Thanks for your insights and the link, Chris.
I’ve reached another milestone in The Beginner’s Greek Book: Lesson XXXIX - The Optative Active.
This lesson introduces the present, future, aorist and perfect optative active, together with some basic uses of the optative (future less vivid conditional sentences; purpose clauses; clauses after verbs of fearing).
I feel that I’m now ready to supplement my Greek studies with some Greek readers. I’m going to use these two: A Greek Reader For Schools by Freeman and Lowe (Oxford, 1917) and Stories and Legends: A First Greek Reader by Colson (Macmillan, 1888). They both have notes and vocabularies.
Here is a review of the Freeman & Lowe book, from The Classical Outlook, Winter 1996:
“A Greek Reader for Schools, Adapted from Aesop , Theophrastus, Lucian, Herodotus , Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato. By C.E. FREEMAN and W.D. LOWE, eds. 1917. Wauconda IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1994. Pp. iv and 142. Paper. $15. The full title of this book alerts the reader to its contents. It is a reader for students who have learned elementary and intermediate Greek, in other words, for second-year students of classical Greek. It contains very interesting prose selections from the authors cited, and there are full notes, an index of proper names, and an end vocabulary. Modern students (accustomed to facing vocabularies) may resent these old-fashioned divisions, but the book is small enough to allow students, while reading the stories, to keep one of their fingers in the notes, and another in the end vocabulary. The readings are not graded in difficulty, although the opening selections from Aesop, Theophrastus, and Lucian are easier than those from Thucydides and Plato that end the book. The syntax of all passages is simplified for the second-year student. The selections from Herodotus are written in Attic Greek. Each of the authors is introduced by a short English description. This book is still a wonderful introduction to classical Greek prose and is recommended. Ed Phinney University of Massachusetts at Amherst.”
Here is a review of Colson’s book from The Classical Weekly, January 14th, 1929. I don’t share Ms. Hirst’s view that the lack of verse is a defect.
"Stories and Legends. A First Greek Reader, with Notes, Vocabulary and Exercises. By F. H. Colson. London: Macmillan and Co. (1924). Pp. xvii + 2I9.
Mr. F. H. Colson’s Greek Reader was first published in 1888, and has been reprinted fourteen times since then; so it obviously meets a want. There are a few introductory remarks on Greek accidence and syntax, designed to help the beginner, and then come the stories, at first very easy, then gradually becoming more difficult, until finally there are five pages from Plato’s Phaedo, ending with the account of the death of Socrates. There are about 40 pages of notes, 10 pages of English exercises to be translated into Greek, and vocabularies (including a vocabulary of proper names). The selections are all in prose, which the present reviewer regards as a defect in a beginner’s Greek book, but of course prose furnishes more useful material for the writing of sentences. Almost all the stories are from Greek mythology, history, or literature; they seem interesting and well chosen.
BARNARD COLLEGE GERTRUDE M. HIRST"
I’ve reached a milestone: I have just started Lesson L (i.e., 50) of the Beginner’s Greek Book. This chapter presents the “Participles Active. Present Participles of εἱμί and of Contract Verbs in the Active.” Exciting stuff! Only 50 more lessons until I get to the continuous readings comprising the first eight chapters of Book I of the Anabasis.
Hi all, I have a question about a Greek to English sentence. This is page 132, Section 361, part I, sentence no. 11:
ἐν δὲ τῷ τρίτῳ σταθμῷ Κῦρος ἐξέτασιν ποιεῖται τῶν Ἑλλήνων καὶ τῶν βαρβάρων ἐν τῷ πεδίῳ περὶ μέσας νύκτας.
My question is, what exactly does “περὶ μέσας νύκτας” mean? I translated it as “around midnight” but I can’t explain why “μέσας νύκτας” is in the plural.
Thanks!
I googled the phrase “περὶ μέσας νύκτας” and it seems to be a common, set phrase that means “around/about midnight.”