Appetitive: The British Schoolboy's Guide to Classical Myths

Since I have been trying to walk for exercise (as well as having a fairly long walk to class every day), I have been listening to a lot of audiobooks and lectures.

My newest favorite set podcasts is from iTunes and is called Myths and History of Greece and Rome. According to the preface, the set of podcasts was composed by the father of two boys who were interested in the stories of Greece and Rome than they were learning in school. He, apparently, did a bunch of background reading and wrote a book.

The set of podcasts is aimed at school children, so much of the sex and violence has been stripped from the stories. However, the stories have the added bonus of being written in that wonderful British way and are peppered by humor, understatement, and little quips to provide background for school children. I find them quite amusing, and they also include a few stories here and there that I had not heard previously, e.g. the origin of Scylla.

Enjoy!

Appetitive: Thoughts on the Audio Aeneid

I have a confession to make: I've never been able to get all the way through the Aeneid-- until a few months ago.

I was assigned the Mandlebaum translation in my first year of undergraduate study. I think I managed to get through Book 6 before my interest entirely ebbed away (and the only part I actually liked was Book 5-- the funeral games). I tried again to get through the whole thing when I read Book 8 in the Latin my third year in college. I managed to get through Books 1 and; 2 (and obviously Book 8 in the Latin), but no further. Then, a few summers ago, I tried to read it again for my own edification with the Fagles translation. Once again, I just failed to get through it. Then, two years ago, when I read Book 2 in the Latin, I tried again with the Fitzgerald translation, but it was a failure.

There's something about the Aeneid that just fundamentally doesn't appeal to me. I'm not sure what it is. I just would rather be doing something-- anything-- else. So, since I have a 30 minute walk each way from my apartment to class every day, I decided to get an audio version so I could feel like I was doing something productive on my walks. It worked. I finished the Aeneid in about a week of walking and house-cleaning (audiobooks have save the state of my apartment).

I recommend this version. It's the Fagles translation, which is colloquial without straying too far from the text. Simon Callow's narration is a little over the top (and his female voices are quite annoying), but it kept me engaged in the story while I was doing other things. I actually noticed some interesting things (how many of Aeneas' actions are motivated by omens, for example).

Once I finished that, I started downloading other audio books of various other classical texts (including Ian McKellen's wonderful reading of Fagles' Odyssey). It makes me feel productive on my walks to and from class. More recently, I've been listening to Paul Cartledge's The Spartans, in order to study for my Greek history survey exam.

Appetitive: I Knew Classics Must Be Useful For Something

I've been busy getting ready for grad school starting next week. However, I found this and thought people might enjoy it.

Source: Communication Studies

Have a nice day!

Apptetitive: Punic War Remnants

According to Italy Magazine, archaeologists have discovered large anchors and the remains of a ship's cargo off the coast of Sicily. They believe that these are vestiges from the Punic War that the Carthaginians left behind when quickly abandoning a hotly contested strategic position. The underwater excavation is ongoing.

Appetitive/Reasoning: Plato's Manuscripts

This picture is page 1r (screen 11) from Gallica Bibliothèque Numérique

Recently, I was wondering what the Platonic manuscript tradition looked like. I had never really thought about it before-- mostly I've considered manuscript traditions for plays or poems. I did a quick browse around the web and I found this amazing website that has a copy of Parisinus gr. 1807 (A). I haven't really even gotten a chance to look at it, but I thought I would put it up for anyone to browse. You can even download a PDF! How cool is that?

Appetitive: The Origins of Winemaking in France

Archaeologists have done a chemical analysis on an preserved amphora in Lattera at the base of the Rhone river which elucidates a possible origin for wine making in France. The article is pretty cool.

Appetitive: Review-- Anne Carson's Antigonick

A friend of the family gave me a copy of Antigonick for my birthday. I was excited to read it. Two of my best friends both raved over it and I generally love Anne Carson. However, as much as I hate to admit this, I just didn't get it.

It wasn't bad, but it wasn't really anything. It was a loose, quasi-postmodern translation of the Sophokles play with a sprinkling of moderately interesting language, quotes from Hegal, and some rather confusing drawings. It conveyed a sense of futility and desolation that reminded me of (but did not follow the tradition of) Camus, but not much more.

And there was a weird mute character, Nick, who "measures things". What things?-- well, as an audience, we don't know. My initial thought was that he provided a measure-- like the chorus was supposed to do in the ancient world. The chorus reacted, related stories, and as helpless witnesses, stood in for the audience. However, the chorus often has such insight (in their philosophical or mythical flights of fancy) or such blindness (when they are used for dramatic irony) in comparison to the audience, that I thought maybe, especially for a modern audience, Carson envisioned that it would help to have a character reacting-- thus measuring-- the play as a sort of intermediary. This idea made sense to me. And yet, that's not what he seems to be doing. Nick appears only once in the stage direction at the end of the play on the final page: "exunt omnes except Nick who continues measuring." This, in combination with Kreon and Eurydike's linguistic games surrounding the phrase "nick of time," inclined me to believe he was literally measuring.

