Ὄχ ἄριστοι ἐν Ἰλίῳ τὰ εἶπον Πρίαμῳ, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἠτίμασεν.
My initial shot at translation was this:
By far the best in Troy who used to speak of Priam, but we insulted them.
But this doesn’t seem to make much sense. Should this be more like:…
By far the best in Troy were not those who used to speak of Priam, but those whom we insulted …?
What person is “ἠτίμασεν”?
what is "τὰ "?
Before translating a sentence its best to make sure you understand how the Greek works and that you have understood the Grammar. If it doesn"t make sense to you, check for mistakes in your understanding of the grammar.
Afterthought: what tense is “εἶπον”?
Is there more to this? Out of context it doesn’t make much sense. Maybe “By far the best in Ilion said those things to Priam but he dishonored them.”
Thanks, all, for the pointers – much appreciated!
seneca2008 wrote
what is "τὰ "?
I see, I was mistaking it for a relative pronoun, but it’s a demonstrative or a pronoun.
Afterthought: what tense is “εἶπον”?
I was taking it for imperfect (3rd person plural), becuse that’s the only verb form I know of that ends in -ον. But now that I look at it again, I don’t really understand this, because I would think that in the imperfect it would have an augment and no stem change.
What person is “ἠτίμασεν”?
I see, I thought it was the first-person plural (aorist), but actually that doesn’t make sense. It looks to me like the aorist stem with -εν on the end, but I don’t understand that because the aorist endings should be -α, -ας, -ε, -αμεν, -ατε, αν.
So it seems like in the case of both of these verbs there’s something going on that I don’t understand. Pharr introduces a whole bunch of tenses all at once, and I’m having trouble deciphering it all. The tenses that are supposed to have been introduced so far are the present, imperfect, future, and aorist. It may be that there’s something I’m not understanding about the organization of the book, since in this lesson it seems like he expects the student to know things that aren’t introduced very explicitly, or maybe they’re in the grammar reference in the back of the book.
For εἶπον he gives a cross-reference from the exercise to a later section where it’s listed like this: εἴρω, ἐρέω, εἶπον (ἔειπον). I think this means that εἶπον is the second aorist of εἴρω, but as far as I can tell he’s never introduced the second aorist except to say that it exists, and he doesn’t seem to have given a set of endings for it. I’m also not sure what the parenthetical (ἔειπον) means. I’m guessing that this is either an alternative form or an indication that εἶπον is a contracted form of this longer form.
Hylander wrote:
Maybe “By far the best in Ilion said those things to Priam but he dishonored them.”
I see, that makes sense of the τὰ, which I was confused about, although it’s a little weird because there’s no antecedent.
Would εἴρω + acc. + dat. mean the dative noun, as opposed to ?
Is there more to this? Out of context it doesn’t make much sense.
No, there’s no context. It’s just a practice sentence.
I see, part of the mystery was because he uses εἶπον in this exercise, which is in lesson 10, but he doesn’t introduce the endings for the second aorist until lesson 11. The -ον can be either 1st person singular or 3rd person plural, with the latter being the one that makes sense from context.
I’m still befuddled by ἠτίμασεν, though. It looks like the aorist stem, but the -εν isn’t one of the verb endings that Pharr lists for the aorist. If it’s “he insulted,” then shouldn’t it be ἠτίμασε rather than ἠτίμασεν?
-ν is the “movable” nu added to -ε of the third person singular aorist ending and certain other noun and verb forms at the end of a sentence or to prevent hiatus with a following vowel.
Honestly, though I’ve never actually held Pharr’s textbook in my hands, from what I’ve seen it looks to me like his book is more confusing than instructive.
Just learn ειπον for now. Yes, εειπον is an uncontracted form of the second aorist. This is a suppletive verb: the various tenses are formed from different roots.
The Homeric language often has alternative forms of the same word that fit in different metrical slots in the hexameter.
I agree with Bill this doesn’t look like a good way to learn Greek of any kind. With a teacher things might be different but on your own its just too confusing.
