Spirited: Greek Dialects

Recently, I have been interested in the difference between the morphology in verbs of Attic and the other Greek dialects. I was wondering if anyone had specific recommendations for references speaking to this for Ionic, Aolic, Doric, and Koine. I would prefer to read something in English, but failing that, French, Latin, or German. Thoughts? Comment or email me.

Reasoning/Spirited: Updates on Classical Greek Accent Rules

Before I took Greek Prose Composition, I had a really difficult time understanding the rules of Greek accentuation. I wrote up this post originally using Eleanor Dickey's unpublished Greek Prose Composition because I found it to be a really useful guide. Doing some more review this summer, I found that there were a bunch of irregularities that I didn't account for in the original so I am adding them in now. Most of these additions come from Hansen and Quinn's Greek: An Intensive Course. There may still be mistakes or obscure portions in here, so comment or email me if you notice anything that is incorrect or confusing.

As a side note, if anyone can teach me how to do a unicode breve above a vowel it would be much appreciated.

Vowel Quantities:

• ε and ο are always short
• η and ω are always long
• α, ι, υ can be long or short
• ει, υι, αυ, ευ, ου, ᾳ, ῃ, ῳ are always long. 
• αι and οι can be long or short depending upon circumstance.[1] They are long when:
• They are not at the end of a word
• When they end a verb in the optative
• When they end locative adverbs (e.g. οἴκοι)
• In some interjections (e.g. αἰαῖ)

Accent Types:

• There are three types of accents: acute (´), grave (`), and circumflex (^/~)
• The acute accent (´) can appear over any of the last three syllables (antepenult, penult, and ultima).
• If the last syllable is short, the acute vowel may stand on the antipenult, irrespective of the vowel quantity of the penult (the sort of exception to this rule is contract verbs. See verbs).
• If the last vowel is long, the acute accent must sit on the penult or the ultima. The one exception to this rule is in cases where the ultima is long by quantitative metathesis-- i.e. the quantities of the two final vowels are switched-- some nouns retain the accute accent on the antepenult even though the manifested form has a long ultima).
• The grave (`) accent may only appear on the ultima
• It may appear over long or short vowels
• It may only appear when it replaces an acute accent when another word follows without pause unless the following words is an enclitic.
• The circumflex accent (^) may only appear over the penult and the ultima
• It can only stand over a long vowel
• It must appear over a long penult when the ultima is short
• It may not appear over over a long penult when the ultima is long

Verbs:

• Most finite verbs have recessive accents (they go as close to the beginning of the word as possible). However, most non-finite forms have persistent accents.
• Recessive accents generally appear over the antepenult or penult unless there is a contraction.
• In the optative, αι and οι are long at the end of a word. However, αι and οι are short when they are the final letters in other verb forms.[2]
• Contract Verbs (and other contract words) have accents that reflect the uncontracted form of the words
• If the accented syllable is not the one that contracts, there is no effect on the accent.
• If the accented vowel is the first of the two vowels that contract, the resulting vowel will have a circumflex
• If the accented vowel  is the second vowel in the contracted pair, it will have an acute accent. 
• The example of παιδευσαι: παίδευσαι 2nd person singular aorist middle imperative (αι is short), παιδεύσαι 2nd person singular aorist active optative (αι is long), παιδεῦσαι aorist active infinitive (accent is persistent).

Nouns (and adjectives when noted):