I thought that I must be missing something, so I looked up a  couple of reviews online. It seems I didn't miss much. One review saw spirit and inspiration and one review hated the anachronistic touches, but neither seemed to be working with something fundamental that I missed.

One review reminded me that this is the second work of Anne Carson's in succession about mourning the loss of a brother (see Nox, which I loved). However, I'm kind of wary of such a biographical insight for obvious reasons.

Appetitive: Fun Online Classes

So while I've been reviewing my languages (and working a lot), I also decided that I should take a couple of courses online to keep myself engaged with the learning process in a more parametrized environment.

iTunes U, David O'Connor's Ancient and Medieval Philosophy: Professor O'Connor is the author of one of my favorite article's on Plato. He uses his incredible insight on Plato to provide an introduction for the beginning philosophy student. Although I love my Alma Mater, O'Connor's lectures are so much better than the first lectures I had on Plato. The class online is missing some of the lectures, but it's one of the things I've been listening to while I clean my room.

Corsera, Sue Alcock's Archaeology's Dirty Little Secrets: Professor Alcock gave the Keynote Lecture at the Getty's "Cultural Memories in the Roman Empire." I noticed, when I heard her speak, that she was very engaging in a way that would make her the perfect person to teach undergraduate classes to inspire budding archaeologists. It seems fitting, then, that she's teaching this basic archaeology class. I've never taken an archaeology class, although I think archaeology is pretty cool. So this is a perfect course for me. Unfortunately, the book is super expensive, so I bought the previous edition and I'm going to hope that it is sufficiently similar.

EdX CB22X, Gregory Nagy's The Ancient Greek Hero: According to one of my friends, at Harvard, this class is known as "Heroes for Zeros" on the modal of the stereotypical "Rocks for Jocks" or Berkeley's "Physics for Presidents." And indeed, the class doesn't require a lot of work. However, despite the pejorative nickname, the class is a lot of fun and is quite engaging. Professor Nagy gives some fabulous insight into Ancient Greek song culture and the text of the Iliad.

Appetitive: The Decypherment of Linear B

I heard this podcast today about a female American linguist who devoted her short life to helping in the early stages of the decipherment of Linear B. Listen here.

Appetitive: Greek Paedegogy

The other day, I was at a book shop and I ran into the new edition of Mastronarde's Greek textbook, Introduction to Attic Greek. It's a very pretty book and it made me think about Greek textbooks. I've been reviewing my Greek grammar in preparation for starting grad school in the fall and I've been thinking about what introductory textbook I would use if I were teaching a introductory Greek course.

Although I know that Hansen & Quinn is the standard,I just don't find it particularly user-friendly. In the early chapters, the sentences are insipid and repetitive. Also, it seems severely front-loaded with forms (chapters 1-5 force almost all of the verb forms upon students, while units 6-11 slow down the pace, and then chapter 12 and 13 try to teach all of the irregular verb patterns). While it's a great text for review, I can't imagine it being much fun for someone starting out with Greek. However, I learned with Athenaze, which, while being fun, was a complete disaster for anyone trying to learn the language.

Egnatius learned with Reading Greek, which I've taken a look at a couple of times. While I like the idea of starting students off with large reading passages, there are some serious issues with the book (such as that it teaches only 5 principle parts-- which I think makes life more difficult than it has to be).

Egnatius left a number of books here because he's coming back for graduate school in the fall. One of them of his copy of the Teach Yourself Guides' Complete Ancient Greek. For the last few days I've been looking it over and I've found it really enjoyable. It's nice for a few reasons. First, it seems that it allots the amount of grammar that it teaches in each chapter pretty evenly so it doesn't feel like an overload at any point. The exercises are fun and interesting. Furthermore, the book is half the price or less than any of the other textbooks on the market. However, there are a few strange things. The explanation of contract verbs is too rushed and would be very problematic for anyone who hasn't learned Greek already (Betts 40-41). I think that this is a problem of the Teach Yourself series in general (I found a similar problem with verb explanations in Complete Sanskrit). However, a teacher might be able to remedy this. There are also one or two of the grammatical explanations that bothered me. I will probably be putting those up on the blog over the next few days.

Anyone have a favorite Greek textbook?

Appetitive: Reading For Pleasure

Have you ever tried to read a Greek or Latin text for pleasure? I have, but usually after the first hour or so, I put it down. It's not that I don't like reading Greek and Latin...I love it. But when I'm not compelled to do it for a class, it can become really frustrating. And worse, it's not about how hard the Greek or the Latin is, it's usually about my vocabulary.