I know that you had reservation about Athenaze but at least it introduces grammar and vocabulary in a coherent and systematic way. A major drawback with Pharr is that he doesnt give you at the beginning passages of Greek that you can make sense of and which enable you to understand the meaning of the Greek with the glosses provided. Isolated sentences lead students into guessing games on the basis of the information they assume they have covered.
You will learn Greek more rapidly and with a better understanding if you develop the habit of reading Greek as Greek and not translating as you go. You need to understand all the forms in a sentence and how they fit together before you even think of translating. Translating is the means by which we communicate our understanding but it is the very last step in the process of understanding. Unfortunately Pharr starts with nothing but translation from Greek to English and vice versa and you have no opportunity to develop your understanding of how continuous Greek works, without translation.
Translation from Greek to English is important and Athenaze does ask for it, but that is more I think as a check for a teacher that a passage has been understood.
The reason I answered your post in the way I did rather than tell you what I thought the translation ought to be is that you learn nothing from that. The best question to ask is about how the Greek works. There are lots of ways to translate a sentence and what form of words you eventually come up with isn’t all that important.
Ben, did you do Section 46 in Lesson 10? The numbering may be different but it should read “Learn 863-866 and the first column of 933”. 933 gives you the conjugation of the 2nd aorist.
Also, as Hylander shows in his translation of the sentence, τἀ is used as a demonstrative pronoun, not a relative. This usage is common in the epic dialect.
The lessons look deceptively short, but they require a fair amount of reading and memorisation. You may need to adjust your pace.
Ah, I see. Thanks, Aetos, for pointing that out. I had been confused by that section and didn’t complete it, so then that came back to bite me when I tried to do the exercise.
I think I just need to spend a bunch of time memorizing paradigms for all these verb forms that Pharr introduces all at once.
Seneca2008, I think you’re right that Pharr would be heavy going for self study in most cases, but I have quite a bit of previous background with modern Greek and koine, so I think I should be able to make it work. I was sloppy in my habits when I started in on the gospel of Mark, because the grammatical forms are mostly very simple, and I knew the sense of the text. Actually my reason for working through the translation exercises in Pharr now is to force myself to learn the grammar more carefully. Pharr just isn’t organized like a modern textbook that holds your hand. I also have a couple of other books that introduce the grammar using Homeric forms (Schoder and Beetham), so I think at this point I should work through the early lessons in those books before proceeding with more from Pharr.
What I really miss is didactic audio tapes. Back in 1993, my wife and I were preparing for our honeymoon in Greece, where her family immigrated from. So we got the Hugo book and audio cassettes and played them over and over in our apartment. It worked really well to implant the grammar in my brain. I still remember some of the random scraps from the tapes. Tα κοκτέιλ - πρίγκιπες του καλοκαιριού 
If you have enough Greek to read the NT, why not just dive in and start working through real Homer?
You can get one book of Homer with commentary in the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics (Green and Yellow) series or the edition of Iliad Book 1 by Simon Pulleyn (which looks promising for beginners though I haven’t seen it personally), and equip yourself with (1) a Greek grammar, either the traditional Smyth or the more modern Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek, (2) Cunliffe’s absolutely essential Homeric Lexicon, and (3) a careful, fairly literal translation to help you when you’re stuck and confirm your understanding (not one of those awful “interlinear” ones, but you might use the online translation on the Perseus site) – and you’ll be in business. (This won’t come cheap, but you’ve got to be prepared to spend if you want to get involved with ancient Greek.)
If you just work through one book of Homer very carefully, it may be slow going at first, but the forms and vocabulary will build up over time, and you will develop fluency in reading – faster than you might think. But be sure to get a handle on the hexameter and try to read metrically. It really isn’t all that difficult, and Homer is generally actually some of the easiest Greek, as well as some of the most enjoyable to read in the original.