• Except where noted, nouns and adjectives have persistent accent
• Nouns take their persistent accent from the nominative singular form. Third declension nouns have special accent paradigms that somewhat alter this.
• Adjectives take their persistent accent from the neuter nominative singular form.
• If the ultima is accented, circumflexes tend to appear in the oblique cases (genitive and dative) while acute accents tend to appear in nominative, vocative, and accusative. e.g. ἀγοράς is accusative while αγορᾶς is genitive.
• First Declension Nouns
• Feminine first declension nouns ending in α have a short α except when the α is preceded by ε, ι, or ρ, in which case the ᾱ is long (with a few exceptions)
• NOTE: feminine first declension nouns with a short α ending have recessive accents except on the genitive plural ῶν which is always accented with a circumflex.
• Genitive and accusative plural ᾱς (α is long)
• For masculine first declension nouns ending in ᾱς, the α is long.
• All nouns of the first declension have the genitive plural ῶν which is always accented with a circumflex, irrespective of accentuation rules. This is not true of first declension adjectives
• First and Second Declension Nouns and Adjectives
• If the basic accent is on the ultima, it is an acute in the nominative, vocative, and accusative, but a circumflex in the genitive and dative of both singular and plural in all genders
• Third Declension
• Third declension nouns ending in α, the α is always short
• Third-declension neuter nouns ending in -ς (e.g. γένος) have recessive accent, except on the gentitive plural, which takes a circumflex: -ῶν.
• Monosyllabic nouns of the third declension accent the stem of the nominative, vocative, and accusative, but accent the ultima of the ending of genitive and dative. Generally, the genitive plural takes a circumflex.
•  Although γυνή, γυνικός is not a monosyllabic noun, it is accented like one.
• τίς, τί the interrogative pronoun/adjective is monosyllabic (and essentially third declension), but the accent always stays on the first syllable (rather than switching to the ultima in genitive and dative).
• Words of the πόλις-type have accent that stays on the same syllables throughout the paradigm, irrespective of the rules of accent. This is because of quantitative metathesis.
• βασιλεύς-type and some other words have paradigm-specific rules.
• In the βασιλεύς-type, the nominative, dative, and vocative singular have accents on the ultima; dative and vocative have circumflexes. In the plural, the nominative/vocative and dative have circumflexes (in the nominative/vocative on the ultima and int he dative on the penult), while the genitive and accusative both have acute accents on the penult.

Enclitics: (e.g. τις, τε, ποτέ, ἐστί)

• enclitics have no accent of their own and follow accented words, whose accents they affect
• If the accent of the preceding word is on the ultima and it is acute and the word is followed by an enclitic, it does not change to grave.
• If the preceding word word has an accent on the penult:
• If the accent is acute
• and the enclitic is a single syllable, the enclitic takes no accent
• and the enclitic is more than on syllable, the enclitic takes an accent on its ultima (either acute or circumflex depending upon the length of its final vowel)
• If the accent is a circumflex
• there is no change to the preceding word irrespective of the number of syllables of the enclitic and the enclitic takes no accent
• If the preceding word has an accent on the antepenult, it adds a second acute accent on its own ultima, irrespective of the number of syllables of the enclitic.
• If several enclitics appear in succession, each one takes an accent on its penult, except for the last in the series.
• If some disyllabic enclitics are placed at the beginning of a clause or a sentence, they take a grave accent on the final syllable (or an acute accent if they are followed by a pause). 
• ἐστί, at the beginning of a sentence, is not an enclitic and it takes an acute accent on the penult: ἔστι
• If an enclitic follows an elided syllable (of a wierd either enclitic or not), it receives an accent.

Proclitics: (e.g. ἐκ, οὐ, εἰ, ὡς)

• Proclitics have no accents of their own and are accentually joined to the following word.
• If followed by an accented word, they cause no change
• If followed by an enclitic, they take an acute accent (from the enclitic)

Addendum: Fun Facts from Class:

• Greek words for the positions of acute accents: ὀξύς (sharp, pointed, quick, swift) τόνος (musical note) the idea being that the accent gives a rise in pitch (musical tone) to the vowel.
• ὀξύτονον-- acute accent on the ultima
• παροξύτονον-- acute accent on the penult
• προπαροξύτονον-- acute accent on the antepenult
• Greek words for the positions of circumflex accents: περι (around) σπώμενον (from "I drag") the idea being that the musical pitch is dragged back to its origin by the accent
• περισπώμενον-- circumflex on the ultima
• παραπερισπώμενον-- circumflex on the penult

Endnotes

1. In this section I am referring to the fact that they are long or short for the purposes of accentuation. In terms of meter, αι and οι are almost always long (although και can be long or short depending upon what is necessary for the metrical pattern).
2. This may not be the case if you are reading a text with iota addscripts instead of iota subscripts, in which case ᾳ, which is long, can be written as αι.

