The novel flourished at a time when Greek identity was above all a matter of cultural affiliation... more The novel flourished at a time when Greek identity was above all a matter of cultural affiliation. This article argues that the characters in the novels are fundamentally concerned with issues of gender, ethnicity, culture, and identity – and that their readers must have been too. However, the relationship between the world depicted in the novels and that in which they were written and read remains difficult to characterize: it is remarkable, for example, that Rome, the great imperial power of the time, is never so much as mentioned in the extant Greek novels.
... Instead there is a lengthy expansion of the fighting during which Hera and Poseidon do interv... more ... Instead there is a lengthy expansion of the fighting during which Hera and Poseidon do intervene directly, Hera by turning Zeus' attention away from the action in the Dios apate episode (14, 153-360), Poseidon by helping the ... RING COMPOSITION AND LINEARITY IN HOMER ...
La conception nietzcheenne de la vie comme combat continuel dans le cadre d'une vision unitai... more La conception nietzcheenne de la vie comme combat continuel dans le cadre d'une vision unitaire du monde est comparee avec l'explication de la dialectique du mouvement par les contradictions dans la philosophie de Heraclite.
explicitly based on a similarity.2 It will be the purpose of this paper to clarify the implicatio... more explicitly based on a similarity.2 It will be the purpose of this paper to clarify the implications of Aristotle's contradictory statements about the relationship between simile and metaphor by following the threads of Aristotle's own figurative language, particularly his characterization of metaphor and simile in the language of commerce (value, exchange, etc.) and in the language of "international relations" (natives, immigrants, etc.). The point will not be to delineate the "true" genealogy of Aristotle's language in his description of figures of speech or to identify a more "proper" meaning for it - for it is these categories (genealogy and propriety) which are questionable. The point will rather be to place Aristotle's contradictory representations of the relationship between simile and metaphor within a more general problematic, an underlying network of problems and issues which subtends his discussion of rhetoric as such.
... more fully the use of this authority (48): Many of us think it more scholarly, as the English... more ... more fully the use of this authority (48): Many of us think it more scholarly, as the English still do and, to judge by the most recent publications (as, for ex-ample, Barker's Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle) always will, to quote any German book a Joel, a Dummler, as well ...
Narrative Becoming: Semiotics, Poetics, and Proasaics in Ancient Litearture, 2023
These essays are a collection of previously published work on the semiotics of poetry and prose. ... more These essays are a collection of previously published work on the semiotics of poetry and prose. I have reset the text in each instance, editing them only lightly in most cases. Because most of this material was scattered over many years and many different venues, I thought their juxtaposition here might produce a sum greater than the parts.
... However, Chaereas also leads the Egyptian fleet to victory against the Persians, and they ret... more ... However, Chaereas also leads the Egyptian fleet to victory against the Persians, and they return to Syracuse with him and are rewarded with ... of Aphrodite, the patron goddess of his home city Aphrodisias, as the deity "whose power encompasses even the Roman empire" is a ...
This article considers the impact of global business and government agendas on tbreign language t... more This article considers the impact of global business and government agendas on tbreign language teaching in the United States. The desire to close the 'language gap' in American education, a laudable goal to be sure, is beginning to compromise the traditional humanistic study of language and literature, epitomized by the study of Greek and Latin. Meanwhile, increased emphasis on teaching Arabic has brought to the fore issues of multiculturalism and the value of a liberal education in the context of national security issues. The authors argue for a broad range of goals in language education, including the grasp of cultural issues besides linguistic competence. ********** In the modern American university, the importance of having a 'global perspective' and the importance of 'diversity' and 'multiculturalism' has been sounded repeatedly. (1) These ideas are also touted regularly in government and in the corporate world, where the economic realities of a...
abstract:Recent scenes of Syrian refugees arriving in Europe and the nationalist reflections they... more abstract:Recent scenes of Syrian refugees arriving in Europe and the nationalist reflections they have engendered recall the discourses of foreign and native in antiquity, a theme addressed frequently in Attic tragedy. Euripides' Phoenician Maidens is a meditation on the theme of autochthony, a key ideological and mythological nexus of ideas about identity and community. The ideal of a homogeneous community symbolized by Athenians' autochthonous heritage fits uncomfortably with another Athenian ideal: hospitality and openness to strangers. The Phoenician Maidens of Euripides reflects on the theme of sameness and otherness, foreign and native, using the resources of theater to articulate a utopian resolution of these conflicting desires.