Pharr’s exercises are unrecognizable as Greek or as Homer. The problem with grotesque, bizarre sentences like the one this thread started with is that Pharr has wrenched individual words out of their context in word-groupings, “formulas,” which are the true lexical building blocks of the Homeric poems, not the individual words themselves, and are metrically shaped to fit the meter of the hexameter. Pharr’s text seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the nature of Homer’s artificial language, which exists solely in hexameter verse. That said, perhaps Pharr could be useful as an adjunct to reading real Homer for the sole purpose of learning to recognize the morphological forms of nouns and verbs. Just don’t do the exercises.
I don’t plan on making a career out of defending Pharr’s book, but he introduces real Greek (Iliad 1.1-5) from lesson 13 (out of 77) onwards and devotes a whole lesson (14) to the scansion of the first two verses. His intention with the ersatz Greek of the exercises is to make the vocabulary of each section of Iliad 1 fit English word order more closely. This lets the vocabulary embed itself at a reasonable reading speed, then you can more easily read the real Greek with its less familiar word order. I found this scaffolding extremely helpful and was happy to kick it away once I’d climbed up it. It’s a clunky tool but it does the job.
I aslo dont plan to make a career out of rubbishing Pharr. But this fetishising of “real Greek” really amuses me. Why is the Greek of Athenaze not “real Greek”? It was written by some one who knew Greek pretty well . Is it imitation Greek? I dont think you would suggest we read Greek without accents in capital letters and no word division! Where does this search for a bogus authenticity end?
I agree with Bill that if the OP has some knowledge of Greek then he would be better of reading Simon Pulleyn’s Book 1 of the Iliad. I have read that and its pretty good. He will learn more about Homer from that book than poor old Pharr’s.
Until someone comes up with a pile of money to write a greek version of Lingva Latina Per Se Illvstrata, Athenaze is in my opinion the best text for learning Greek, whether you want to read Homer or Classical Greek.
Bogus authenticity? It either follows the usage patterns of the native speakers or not. Hylander goes a little too far, I think, and should pick up a copy of Pharr (3rd edition, please) whose exercises are not bad overall. But his line of attack has a solid basis.
I take your point - it’s difficult to avoid loaded language when talking about this kind of thing. I don’t think that all Greek after the death of Procopius is ‘fake’, just that some Greek is made deliberately less natural so as to be easier for the learner. The same is true of English - if an Italian student of English were given the sentence “The brother of Sean has not yet met the sister of John”, it would not ungrammatical but it is unnatural.
However, it might have some value over “Sean’s brother hasn’t met John’s sister yet” in helping younger learners get used to the English present perfect without worrying about possession. Later on, the training wheels can be taken off to teach the learner when to use “The Queen of England” and when to use “England’s Queen”. From what I’ve seen of Athenaze, I imagine it’s a mix of pedagogese and natural Greek.
ἄριστοι ἐν Ἰλίῳ ταύτα (τὰ πράγματα) λέγουσι τῷ Πριάμῳ.
Πρίαμος τούτους ἀρίστους ἀτιμᾷ.
ἄριστοι ἐν Ἰλίῳ ταύτα λέγουσι τῷ Πριάμῳ, ἀλλὰ Πρίαμος τοὺς ἀρίστους ἀτιμᾷ.
ἄριστοι ἐν Ἰλίῳ τὰ λέγουσι τῷ Πριάμῳ, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἀτιμᾷ.
Ὄχ’ ἄριστοι ἐν Ἰλίῳ τὰ εἶπον Πριάμῳ, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἠτίμασεν.
Hi Ben,
Both Hylander and Seneca have made some excellent suggestions. As for jumping into the Iliad, Hylander’s suggestion is a good one, especially if you have enough Greek. Probably the only point I can make for continuing with Pharr is that you are only 2 lessons away from starting the Iliad. At that point, Pharr introduces the grammatical knowledge required to read each successive portion of the Iliad. By lesson 47, you’ll be up to line 232 in Book 1. After that, it’s all review and the lessons become more of a commentary. That might be a good place to transition to another edition of the Iliad with a better (and more recent) commentary. mwh has suggested Benner’s Selections from Homer’s Iliad on occasion. This gives you the equivalent of 8 books of the Iliad while filling in the gaps between selections with summaries to preserve continuity. It also is very old, as It was first published in 1904.