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: 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: The Joys of Greek

Although I have had a number of pitfalls so far, ever since I started taking this graduate seminar on the Attic Orators, I've begun to really enjoy Greek. Antiphon and Andocides are quite a joy to read, although they have their frustrating moments. My reading speed (for prose, although not for Aeschylus) is increasing significantly-- it seems like the effects of Greek prose composition finally caught up with me-- and I am beginning to learn the typical terms.

Nowhere did this joy manifest itself more than in reading Plato last night with Ovid II. When I read Crito over the summer with Propertius II, I was still struggling a lot with parts of the prose and my reading speed was quite slow. Now, I can carve a few hours out of my schedule and process the Greek pretty decently before going over it. While the orators are fun in their persuasive energy and the window they provide on Greek culture, the Symposium has a bit of wonderful colloquial wit that is just fantastic.

After that, even my remaining 50 lines of Vergil did not seem so dreadful, although the battle scenes are certainly grim. I'm actually beginning to appreciate parts of Vergil, finally.

To pass my little glimmer of exuberance on, I thought I would post a link to A.E. Houseman's "Fragment of a Greek Tragedy." My professor in the Persians class passes this out to us. I had seen it many years before, but it still absolutely cracks me up.

Have a lovely weekend, everyone. I will (I hope) be posting some interesting tidbits from Antiphon.

Reasoning: Introducing Classical Greek Principal Parts

No where that I have found is there a definitive list of principal parts in Greek. Many textbooks, including Ἀθηναζε the textbook from which I learned Greek, does not have a full list of principal parts and expects students to intuit some of principle parts. While there are paradigms for certain types of verbs, even when completing these paradigms a student (like myself) sometimes runs into trouble. For that reason, I thought I would make my own list. I am planning on starting a page on my blog that will work as a list of principle parts. I will put it up in the next few days, although it will probably be under major construction for quite a while.

The page, now up on the website (see left-hand column) looks something like the following:

Please note: I am a student of Greek myself and do not have an authoritative view of Greek at all. If I am wrong, which is certainly possible (especially factoring in typos), please comment with a correction (and if possible a source for the correction) and I will fix it.

My goal is as follows: as I am finish my prose composition class, I am planning on adding the verbs from Eleanor Dickey's unpublished prose composition book (which is what we are using so this will be part of the studying for my final). After that, I will add the verbs from Malcom Campbell's Classical Greek Prose: A Basic Vocabulary, as this is a standard text book for prose composition classes and verbs I should know.

As a key: "---" means that the principal part does not exist for this verb. "-" in front of a form means it is usually paired with a prefix of some sort.

ἀγγέλλω	ἀγγελῶ	ἤγγειλα	ἤγγελκα	ἤγγελμαι	ἠγγέλθην	(to) announce
ἀγείρω	----	ἤγειρα	----	----	----	(to) gather, collect
ἀγω	ἄξω	ἤγαγον	ἦχα	ἦγμαι	ἦχθην	(to)drive, go
ᾄδω	ᾄσομαι	ᾖσα	----	ᾖσμαι	ᾔσθην	(to) sing

 etc...

Works Referenced

Dickey, Eleanor. Greek Prose Composition (draft). Completed at the Columbia University Classics Department, 2003. Unpublished.

Reasoning/Spirited: Classical Greek Accentuation

I am embarrassed to say how long I have not understood Classical Greek accentuation. I tried. My most recent attempt with Hansen & Quinn was more successful than the previous ones, but I was still confused. Finally, reading over the chapter for Prose Composition tomorrow from Eleanor Dickey's Greek Prose Composition [1] I understand. Here is what I learned:

Vowel Quantities:

• ε and ο are always short
• η and ω are always long
• α, ι, υ can be long or short
• ει, υι, αυ, ευ, ου, ᾳ, ῃ, ῳ are always long. 
• αι and οι are long when:
• They are not at the end of a word
• When they end a verb in the optative
• When they end locative adverbs (e.g. οἴκοι)
• In some interjections (e.g. αἰαῖ)

