Ionic+. Learning about some archaic forms and getting used to the vocabulary is all you really need.
You need P A Draper’s books, either her Iliad 1 or her Odyssey Reader. If you start with Iliad 1 you will also have Lombardo’s audio of the Greek on Youtube. the quality is poor but it’s good enough.
Sorry, I should have explained why Draper’s books are so good. It’s very simple, she translates pretty well every single word and also gives the tense of pretty well every verb. For those of us who need all the help we can get, she’s the best. As to a couple of other resources, you also need a good English translation. Personally, I like Peter Jones Penguin translation which is very close to the Greek. Also I’d say it’s worth buying Autenreith’s Homeric Dictionary which is a specialised dictionary of Homeric language.
I beg to differ on Autenrieth. A much better dictionnary in my opinion is Cunliffe’s Lexicon of the Homeric dialect. It’s also available online Cunliffe and even in the Logeion iPhone app.
I’m in a similar position, although at times Herodotus’s (as opposed to Plato’s, for example) vocabulary is daunting. Based on the recommendations here and on amazon, I’ve just ordered Draper’s Illiad 1 and am looking forward to it.
The syntax of the early Plato dialogues (the only ones I’ve read so far) is way more complex than anything I’ve encountered in Book 1 of Herodotus, the only book I’ve read. And the later dialogues are supposedly even more complex.
pddcva mentioned that he had read reviews in Amazon. I’ve had a look and, Yes, there are some nice reviews. One I liked:
"As I say, I’ve tried several books as I’ve struggled to find my way into Homer, and I think this is the best by a VERY long way. I really can’t imagine someone buying this and being disappointed by it.
The odd thing is… (and here I admit to being a bit of a Philistine)… the odd thing is that I never much liked the Iliad when I read it in English. But in Greek, I’m finding it HUGELY enjoyable.
Really, I can’t recommend this book highly enough."
I’m going to re-read Book 1 when I finish but before that I’m going to try to learn all the words that occur at least five times and that don’t look Herodotus-specific. There’s tool on Perseus to create a list like that.