We have similar backgrounds, Ben. I started learning Modern Greek at the age of 11 and continued that study for seven years, which included a year of Καθαρεύουσα. My wife is a Pontian Greek, born in the νομός of Δράμα. Her grandparents were from the area of Τραπεζούντα and eventually fled Turkey after the events of 1922, her mother’s parents making it to Russia and her father’s making it to Greece.
My knowledge of Modern Greek has had limited efficacy with respect to acquiring proficiency in both Homeric and Classical Greek. As with most languages, the meanings of many Greek words have evolved over the millennia and the grammar has become less complex, so the forms and vocabulary that one knows in the modern language do not have exact correspondences in the ancient language; in other words, you can’t just address differences between ancient and modern Greek and gain a working knowledge of both. As a result, I treat each variety of the language as a separate entity.
So much for my thoughts on your situation. Whatever you choose, Ben, you’ll find plenty of help here.
Ὄχ ἄριστοι ἐν Ἰλίῳ τὰ εἶπον Πρίαμῳ, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἠτίμασεν.
This is complete mumbo jumbo, I have no idea what this means (nothing?) and I’ve thought that I’m a reasonably experienced reader of Homer. Like Sean, I don’t plan to make a career out of defending Pharr, even if it has some merits. I have not opened his book for after I worked through it well over ten years ago; it did its job but apparently it’s worse than I thought back then. I still think the book can be useful but the sooner you can ditch it the better. Hylander’s recommendation of Simon Pulleyn’s edition of Iliad book 1 is excellent, once you get to read the actual text by Homer you could read it alongside and get an idea of what Homer is really about.
ὄχ’ ἄριστοι ἐν Ἰλίῳ τὰ εἶπον Πριάμῳ, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἠτίμασεν.
@Paul, Mumbo-jumbo goes too far, I think. The meaning is plain to me: “The very best in Ilium said this to Priam, but he dishonored them.”
Is it idiomatic/normal Greek? No. But I don’t see any big rules of usage or meaning violated here. Replace the τα/τους with demonstratives and it’s Attic (and οχα).
Paul is right. It’s mumbo jumbo. Yes, it’s possible to make sense of it, but it’s not Greek, neither Homeric nor any other variety. People who want to learn Greek shouldn’t be subjected to this.
A textbook for learning Homeric/epic Greek directly is probably a good idea – one that uses bits and pieces of Homer or the Homeric Hymns to start, and one that’s informed by the modern understanding of the formulaic nature of the Homeric diction. And one that allows the user to eventually transition to other forms of Greek.
I just ordered a copy of Pharr to evaluate it for myself. I’m willing to look at it with an open mind. Maybe this awful sentence isn’t representative.
Again, Ben, I’d urge you to dive directly into Homer.
I should have mentioned Benner’s Introduction to the Iliad – somewhat out of date, to be sure, but a good text for getting into Homer. We used it in second-year Greek, though we ha read Odyssey 9 in the second semester of our first year. This was in 1960-61.
This is not the text we used for Odyssey IX, but it looks promising for beginners:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/homer-odyssey-ix-9780906515617/
Odyssey IX is more or less self-contained and it consists mostly of the story of the Cyclops.
Scroll through this Amazon link (including subsequent page or pages) to find editions of individual Homeric books in the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classic (Green and Yellow) series. These will generally be more up-to-date than Benner and in my experience the texts in this series are of uniformly high quality.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=homer+cambridge+greek+and+latin&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
Cunliffe’s Lexicon – as I wrote earlier, this is essential:
“Real Greek” to me in this context is anything composed by an ancient author that has not been edited for student use. If I were doing Byzantine or modern Greek, I would substitute those for “ancient.”