Accent Types:

• There are three types of accents: acute (´), grave (`), and circumflex (^/~)
• The acute accent (´) can appear over any of the last three syllables (antepenult, penult, and ultima).
• If the last syllable is short, the acute vowel may stand on the antipenult, irrespective of the vowel quantity of the penult (the sort of exception to this rule is contract verbs. See verbs).
• If the last vowel is long, the acute accent must sit on the penult or the ultima.
• The grave (`) accent may only appear on the ultima
• It may appear over long or short vowels
• It may only appear when it replaces an acute accent when another word follows without pause unless the following words is an enclitic.
• The circumflex accent (^) may only appear over the penult and the ultima
• It can only stand over a long vowel
• It must appear over a long penult when the ultima is short
• It may not appear over over a long penult when the ultima is long

Verbs:

• Most verbs have recessive accents (they go as close to the beginning of the word as possible), except infinitives and participles (which have persistent accents).
• Recessive accents always appear over the antepenult or penult.
• In the optative, αι and οι are long at the end of a word
• Contract Verbs (and other contract words) have accents that reflect the uncontracted form of the words
• If the accented syllable is not the one that contracts, there is no effect on the accent.
• If the accented vowel is the first of the two vowels that contract, the resulting vowel will have a circumflex
• If the accented vowel  is the second vowel in the contracted pair, it will have an acute accent. 
• The example of παιδευσαι: παίδευσαι 2nd person singular aorist middle imperative, (αι is short) παιδεύσαι 2nd person singular aorist active optative (αι is long), παιδεῦσαι aorist active infinitive (accent is persistent).

Nouns (and adjectives when noted):

• Except where noted, nouns and adjectives have persistent accent
• If the final syllable is accented, circumflexes tend to appear in the oblique cases (genitive and dative) while acute accents tend to appear in nominative, vocative, and accusative. e.g. ἀγοράς is accusative while αγορᾶς is genitive.
• First Declension Nouns
• Feminine first declension nouns ending in α have a short α except when the α is preceded by ε, ι, or ρ, in which case the ᾱ is long (with a few exceptions)
• NOTE: feminine first declension nouns with a short α ending have recessive accents except on the genitive plural ῶν which is always accented with a circumflex.
• Genitive and accusative plural ᾱς (α is long)
• For masculine first declension nouns ending in ᾱς, the α is long.
• All nouns of the first declension have the genitive plural ῶν which is always accented with a circumflex, irrespective of accentuation rules. This is not true of first declension adjectives
• First and Second Declension Nouns and Adjectives
• If the basic accent is on the ultima, it is an acute in the nominative, vocative, and accusative, but a circumflex in the genitive and dative of both singular and plural in all genders
• Third Declension
• Third declension nouns ending in α, the α is alwazs short
• Third-declension neuter nouns ending in -ς (e.g. γένος) have recessive accents .
• Monosyllabic nouns of the third declension accent the stem of the nominative, vocative, and accusative and the ending of genitive and dative.
• Words of the πόλις-type have accent that stays on the same syllables throughout the paradigm, irrespective of the rules of accent.
• βασιλεύς-type and some other words have paradigm-specific rules.

Enclitics: (e.g. τις, τε, ποτέ, ἐστί)

• enclitics have no accent of their own and follow accented words, whose accents they affect
• If the accent is on the ultima and it is acute and the word is followed by an enclitic, it does not change to grave.
• If the main word has an accent on the penult:
• If the accent is acute
• If the enclitic is a single syllable, it takes no accent.
• If the enclitic is more than on syllable, it takes an accent on its ultima (either acute or circumflex)
• If the accent is a circumflex
• There is no change irrespective of the number of syllables of the enclitic
• If the main word has an accent on the antepenult, it adds a second accent on its own ultima.
• If several enclitics appear in succession, each one takes an accent on its penult, except for the last in the series.