This article discusses three examples of the way that ancient novels mobilize the resources of pe... more This article discusses three examples of the way that ancient novels mobilize the resources of performance traditions to create the particular effects sought for by the novelists, an analysis that is part of a ‘prosaics' of the ancient novel. Cases of writing and reading a letter, a story within a story, and ec-phrasis reveal different aspects of our novelists' strategies for exploring the tension between public and private forms of discourse. A genre that is, as Bakhtin notes, younger than writing, the novel is especially suited to conflating voices and positions in respect to the organizing position of a reader. Stephen Nimis is Professor of Classics at Miami University. His work on narrative include a book on the epic, Narrative Semiotics in the Epic Tradition (1987), and articles on narratological issues in the ancient novel (‘The Prosaics of the Ancient Novel,' ‘Memory and Description in the Ancient Novel,' ‘The Sense of Open-endedness in the Ancient Novel&#...
The novel flourished at a time when Greek identity was above all a matter of cultural affiliation... more The novel flourished at a time when Greek identity was above all a matter of cultural affiliation. This article argues that the characters in the novels are fundamentally concerned with issues of gender, ethnicity, culture, and identity – and that their readers must have been too. However, the relationship between the world depicted in the novels and that in which they were written and read remains difficult to characterize: it is remarkable, for example, that Rome, the great imperial power of the time, is never so much as mentioned in the extant Greek novels.
... Instead there is a lengthy expansion of the fighting during which Hera and Poseidon do interv... more ... Instead there is a lengthy expansion of the fighting during which Hera and Poseidon do intervene directly, Hera by turning Zeus' attention away from the action in the Dios apate episode (14, 153-360), Poseidon by helping the ... RING COMPOSITION AND LINEARITY IN HOMER ...
La conception nietzcheenne de la vie comme combat continuel dans le cadre d'une vision unitai... more La conception nietzcheenne de la vie comme combat continuel dans le cadre d'une vision unitaire du monde est comparee avec l'explication de la dialectique du mouvement par les contradictions dans la philosophie de Heraclite.
explicitly based on a similarity.2 It will be the purpose of this paper to clarify the implicatio... more explicitly based on a similarity.2 It will be the purpose of this paper to clarify the implications of Aristotle's contradictory statements about the relationship between simile and metaphor by following the threads of Aristotle's own figurative language, particularly his characterization of metaphor and simile in the language of commerce (value, exchange, etc.) and in the language of "international relations" (natives, immigrants, etc.). The point will not be to delineate the "true" genealogy of Aristotle's language in his description of figures of speech or to identify a more "proper" meaning for it - for it is these categories (genealogy and propriety) which are questionable. The point will rather be to place Aristotle's contradictory representations of the relationship between simile and metaphor within a more general problematic, an underlying network of problems and issues which subtends his discussion of rhetoric as such.
... more fully the use of this authority (48): Many of us think it more scholarly, as the English... more ... more fully the use of this authority (48): Many of us think it more scholarly, as the English still do and, to judge by the most recent publications (as, for ex-ample, Barker's Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle) always will, to quote any German book a Joel, a Dummler, as well ...
Narrative Becoming: Semiotics, Poetics, and Proasaics in Ancient Litearture, 2023
These essays are a collection of previously published work on the semiotics of poetry and prose. ... more These essays are a collection of previously published work on the semiotics of poetry and prose. I have reset the text in each instance, editing them only lightly in most cases. Because most of this material was scattered over many years and many different venues, I thought their juxtaposition here might produce a sum greater than the parts.
... However, Chaereas also leads the Egyptian fleet to victory against the Persians, and they ret... more ... However, Chaereas also leads the Egyptian fleet to victory against the Persians, and they return to Syracuse with him and are rewarded with ... of Aphrodite, the patron goddess of his home city Aphrodisias, as the deity "whose power encompasses even the Roman empire" is a ...
