Where do I go from here?

Greek Learning Greek
1

χαιρετε!

I am on the verge of completing Athenaze and I was wondering what would the good people here recommend? I prefer prose and histories, however, given how little experience I have with Greek, I am open to any suggestions. I have ordered a rather pricy NT, however, I expect it to be more leisurely reading, since I can use the Vulgate as a crutch. So, what would be a good choice to challenge me, but not be too difficult?

I do have experience with Latin; I’ve read books 1-5 and 20-35 of Livy, a handful of Cicero, Sallust, and Caesar’s Commentaries as well as random readings of the Bible.

I also have the reading course for Homeric Greek text, which I never did finish, that I may go back to now. So Homer is an option.

2

Libronix Digital Library System has a version of the Iliad that has the lexical form and declension of every word. In essence, it’s a word study version of the Iliad. So if you’re up for Homer, you might enjoy this.

3

Do you by any chance have a link, and are there other classical Greek texts as well (Xenophon in particular)?

4

I got mine here. They mostly have biblical texts, and I don’t know of any classical texts like Xenophon in this format. (But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist; I just don’t know of them, if they do.)

5

Thanks, Lex, I appreciate your help! If anyone knows of any classical texts in the same format please feel free to post them here. Thank you all.

6

The traditional choice used to be Xenophon, as he writes fairly textbook Attic and his style is relatively simple, specifically his Anabasis. I would recommend that for you since you say prose and history. Most people, including me, find Thucydides very difficult, and Herodotus writes in a different dialect (not that different from Attic but still). If you’re interested in post-Classical historical works, there are a lot of those as well, all the way down to the fall of Constantinople.

For myself, I started off with Plato, first the Apology, which I think is a great work to start off with. There’s also Lysias’s speeches which are also textbook Attic. And Aesop’s fables make nice short reading, but unless you like fables, I’d take these in small doses.

About Homer, you might want to consider Draper’s edition of the first book of the Iliad, which I imagine would be extremely helpful for someone jumping in to Homer after having gone through a textbook.

7

Thank you for the Xenophon recommendation. I hope to some day read Thucydides, and if Xenophon is a good place to start, I will look for some of his material. Are there any publications of Anabasis that are good for beginners?

8

First Greek Book

by John Williams White is for beginners and it can be downloaded from Textkit.

9

There is a good edition of books 1-4 from the University of Oklahoma Press by Mather and Hewitt.

10

It might also be good to look through google books and archive.org and similar sites for older school editions.