Proclitics: (e.g. ἐκ, οὐ, εἰ, ὡς)

• Proclitics have no accents of their own and are accentual joined to the following word.
• If followed by an accented word, they cause no change
• If followed by an enclitic, they take an acute accent (from the enclitic)

Addendum: Fun Facts from Class:

• Greek words for the positions of acute accents: ὀξύς (sharp, pointed, quick, swift) τόνος (musical note) the idea being that the accent gives a rise in pitch (musical tone) to the vowel.
• ὀξύτονον-- acute accent on the ultima
• παροξύτονον-- acute accent on the penult
• προπαροξύτονον-- acute accent on the antepenult
• Greek words for the positions of circumflex accents: περι (around) σπώμενον (from "I drag") the idea being that the musical pitch is dragged back to its origin by the accent
• περισπώμενον-- circumflex on the ultima
• παραπερισπώμενον-- circumflex on the penult

 

Endnotes

1. This is not a published book. It is a manuscript Dickey put out in 2003. I am here reorganizing and summarizing what she says, re-explaining some of the concepts myself, and adding a couple of pieces from Hansen & Quinn and from my class today. If I make any mistakes (which I very well might) comment with corrections.

Reasoning: Ancient Greek Paradigms

For any of you out there who, like me, are reviewing your Ancient Greek grammar for fall classes, I have found an interesting resource. Somebody posted a set of Ancient Greek paradigms for nouns, pronouns,  adjectives, and verbs on Berkeley's old Socrates server. Enjoy.

Also, because I have a lot to do before the summer ends, I am postponing my reworkings of "Dates in the Platonic Corpus" until after September 8th.

Appetitive: Annoying Update

I have been very busy reading Greek, taking German, tutoring, etc. I will resume normal posting soon. One thing that I did notice while I've been away is that the Greek texts on Project Gutenberg, which I thought were in Ancient Greek, are actually in Modern Greek. Very sad.

Reasoning/Spirited: Publishing and the Internet

I found this article on Twitter. I thought it was especially interesting for classicists/grad students. Apparently some publishers get really jumpy about publishing books from dissertations that appear online in digital form. Others seem to feel that this means that there is already a market for the product. I wonder whether publishers will end up moving digital information backward by forcing students not to share their work if they want to be considered publishable.

I read over 80 lines of Μήδεια today and I am exhausted (how will I ever survive grad school?) so I am not going to finish my addendum to the comments on "Μήδεια and Rhetoric" tonight. However, they should appear in a semi-coherent form in the next few days along with some addenda to "Μήδεια and the 'Royal We'," some thoughts on Isocrates, Parmenides, and a review of the most recent Marathon 2500 talk.

Spirited: Μήδεια and the "Royal We"

In English, there is a phenomenon known as the "royal we" where a speaker used first person plural as a stand-in for first person singular. Generally, this phenomenon associates itself with arrogant and schizophrenic-type personalities. In Greek or Latin, poets often employ the first person plural so it is essentially the "poetic we" rather than the "royal we."

Herodotus II and I have recently doubled our number of lines per week in order for us to finish before summer vacation. Although this certainly requires more time, it also provides me with a greater sample size in which to notice patterns. One of the things that stood out to me as I read our most recent section was the use of the "poetic we." Μήδεια employs this tactic quite frequently, although she also uses the first person singular within 2-3 lines of her first person plural. I did not notice, although I might have missed it, Kreon using the poetic plural, nor any of the other characters (I am happy to be corrected if someone notices an instance). So, I wondered why Medea, specifically, might use this rhetorical device.

Euripides, as I remember reading in my Bacchae class freshman year, likes to use "halved" characters, i.e. two main characters who each represent one set opposing characteristics usually housed in a single person. Unlike his half characters, Medea seems to be a duel (or possibly more) character. She switches from courageous and fearsome at one moment, to helpless and despairing the next, to conniving and persuasive, sometimes within a single speech. Like Hekate (Μήδεια line 397), the goddess she worships, to whom each of the three main Gods (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades) gave a small segment of their domain, she functions as a polymorphic character. Each of the characters around her serve a single function. Even the chorus of women acts essentially as a single entity; they represent a moderate buffer to the extreme arguments put forward by any side. But Medea demonstrates so many different personality traits and skills that she becomes awesome and terrifying.

