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On difficulty: yes, it’s difficult, but at my ability-level (borderline beginner-intermediate, i reckon), every unadapted text is difficult. What made Thucydides especially difficult for me: many new words, many unfamiliar meanings of common words, and idioms not previously encountered.
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I agree with the consensus of the more able that the speeches are harder that the narrative.
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Aids to study. First, the Attikos app for the ipad/iphone saves much time looking up words. It helps with the parsings. Second, the Perseus presentation gives you a choice of translations; for me, the most helpful English translation is that of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), available on Perseus; yes, this is the very Hobbes you learned about if you studied modern political philosophy. H.D. Cameron, Thucydides Book I: A Student’s Grammatical Commentary (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2003), often cites exact places in Smyth and in LSJ to support his interpretations. Cameron is intended for students somewhat more advanced than I am. He tries to comment on hard places that such students can’t work out for themselves. For me, every word he wrote was useful. I also used every study session the Loeb Classical Library volume that includes Book 1. (Somewhere the LCL is referred to as “those squat comforting volumes with their much-consulted translations.”)
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This forum is very helpful. Aside from the helpful replies, it often happened that while writing my question, an attractive answer came to mind that solved my difficulty. I wonder if others have experienced this.
Good to know you’re having success 
I intend to start Tukydides by the beginning of next year and use him as my first huge source of greek input. I have already read he’s book in translation last year and I was very delighted, nothing gets out of my mind that he is gonna be the first guy I’ll read in greek after Euclid (some mathematical studies). You mentioned the app you’re using, and for myself, when I search an explanation of something I’m studying in a textbook I use Chat GPT. Is very good at offering quick explanations and as a source for vocab you forget, together with some grammar notation. Isn’t perfect though, sometimes commits mistakes, but works 98% of cases. I used it when reading french books that didn’t had this sort of commentaries in my native language - such as Corneille, which people offers a direct translation instead, even though it isn’t exactly modern french - and I was surprised at how well it dealt with the situation. I think for a intermediate reader it might work very fine, but advanced ones may recquired very specific commentaries. As you’re an intermediate I think it could help you a lot with shortening the time you spent in a given passage, but be very cautious because is very easy to just screw the thing up by constantly asking for translations all the time and not working hard yourself. It can also be useful to correct yourself as for a sample doubt you could have.
I tryed to talk to the machine in greek, and it more or less worked. I would not say that it would be as good as talking with someone else, a friend or a very experienced one, but in exchange for the normal beginners you may find out there who just casually tries to talk - such as the ones you’ll find in some telegram channels - it’s just as good, or better. In trying to speak greek we all make huge mistakes, but the machine errs less, and it can provide corrections for your errors instantly, and very exactly, almost as a teacher would, but free and at any time. Its a resource we have, and as a refined searching engine is the best we can find for our time.
Hugh, what are your thoughts on this a few months later? I see that you’ve read some Lysias and Plato since posting this thread - do you think your experience with Thucydides served as a good preparation?
Matt
Good question. Reading Thucydides for me is more like an end-in-itself than like a preparation for something to come later.
So, I think for autodidacts, including me, more reading of Lysias and Plato would be better preparation for later study.
Interesting! Reading materials for learners typically get progressively harder, for obvious reasons, but I know there are plenty of people who’ll say ‘after reading [some famously hard author], everything else seemed easy’.
I’m reading the gospel of Mark now, besides Plato’s Symposium.
After I retired, I improved my French literacy by reading through Proust’s masterpiece, twice. I used a good French-English dictionary, then a French-only dictionary, the Scott Moncrieff translation of Proust, and a grammar. I also read thirty or forty of the Simenon Maigret police novels. Proust took a couple of years, but, after that I could “just pick up and read” Balzac, Flaubert, etc.
The journey with Latin and Greek has been much more difficult and longer, and is far from complete. What accounts for the difference? First, French is much more like English. Second, I had had formal instruction in French. Third, over the years I had used French now and then, so that I could make out nonfiction expository prose, and easy fiction of the Simenon type before I started working on Proust.
I’ve lived in Spain for 10 years so my speaking ability was quite high before I started reading Spanish fiction… I though I was going pretty well but La Regenta put me in my place. It’s true that there is no text that would daunt me after that experience, but maybe it wasn’t the most efficient way to improve.
As we were under quarantine at the the time I had no other distractions, which probably helped!
Hello fabiusvinicius:
Can you give an easy example of how you ask ChatGPT for help?
I have tested ChatGPT only in fields that I know well. For this reason, I am a little unsure how a beginner might query ChatGPT.