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Learning Ancient Greek

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Could you elaborate?

Sure. When I think of men in the past 300-400 years, I imagine an entire culture of men that all studied Greek and Latin, languages that are dead for all intents and purposes, just so they could read the ancient classics in original, and as a spiritual issue, to feel closer to the Greco-Roman culture.

Nowadays, almost no one wants to do this anymore; few care about Rome or Greece except for a bunch of dusty academics on the top floors of ivory towers. Very few know the history, the struggles, the relevance - and I know this from personal experience, both from meeting a lot of people at the university and from myself being utterly ignorant of these issues and thinking Enlightenment fascination with Greek and Latin was just a manifestation of their effete values.

And so when I see this sort of tuition incentive offered by the Department Chair of Classics Department I feel very sad. After four years in this university I know he's in vast minority, maybe even all alone, in his defense of Greco-Roman importance, vastly outnumbered by a horde of professors whose values are truly effete, who have nothing to say in defense of, nor can provide any reason for admiring, the ancients. Even these men are vastly outnumbered by a vast horde of a new breed of professor, post-Modernist cultural relativists who would just as soon forget the evils of patriarchal Greece and study the values and philosophy of Afrika where men and womyn lived in contemplative tranquility and peace.

With all this first hand understanding of academics at my university, when I see the tuition incentive for taking Greek, I know that it would be a complete anathema to anyone born before 20th century. I imagine this Department Chair to be a man in a lonely crusade, in desperate attempts to save the Western culture, finally out of bitter hopelessness offering people *money* just so they would learn and attend classes they ought to have attended on their own, and paid *him* money for the privilege.

So one side of me wants to say, "I don't want your money, please take it back and keep it; thank *you* for letting me study this, don't thank *me* just for completing the course. I won't take the money and be part of what seems like a monstrous injustice to you and your cause. I'll attend the course and be grateful you are offering it to me." And another side of me wants to say, "I'm a poor student, so if you really don't mind that I take the money, thank you, I'll accept it, and put it to good use."

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...

And so when I see this sort of tuition incentive offered by the Department Chair of Classics Department I feel very sad.

..

I imagine this Department Chair to be a man in a lonely crusade, in desperate attempts to save the Western culture, finally out of bitter hopelessness offering people *money* just so they would learn and attend classes they ought to have attended on their own, and paid *him* money for the privilege.

So one side of me wants to say, "I don't want your money, please take it back and keep it; thank *you* for letting me study this, don't thank *me* just for completing the course. I won't take the money and be part of what seems like a monstrous injustice to you and your cause. I'll attend the course and be grateful you are offering it to me." And another side of me wants to say, "I'm a poor student, so if you really don't mind that I take the money, thank you, I'll accept it, and put it to good use."

Thank you for the fuller explanation. Perhaps I am still unclear about the situation. In one place you say he is offering a "tuition incentive" to take the Greek course. In other places you say you want him to keep his money. But is it his money?

Isn't he doing what every grocer does? Isn't he offering a big price discount on produce that isn't moving fast enough at the moment -- here, in order to attract students who are marginal buyers to his program, a program he wants to build up for the longterm? (A marginal buyer is someone who wants the product but can't afford it at the moment -- but could at a lower price.)

Offering a discounted price is not giving people money. It is simply selling for less than previously advertised.

I would be very excited about taking him up on his offer, an offer made by a man who (1) has the zest for the Classics that the early Renaissance bookhunters had, and (2) has the brass to add a commerical touch from the Industrial Revolution -- price discounting!

The admirers of the classics in the earliest days of the Renaissance were discounters too, when they attracted people to their lectures. They gave away knowledge of the languages and literature for free, partly to advance their movement and partly to associate with like-minded people. In that perspective, a modern discounted tuition sounds positively greedy. I would snap up the offer without any hesitation.

The situation you have described, plus other anecdotal information I have received, suggests to me that U. S. culture might be at the doorstep of a renascence, if not a renaissance in classical studies. If so, I would love to be a student in that movement.

P. S. -- See Warren Treadgold, Renaissances Before the Renaissance, p. 116 for the use of the term "renascence" to indicate Classics revivals that brought an upsurge of interest in ancient literature and language but weren't strong enough to permeate the whole culture (as the Renaissance did). Sometimes the distinction is simply between various revivals and the Renaissance.

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I understand that learning Greek on my own will be hard, but I am prepared to spend the time needed to learn it. The main reason I am having to learn on my own is a lack of money and a lack of patience. The only place I'll be able to learn Greek with a teacher is when I'm in college. I can't afford to do a distance course. Also, the reason I wanted to know of any books which contain only the original Greek was that I didn't want the temptation of looking across the page to translate. Also, by commentaries, I meant an explaination of grammatical points in the text, as in common in many Latin texts. Thank you for your time.

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... would it be possible to self-guide learning into Greek to the point where marginal Aristotle translations would be possible?

Back in the '70s, I took two semesters of Classical Greek at Purdue University, in the Philosophy Department. I think our text was "Introductory Greek" ... I could look it up once I get home ... and the course was a lot less intensive than those mentioned by others! We read parts of the Gospel of Mark (easy reading) and Plato's "Euthyphro" (more difficult, but not overwhelming). Aristotle is really not too hard to read, in Greek! In fact, we found that many, many times it was easier to understand what Aristotle's meaning was from the original, than from the translation! Aristotle's sentence structure is generally simple and straightforward, as opposed to the convoluted sentences of the translators. His vocabulary is not huge, either. There are several good books: Fobes' "Philosophical Greek", and another, I think it was "Greek Philosophic Terms," that I could look up at home. I would recommend studying Aristotle with the Greek text on one hand, and a translation right next to it; you'll have to look up fewer words, since many of them will be made clear by the context. There are also "trots" or simple interlinear translations of works like Xenophon's "Anabasis," that can take a little of the drudgery out of learning Greek. So yes, I think it would be quite possible to learn enough on your own, to read Aristotle.

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Our text was "An Introduction to Greek," by Crosby and Schaeffer.

Highly recommended: "Greek Philosophical Terms," by F.E. Peters. For each term it offers a chronological summary, showing how each thinker used it and how the meaning developed. This would also be helpful for students who are NOT learning Greek ... because you can't really rely on the translator, many English terms do not have precise equivalents in Greek and vice versa ... you ought to know the Greek word, for the key concepts (e.g. physis for nature, psyche for soul, hyle for matter, eidos for form).

A good feature of Wheelwright's "Aristotle" is that his translations do show, in parentheses, what Greek word Aristotle was using.

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BurgessLau, indeed when the entire culture has forgotten its classics, and when a few brave men use innovative techniques to entice renewed interest, that is grounds for optimism. But when the entire culture has remembered the classics, and is slowly losing interest, except for a few brave men who use innovative techniques to entice renewed interest, that wouldn't be ground for optimism at all.

The money the man is offering is indeed his, or at least belongs to some private trust fund; I'm positively sure it has nothing to do with the financials of this university, and so it's not a discounted price. I'm paying the full price for attending, and he's paying me a "salary" if you will, or a "reward" just to attend the very same classes that would once before not only be attended without any such incentives, but there would be no reason for enticing at all, as demand would be high and vibrant.

It's like imagine us today eager for some new good Objectivist book to come out, and people 500 years from now, when Objectivism has become mainstream and hundreds of books have been published but people are no longer reading them and are no longer interested in the philosophy's values. One may pay today to have others attend and spread Oism, and someone might decide to pay people to attend Oist classes 500 years from now, but surely you see how the two contexts are completely opposite.

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