Update 03/24/11: Jason also uses the "poetic we" at least once. I ran across this in line 451 where he refers to himself as κἀμοὶ which is a crasis of και + αμοι (from αμος, "our"). However, this is the first time it is mentioned by another character. Also, interestingly enough, Jason is being deceptive here and saying things he only half means in a typical Μήδεια style. I will have to investigate further.

Spirited: All the Greek Verbs

So it seems my resolutions are not going very well so far as I have done no Greek or Latin as of yet and did not begin my blogpost until now. I also spent much of the day reading a book not on my reading list: Jeff Sharlet's The Family. It's just been one of those days.

However, I have been flipping through a gift I received: Nino Marinone's All the Greek Verbs. I have spoken before of my unintentional reliance on Perseus for the sake of efficiency in translating Latin and especially Greek. Part of this is because I do not know irregular verb conjugations (and sometimes cannot identify regular or common verb conjugations) off the top of my head. All the Greek Verbs is a list of verb forms, which tell you the person, number, tense, voice, and mood of each verb, as well as the verb itself so that one can look up a translation. I think this will help to ween me off of my Perseus addiction, because I can use a book instead of the computer and constantly looking up the verbs in paper dictionary will help not only to ingrain the verb forms but also the meanings in my head. I will update this review when I try it out on the next section of the Μήδεια.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Does anyone know if there is a similar book for Latin?

Appetitive: Why Everyone Should Learn Latin or Greek

America just does not teach grammar anymore. Even when I was in middle school and high school, we learned no grammar. English teachers seemed to expect that our grammatical understanding was intuitive; consequently errors in essays were dealt with individually not by providing any systematic understanding of English grammar.

Even in foreign language classes, at least at my school, the focus was placed on conversation-- usually extraordinarily inane conversation about buying food or asking for directions-- rather than grammar. Grammar days in the class came infrequently and were considered to be the "boring" days. I loved them. My conversational skills in French were minimal, but grammar was something I enjoyed.

The one place in my high school that grammar was taught systematically and well was in the Latin department (and later the adhoc Greek department). I did not take Latin in high school, but the few students who did had a better understanding of grammar in any language than the rest of us.

Today I taught my first grammar lesson to my current SAT prep class. Every student in the class takes Spanish in high school, which I admit is a useful skill, but none of them have training in English grammar or in either Latin or Greek. Although these students are bright and had an intuitive understanding of English grammar, they had no ability (even with their Spanish backgrounds) to associate different types of words or constructions with names. Even with no formal English grammar, students of Latin or Greek can easily identify parallels between languages and demonstrate a heightened ability to identify and correct errors.

I know I did not take Latin until college, but I wish that students began to learn Latin or Greek in middle school or earlier. It increases the ability to identify grammatical structures in English, as well as to learn other Indo-European languages and often increases knowledge of and interest in linguistics.

Just a thought for the day. Happy holidays, everyone.

Reasoning: Thoughts on the Medea

I have been reading the Μήδεια in Greek with a friend of mine who is in Turkey (skype is awesome). One of the things that we notice recently was that not only is there an ever-present sense of doom in the beginning of the text, but it is clear from the rhetoric that the Τροφός (Nurse) and the Παιδαγωγός (Tutor) use that they know from the beginning (or at least fear) that Μήδεια will kill her children in an act of vengeance in a way that does not seem as imminent in the English.

Two questions emanate from this: 1) do we (as the audience) ignore the rhetoric because we know the ending, but notice it reading the Greek because we focus on it word by word (and therefore the Greek audience would not have noticed this aspect) or 2) if Euripides' version was the original version of the myth in which Μήδεια killed her children, what would the audience have been thinking during this opening scene?

Just food for thought.

Appetitive: You Know You're a Classics Geek When...

I spent last night on Cynthia's couch. it was warm and cozy in the sleeping bag. I was woken up first by some children outside proclaiming loudly to the neighborhood that there was snow on the ground (they were mistaken). A few hours later a friend (one of Cynthia's roommates) came in and said, "Sulpicia, I know this is not what you want to hear first thing in the morning, but can you recite the principle parts of γιγώσκω off the top of your head?" I had to admit, to my dismay, that I did not.

