Andrew's Corner: Ancient Greek

I have found the study of the Ancient Greek language to be endlessly fascinating. With sufficient work one can read the original words of the New Testament, the words of Homer as spoken 2,000 years ago and the words of the greatest tragedians of all time: Sophocles, Euripides & Aeschylos. It is a field of study that I have given a great deal of time to over the last few years as I slave away for my undergraduate Bachelor of Arts Degree and hopefully Honours in Greek and it is a field of study that I hope to devote myself to for the rest of my life.

And yet I always have in mind that the search for the Greeks will meet in a type of failure having read early in my studies the words of Virginia Woolf:

Ex pri sonet eloquentiam. Sit cu nullam adolescens voluptatum, iusto saepe nonumy ex qui. Sed no legere quaerendum concludaturque, id mucius quidam urbanitas sed, admodum accommodare mei te.

Greek Texts Online

A short piece of Greek is placed below to test if it can be seen properly in Windows, Macintosh and Unix:

Μῆνιν ἄειδε, Θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί᾿ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾿ ἔθηκε,
πολλὰς δ᾿ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς  Ἄϊδι προῒαψεν
ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν
οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, Διὸς δ᾿ ἐτελείετο βουλή,
ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε
Ἀτρεῒδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς.

Can anybody identify this quote?

Urban Myths & Homer's Iliad

I cannot claim to be an expert at the Iliad of Homer. I have read all 24 books in English and have read books 1, 6, 22 & 24 in the original Ancient Greek. But I have found that many people with even less knowledge about this great poem than myself unwittingly spread a series of urban myths about the poem. It is the nature of an urban myth to become the truth and I hope that this small list will perhaps in this instance prevent this happening :-) References to the Iliad are given in a shorthand method: 4:22-25 indicates Book 4 Lines 22 to 25.

Top 10 Urban Myths of Homer's Iliad

Paris kills Achilles. According to the urban myth Paris shoots an arrow into the heel of Achilles and kills him. This does not happen in the Iliad where Achilles lives to the end of the poem, although as Hector lies dying he foretells the death of Achilles (22:358-360) at the hands of Paris and Apollo.
A wooden horse? In the Iliad there is no mention of a wooden horse filled with warriors that is taken into the city of Troy. Certainly the Odyssey speaks of this horse (4:272, 8:493-494 & 11:523) but it does not feature in Homer's Iliad.
Troy is Sacked. Admit it, you watched the movie didn't you? Unlike the movie the Iliad does not end with Troy being destroyed, instead it ends with the burial of Hector and the walls of Troy intact.
His in meis putent mollis, ex stet utroque tincidunt usu. Et pro brute audire, eam tractatos assentior constituam ut. Eum ne scaevola ocurreret. Ne ius verear malorum, ad indoctum percipitur eam, quas ridens an eos. Doctus mnesarchum interesset duo an, id debet dictas facilis usu. Sea no oportere pericula expetendis.
His in meis putent mollis, ex stet utroque tincidunt usu. Et pro brute audire, eam tractatos assentior constituam ut. Eum ne scaevola ocurreret. Ne ius verear malorum, ad indoctum percipitur eam, quas ridens an eos. Doctus mnesarchum interesset duo an, id debet dictas facilis usu. Sea no oportere pericula expetendis.
vim an nihil soleat honestatis,
vim an nihil soleat honestatis,
vim an nihil soleat honestatis,
Ei per vidisse malorum expetendis,

So can I suggest: read the book! You do not have to learn Greek, although this will certainly bring the poem alive. The best English version is Richard Lattimore's translation published by the University Of Chicago Press. ISBN: 0226469409.

Some Ancient Greek Links

These links are here mostly for my own benefit, but feel free to use them yourself :-)

The Perseus Digital Library The greatest resource for Greek & Latin students on the Web today: full texts, morphological analysis & more. I noticed the other day that Perseus 4.0 is partially released and appears a huge step forward, although obviously early days there yet. There is also a Berlin mirror site and another at Oxford.

This is not intended to be an exhaustive list, simply the links that I have found most useful.

Last Words

Nothing more for the moment, this represents the bare skeleton of the page that I will flesh out properly soon! I have a few projects in mind. Hmmmm.....