When I read a Greek text, for example, I have to sit at my desk with the text, a commentary, All The Greek Verbs, the LSJ (or a smaller dictionary), Smyth, and sometimes various other references. After a while, I just get sick of flipping through pages. For school, I have to do it which forces me to power through, but it's just too many things to look up when reading for pleasure; especially when reading for pleasure only comes as a brief break from reading for school.

One of the solutions to this is old elementary and middle school textbooks. When I was in ireland I picked up a little copy of Xenephon's Anabasis, Book I, that was edited for children. It has a vocabulary in the back, a commentary, and it's slightly simplified. It also has the added benefit of being pocket sized, so sometimes I take it around with me and read when I have a few free minutes.

Even better, I found, are the texts on Geoffrey Steadman's website. The texts are unaltered (with the exception of a typo here and there). There's a list of core vocab at the beginning of each one, which must be memorized, but everything else is glossed. The commentary explains any wording that is even remotely difficult. Of course, Steadman rarely explains the reasoning behind the constructions, so it's nice to have Smyth or a big dictionary on hand, but it's nice to be able to just sit there with my kindle and read Republic Book I (only needing to flip back and forth between text and facing vocabulary). I hope that in the future, I'll spend more time reading Greek for pleasure. And maybe someday my vocabulary will be decent enough that I can do this with an OCT. Maybe...

Appetitive: Cool Manuscript Research

I'm supposed to be working on an article about knowledge in the Meno and the Theaetetus right now, but instead I've been reading, flitting from one thing to another.

One of the things I found this morning was a post on the Homer Multitext about a group of undergraduates at Brown who were given a thus-undecoded set of  notes in archaic shorthand by Roger Williams, founder of the colony of Rhode Island and the First Baptist Church. The students actually managed to not only decode it, but find that it contained a great deal of historically relevant information about the Baptist church. I think it's pretty awesome that they let undergraduates do the work, and it's wonderful that the digitization of old and ancient manuscripts allows a much wider range of individuals to work on primary sources.

Appetitive: It's Been a While...and Sanskrit

It's been quite a while. Now I'm back and I'm going to try to stay sane enough to post fairly regularly. Perhaps it will keep me sane.

One of the things I learned this last quarter is that Sanskrit is really hard, and, no one seems to like any of the books out on the market right now. I liked Sanskrit, but I'm not going to continue to take it because it takes up too much time for something that is not in my area of interest. However, I realized that the reason it took up so much time is that I basically had to rewrite the book for myself and gather information from other resources to supplement it.

My guides are far from complete, but I realized that if I put them up online, people could benefit from the many, many, many hours I spent making them and it might make Sanskrit an easier process for beginners or people trying to teach themselves. I realize this sounds presumptuous-- because it is; it is somewhat unreasonable that I, with only one quarter of Sanskrit, would be able to help other people. I do not pretend I know anything-- I just thought I would reorganize the information already out there into a more easily digestible form. I also would be more than happy for help/corrections/etc.

It's going to take a while to convert my notes into a distributable format. I've started doing this, but it will be a little while before I am able to post it.

 

I used Perry's Sanskrit Primer, both because it was my textbook for class, and because it is both cheap (book form) and free (PDF form). I did a lot of my supplementary reading out of Complete Sanskrit, but I also occasionally used William Dwight Whitney's Sanskrit Grammar (PDF).

More classically related things soon. Happy holidays, everyone.

Appetitive: A New Temple

A while ago, Egnatius sent me this exciting article about a new temple. Interestingly, this site was discovered in 1995, but it wasn't excavated until recently. It must be pretty nice for Xeni Arapogianni, the person who found the site, that she should be able to investigate it all these years later.

I haven't been able to blog for a while. Things are a bit hectic as I'm in school and applying to programs. My writing sample is proving to be hurdle. However, it has allowed me to do a bunch of great research filling in the gaps. Right now I'm reading The Play of Character in Plato's Dialogues. It's wonderful.  I just wish I didn't have to do quite so much other work at the same time. I should be really working on it right now. I may be posting very little for the next few weeks.

Appetitive: Procrastination

We translated this (simplified) sentace from the Bhadavad Gita[1] today and I just needed to put it up (and I'm avoiding reading 10 OCT pages of Cicero's letters for tomorrow):

प्रसक्ताः काम-भोगेषु पतन्ति नरके (The ones attached to the satisfaction of desire fall into hell: XVI.16)

I may have this not entirely right because I'm typing it from a transliteration and I don't know if words represented with a hyphen in transliteration have a hyphen in Devanagari script. I, however, cannot type the transliteration because I can't put the dot under letters. Anyway, this sentence just amused me, especially because I am, at the moment, satisfying my desire to do my Sanskrit homework instead of my Latin homework which is more immanent. However, this is probably not the kind of desire spoken about in this passage.