So, first thing when I got up I pulled up my PDF copy of Smyth (which you can download from Textkit) and looked them up. γιγνώσκω, γιγνώσομαι, ἔγνων, ἔγνοσκα, ἐγνώσθην.

Reasoning: Mastronarde's Greek Tutorial

Donald Mastronarde, a professor at UC Berkeley, posted an incredible online Ancient Greek Tutorial. His instruction accenting rules seem more complicated to me than the way I was taught, but obviously everyone learns differently and this might be the perfect way for certain people to learn Greek accenting. He also covers pronunciation, vocabulary, and declension and conjugation paradigms.

I did not encounter Mastronarde's work until last year, when a wonderful professor recommended the Mastronarde edition of the Medea to me. Although I did not get a chance to read it then, I am reading now with a friend over skype and I am really enjoying it. Mastronarde's text provides a great introduction and an extensive and helpful commentary. I highly recommend the edition and the play, which is fabulous. It turns out, however, that he wrote an introductory Greek textbook, Introduction to Attic Greek, about which I know nothing.

While I was looking for Mastronarde's other work today, I stumbled upon Mastronarde's article "Euripidean Tragedy and Theology" which  I have not read it yet, but it looks quite interesting. Maybe I'll end up amending my "Euripides and the Gods" post.

Reasoning: Tracing Philosophy

On Saturday, I finished reading Andrea Wilson Nightingale's Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of Philosophy. I found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable read. Her insight was energetically written, insightful, and thoroughly footnoted.

The general premise of the book is to take literary theory, influenced particularly by the work of Bakhtin, and she uses this to analyze Plato's creation of the discipline of philosophy. According to Nightingale (and this seems to be pretty accurate), the term philosophos (philosophy) was originally used just as the generic term for intellectuals (wisdom-lovers) and was used to describe poets, preSocratics, and sophists. Plato is the person that designated the term as its own discipline and created a specific methodology for it. It was afterward employed by Isocrates and subsequent philosophers.

I think this is a fascinating concept and plan on looking into it further. What is more important is that she claims that the evolution of the term philosophos used in Plato itself follows the pattern of the original dating of the Platonic corpus [1]. There a significant number of problems with the original dating system, as elucidated clearly in the first chapter of Catherine Zuckert's book Plato's Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues. My thesis is based partially on Zuckert's premise about the dramatic dating of the dialogues. Although I do not thing that the premise that the dialogues are written in the order originally predicted does not necessarily violate the dramatic dates, it might put something of a damper on the revolutionary aspect of the theory. I am going through the TLG results in order to determine what I think.

Endnotes

1. The description of the traditional methodology is traced by Leonard Brandwood in his book The Chronology of Plato's Dialogues  and his essay which is condensed into a 30 page essay, "Stylometry and Chronology," in The Cambridge Companion to Plato.

Reasoning: Sanskrit Library

I have spent most of the day working on a time line for the art history in the second chapter of my thesis. I am trying to do some revision to see if I can get anyone interested in my thesis, and I also to use it for a writing sample.

Some of the programs that I am looking at, e.g. Brown, require Sanskrit. Ever since I was in high school and my first Greek teacher talked about the relationship between Greek and Sanskrit, I have been interested in learning Sanskrit. My interest was stoked further by a beautiful green leather book I discovered in one of my friends rooms when hanging out one day. The book was beautiful, thick with cream pages, and became much more so when I realized that the book was in fact a Sanskrit Grammar. A few summers ago, two friends of mine decided to teach themselves Sanskrit (one of whom was Propertius). I was going to do it with them, but it became complicated, although I believe they did manage to pick up some amount of the language. In the process, I received my own copy of the Sanskrit Grammar. I have planned on looking into it this summer, but I have not gotten around to it yet. You can download it for free online on the Internet Archive.


While I was searching around, I found a Sanskrit Library. It appears to have Sanskrit texts and materials of some kind, although I haven to looked into much of it yet. I hope that I would manage to teach myself a little at some point.