Hello,
I just finished a complete course on Homeric Greek. My passion is to read and study Plato in the original Greek. I am also very fluent in modern Greek having lived there for many years. Does anyone have any suggestions as to the different approaches I can try and perhaps book suggestions? Thanks.
Are you in a hurry to start reading Plato? You have just finished a course that prepares you to read Homer and Hesiod. You might want to take some time to read the Iliad or the Odyssey now before you start to transition to Attic Greek. Once you start doing Attic Greek you’ll inevitably lose some of what you’ve learned of Homeric Greek.
Plato’s Greek is a long way from Homer. His syntax is complex and his sentences can be very long. It might be easier to transition to Attic Greek with an easier author – such as Xenophon’s Anabasis.
If you want to jump right into Plato, I’d recommend the Crito. It’s short, enjoyable and fairly easy to follow.
Mark
Thank you for the good advice!
By studing Homeric, you have made a good beginning. Look online for the differences between Attic and Homeric, and then decide how much study in Attic Greek you need. If you need a lot, then Mastronarde is a thorough first-year textbook in Attic Greek grammar. If you don’t need much, then Morwood, Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek might do for you.
If you have an iPhone or iPad, the Attikos app is very helpful for students making the transition to unadapted Attic Greek texts. I use it every day. The app works well with my iPhone SE First Generation of 2016, and on my iPad mini Fourth Gen.
I’ve been learning AG in order to read Plato. (I taught Greek Philosophy - in English - at University for many years.)
I recommend you choose one of the earlier, ‘Socratic dialogues’. The conversational style makes these works more accessible to intermediate students of AG.
After making many trials (and episodes of putting away my books in despair), I settled on Republic Book One. It is easier than Apology (which is not a dialogue, but a long and often intricate speech) or Symposium (consisting of an introductory dialogue but then mainly of rhetorically polished speeches). Republic One is philosophically more interesting than other ‘easy’ dialogues like Crito and Meno, including as it does the celebrated conversation with Thrasymachus.
There is a Geoffry Steadman guide (indispensable), and an excellent Cambridge Green and Yellow, edited by Nicholas Denyer.
There’s another guide, though it is expensive: ‘Book 1 of Plato’s Republic: A word by word guide to translation’, by Drew Mannetter, in two volumes. It does exactly what it claims to do.
It is perfectly acceptable, if your main aim is to read Plato in the original, to make extensive use of translations, even multiple ones. In English, the basic set is the Hackett Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper. Penguins are also very good.
I should also add that there is huge value to be had from re-reading, and re-re-reading the dialogues.
I endorse what others have said about learning Attic grammar and syntax. As a beginner, I was taught using the Cambridge Reading Greek series, which includes a self-learners guide. I still use these books for reference.
The editor of the Yellow and Green Republic I is David Sansone, not Nick Denyer.
Denyer has written commentaries on the Alcibiades and the Protagoras in the same series.
I recently used Dover’s Green and Yellow Symposium and was a bit disappointed.