Footnotes:

1. Can someone with a Windows computer tell me how to make unicode macrons? Also how to make the little dots under retroflex consonants and the tilde-n. That would be awesome.

Appetitive/Spirited: Formatting in LaTex

I've been fighting with LaTeX for the last few days. I wrote my thesis in LaTeX because the formatting was so pretty, but I was really foolish. I am not a computer person in general and it didn't occur to me that I might want to deal with portions of my thesis in other contexts and trying to make a decent version of a portion of my thesis is problematic with LaTeX partially because I'm just completely hopeless with it and partially because it just takes a lot longer to make some of the stuff work.

In case anyone else uses LaTeX for writing, I thought I'd put up some pointers for writing in Ancient Greek. I had some problems with Teubner, which is what (I think) most of my friends used and I just wanted to use unicode polytonic Greek and enter it like I enter Greek for everything else. Unicode should work in every program, right? Well, everyone on the internet seemed to agree with me, but basically none of the ways that any one posted worked. It was really really really disheartening/frustrating. So I thought I'd post what I'd managed to do, just in case anyone else runs into the same problems.

Here are my system specifications:

• Windows 7
• MiKTeX 2.9 (which runs as TeXworks and a DVI previewer)
• Aspell
• Emacs
• + any packages MiKTeX prompted me to download throughout this process. If you have this, it will prompt you too so never fear.

If you don't have this system or any of this other stuff, I have no idea whether this will work for you. If you're using XeTeX I do know that this won't work. There are other ways, but you will have to do your own research on that (sorry guys).

Directions:

• Click on edit > preferences > editor > encoding > UTF-8 > ok
•  Make sure that your system is building to pdfLaTeX+MakeIndex+BibTeX
• Now insert this piece of coding. The bolded part is necessary, the unbolded parts around it show you where to insert it in your document
• \documentclass[12pt,twoside] {article}
  \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenx}
  \usepackage[LGR, T1]{fontenc}
  \usepackage[polutonikogreek,english]{babel}
  \newcommand{\greek}[1]{{\selectlanguage{greek}#1}}
  \usepackage{palatino}
  \begin{document}
• When you want to type in Greek in the document, \greek{σκιαία}
• The bolded portion is the way to indicate Greek. The Greek goes inside the curly-brackets. For this to work, you must have unicode polytonic Greek enabled on your computer and type in it in the curly brackets. If you don't have it set up, I wrote up some instructions for Windows XP and Windows 7. 
• That's all!

I don't know why this works or why other methods didn't work for me. So far as I can understand, the  \usepackage[utf8x]{inputenx} tells LaTeX to use the unicode, the \usepackage[polutonikogreek,english]{babel} tells the document what languages you are writing in, and the \newcommand{\greek}[1]{{\selectlanguage{greek}#1}} tells it what the command is going to look like in order that LaTeX can recognize it. it seems to be working, anyway, which is all that matters.

Appetitive: Update

Wow, it's been a long time! I've been incredibly busy with school and friends. I am going to try to get back to posting some things more regularly. For the moment, I have posted a few more verbs on my Principle Parts page.

Also, two Egyptology News article grabbed my attention this morning. The first is that a statue of Cleopatra and Marc Antony's children has been discovered. The second is about the recovery of fragments from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Interestingly enough, both of these "discoveries" were actually found years ago, but scholars didn't realize what they were until recently. It shows that there are still new things to be discovered, even in museum archives.

Appetitive: Birthday Poetry

One of my friends who is a superb Latinist is having her birthday coinciding with my next bread lesson. She insists that we not sing her happy birthday so I thought we would all chant a Latin poem together that had something do do with birthdays, like one of the ones from the Sulpicia cycle. Anyone have any good ideas?

Appetitive: A Summery of My Weekend

"κναπτόμενος δ'ἀλὶ δεινᾷ

φεῦ

σκύλλονμαι πρὸς ἀναύδων

ἠέ

παίδων τᾶς ἀμιάντου.

ὀᾶ."

I slightly modified a line that reminded me of the way I feel this weekend. I don't think I altered the meter (although I could be wrong). Although it's pretty obvious, can anyone guess what this is from? I hope the rest of you had a better weekend than I did...

Appetitive: Greek Vocabulary

I am almost three-quarters of the way through the Lysias for tomorrow...about fifteen OCT pages in, and I am just amazed at how many words the Greeks had for "kill" and "destroy."

And also that "you were robbed of all hope" (lit. will be in the Greek, but only because it is in a particular type of condition) is exactly the same expression in Greek: "πασῶν τῶν ἐλπίδων ἀποστερήσεσθε" (Lysias 12.70).

Have a lovely evening, everyone.