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Reading Course in Homeric Greek: Book One (revised)
A Reading Course in Homeric Greek, Book One, Third Edition is a revised edition of the well respected text by Frs. Schoder and Horrigan. This text provides an introduction to Ancient Greek language as found in the Greek of Homer. Covering 120 lessons, readings from Homer begin after the first 10 lessons in the book. Honor work, appendices, and vocabularies are included, along with review exercises for each chapter with answers.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
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May 5, 2021
Imagine a language textbook with no pictures! Not even a line drawing! This book is it. May God bless the two learned Jesuits who wrote it.
Before progressive educators began their systematic destruction of the classical curriculum, Homer -- in Greek -- was a standard subject for college-bound American high school students. Until around 1900 elite American colleges required students to pass entrance examinations in Latin or Classical Greek. Indeed, prefaces to Homeric Greek schoolbooks authored in the late 1800's (some of which are sitting on my bookshelf) routinely reference the expectation that students would read substantial portions of the Iliad or Odyssey in preparation for college.
Homer still rules in the sovereign kingdom of the humanities. New translations of his poems appear nearly every year, and in the better high schools the Odyssey has been a standard text for many freshman English students. And yet, Homer's unrivaled genius and foundational importance notwithstanding, only an extraordinarily infinitesimal, teensy-weensy group of students (both in high school and college) read him in his own language. Even many elite prep schools formerly known for the rigor of their offerings in classics no longer employ faculty members to teach ancient Greek. Each year approximately 200 students sit for the National Greek Exam in Homer -- this in a country of 17 million high school students.
This deplorable state of affairs is an indictment of our educational system. For the sake of educational sanity, Greek must be restored as a core subject within the secondary curriculum. This beautiful textbook is the standard issue field manual for all those who are ready to fight in this rear guard engagement.
I enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone considering teaching Homeric Greek. Ancient Greek -- whether Koine, Attic or Homeric -- is an exacting discipline that cries out for just the sort of clear, straightforward presentation that is offered here.
The book's format of presenting new grammar and vocabulary in brief, manageable lessons is so refreshing -- a reminder of how common sense and restraint characterized the textbooks of yesteryear. Compared with the surreal butchery of modern language textbooks -- where distracting sidebars, clashing colors, trivial dialogues and irrelevant pictures conspire to prevent students from learning anything having to do with grammar -- this book is a model of clarity and sanity. Each chapter includes short Greek sentences for translation which illustrate the grammatical concepts under consideration. Included also are English sentences for translation into Greek (time constraints force me to skip these) as well as additional sentences for translation that are adapted from a great wealth of ancient authors: Homer, Hesiod, Plato, the tragedians, Theognis, Menander, Pindar, the Gospels, the Septuagint, Aristotle, the pre-Socratics, and many others.
The authors -- learned Jesuits with a deep appreciation for the extraordinary range of classical Greek literature -- bring into play a wide sampling of viewpoints both Christian and classical. Sentences in Greek that students routinely encounter include such typical examples as: "If men should live justly with one another, they would no doubt have peace; A good friend is the best of all treasures; Let us not love the wealth of a man, but the man himself; and Wise men believe that moral excellence brings glory." These and frequent reminders about the immortality of the soul offer students ideas that are very rarely, if ever, touched upon in American public schools.
Both the Greek and English fonts are attractive, and full paradigms of word forms are set forth within the pages of each lesson, rather than referenced in an appendix. Another especially helpful feature of the book is the use of authentically Greek idioms and word order throughout the sample Greek sentences. In particular, there are more examples of ellipses, conditions, adjectives used substantively, and constructions with a more genuinely "Greek" feel than one typically encounters in the synthetic sentences of Athenaze, a beginning Attic textbook that I have used enthusiastically for over a decade. The subjunctive and optative moods are introduced much earlier in this book than in Athenaze, and what students read by way of exercises comes strikingly close to the actual Homeric verses (Odyssey Book 9) they will encounter in chapters 61-120.
The authors drew upon many years of experience in teaching Homer and were careful to omit extraneous grammatical information. The best proof of this book's excellence are the actual results I see in my own students, most of whom can translate Homer with relative ease by the spring semester of their second year of the subject. Unlike An Introduction to Greek, which I recently had to jettison as a second year text because it was only torturing my students rather than helping them understand Greek, this book features Greek sentences that are sensibly crafted to advance students at a reasonable pace toward the goal of reading Homer with confidence and pleasure.
Before progressive educators began their systematic destruction of the classical curriculum, Homer -- in Greek -- was a standard subject for college-bound American high school students. Until around 1900 elite American colleges required students to pass entrance examinations in Latin or Classical Greek. Indeed, prefaces to Homeric Greek schoolbooks authored in the late 1800's (some of which are sitting on my bookshelf) routinely reference the expectation that students would read substantial portions of the Iliad or Odyssey in preparation for college.
Homer still rules in the sovereign kingdom of the humanities. New translations of his poems appear nearly every year, and in the better high schools the Odyssey has been a standard text for many freshman English students. And yet, Homer's unrivaled genius and foundational importance notwithstanding, only an extraordinarily infinitesimal, teensy-weensy group of students (both in high school and college) read him in his own language. Even many elite prep schools formerly known for the rigor of their offerings in classics no longer employ faculty members to teach ancient Greek. Each year approximately 200 students sit for the National Greek Exam in Homer -- this in a country of 17 million high school students.
This deplorable state of affairs is an indictment of our educational system. For the sake of educational sanity, Greek must be restored as a core subject within the secondary curriculum. This beautiful textbook is the standard issue field manual for all those who are ready to fight in this rear guard engagement.
I enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone considering teaching Homeric Greek. Ancient Greek -- whether Koine, Attic or Homeric -- is an exacting discipline that cries out for just the sort of clear, straightforward presentation that is offered here.
The book's format of presenting new grammar and vocabulary in brief, manageable lessons is so refreshing -- a reminder of how common sense and restraint characterized the textbooks of yesteryear. Compared with the surreal butchery of modern language textbooks -- where distracting sidebars, clashing colors, trivial dialogues and irrelevant pictures conspire to prevent students from learning anything having to do with grammar -- this book is a model of clarity and sanity. Each chapter includes short Greek sentences for translation which illustrate the grammatical concepts under consideration. Included also are English sentences for translation into Greek (time constraints force me to skip these) as well as additional sentences for translation that are adapted from a great wealth of ancient authors: Homer, Hesiod, Plato, the tragedians, Theognis, Menander, Pindar, the Gospels, the Septuagint, Aristotle, the pre-Socratics, and many others.
The authors -- learned Jesuits with a deep appreciation for the extraordinary range of classical Greek literature -- bring into play a wide sampling of viewpoints both Christian and classical. Sentences in Greek that students routinely encounter include such typical examples as: "If men should live justly with one another, they would no doubt have peace; A good friend is the best of all treasures; Let us not love the wealth of a man, but the man himself; and Wise men believe that moral excellence brings glory." These and frequent reminders about the immortality of the soul offer students ideas that are very rarely, if ever, touched upon in American public schools.
Both the Greek and English fonts are attractive, and full paradigms of word forms are set forth within the pages of each lesson, rather than referenced in an appendix. Another especially helpful feature of the book is the use of authentically Greek idioms and word order throughout the sample Greek sentences. In particular, there are more examples of ellipses, conditions, adjectives used substantively, and constructions with a more genuinely "Greek" feel than one typically encounters in the synthetic sentences of Athenaze, a beginning Attic textbook that I have used enthusiastically for over a decade. The subjunctive and optative moods are introduced much earlier in this book than in Athenaze, and what students read by way of exercises comes strikingly close to the actual Homeric verses (Odyssey Book 9) they will encounter in chapters 61-120.
The authors drew upon many years of experience in teaching Homer and were careful to omit extraneous grammatical information. The best proof of this book's excellence are the actual results I see in my own students, most of whom can translate Homer with relative ease by the spring semester of their second year of the subject. Unlike An Introduction to Greek, which I recently had to jettison as a second year text because it was only torturing my students rather than helping them understand Greek, this book features Greek sentences that are sensibly crafted to advance students at a reasonable pace toward the goal of reading Homer with confidence and pleasure.
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