This article considers the impact of global business and government agendas on tbreign language t... more This article considers the impact of global business and government agendas on tbreign language teaching in the United States. The desire to close the 'language gap' in American education, a laudable goal to be sure, is beginning to compromise the traditional humanistic study of language and literature, epitomized by the study of Greek and Latin. Meanwhile, increased emphasis on teaching Arabic has brought to the fore issues of multiculturalism and the value of a liberal education in the context of national security issues. The authors argue for a broad range of goals in language education, including the grasp of cultural issues besides linguistic competence. ********** In the modern American university, the importance of having a 'global perspective' and the importance of 'diversity' and 'multiculturalism' has been sounded repeatedly. (1) These ideas are also touted regularly in government and in the corporate world, where the economic realities of a...
abstract:Recent scenes of Syrian refugees arriving in Europe and the nationalist reflections they... more abstract:Recent scenes of Syrian refugees arriving in Europe and the nationalist reflections they have engendered recall the discourses of foreign and native in antiquity, a theme addressed frequently in Attic tragedy. Euripides' Phoenician Maidens is a meditation on the theme of autochthony, a key ideological and mythological nexus of ideas about identity and community. The ideal of a homogeneous community symbolized by Athenians' autochthonous heritage fits uncomfortably with another Athenian ideal: hospitality and openness to strangers. The Phoenician Maidens of Euripides reflects on the theme of sameness and otherness, foreign and native, using the resources of theater to articulate a utopian resolution of these conflicting desires.
This article discusses three examples of the way that ancient novels mobilize the resources of pe... more This article discusses three examples of the way that ancient novels mobilize the resources of performance traditions to create the particular effects sought for by the novelists, an analysis that is part of a ‘prosaics' of the ancient novel. Cases of writing and reading a letter, a story within a story, and ec-phrasis reveal different aspects of our novelists' strategies for exploring the tension between public and private forms of discourse. A genre that is, as Bakhtin notes, younger than writing, the novel is especially suited to conflating voices and positions in respect to the organizing position of a reader. Stephen Nimis is Professor of Classics at Miami University. His work on narrative include a book on the epic, Narrative Semiotics in the Epic Tradition (1987), and articles on narratological issues in the ancient novel (‘The Prosaics of the Ancient Novel,' ‘Memory and Description in the Ancient Novel,' ‘The Sense of Open-endedness in the Ancient Novel&#...
The Gospel of John in Greek and Latin A Comparative Intermediate Reader, 2017
The aim of this book is to make the Gospel of John accessible simultane- ously to intermediate st... more The aim of this book is to make the Gospel of John accessible simultane- ously to intermediate students of Ancient Greek and Latin. There are lots of resources available for the study of John’s gospel, particularly in Greek, but this edition juxtaposes the Greek text to one of its most famous translations: the ren- dering into Latin by St. Jerome known as the Vulgate. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page, so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowl- edge of Greek and/or Latin while reading one of the key texts of early Christian- ity. For those who know both Greek and Latin, it will be possible to use one language as a resource to read the other. Meanwhile, the Vulgate is a key index of how the Greek text was understood by early Christians in the Latin west.
Lucian's Prolaliai: An Intermediate Greek Reader Greek Text (revised), 2022
The aim of this book is to make accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek five prolali... more The aim of this book is to make accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek five prolaliai ("introductory lectures") by Lucian that reflect on Lucian's new literary genre, the comic dialogue (You are a Literary Prometheus, Zeuxis or Antiochus, Dionysus, Heracles, and The Dream). The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page, so that intermediate readers can progress through the texts, improving their knowledge of Greek while enjoying one of the most entertaining authors of antiquity. In each of these texts, Lucian reflects on the reception of his works by his audience, on various aspects of his performance, on the hybrid nature of his new genre, the comic dialogue, and his own cultural hybridity, as an outsider engaged with the canon of traditional Greek culture he has mastered. As such these readings are typical of their author as well as the brilliant period of Greek literature known as the Second Sophistic.
Revised edition (2022)
Elegaic Romulus Aesop's Fables An Intermediate Latin Reader Latin Text, 2016
The aim of this book is to make the most famous medieval version of Aesop’s Fables, the elegiac R... more The aim of this book is to make the most famous medieval version of Aesop’s Fables, the elegiac Romulus, accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Lat- in. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Latin while enjoying this delightful version of Aesop’s Fables.
Zeus the Tragedian An Intermediate Greek Reader Greek Text, 2019
The aim of this book is to make Zeus the Tragedian by Lucian of Samosata (c. 120 CE –190) accessi... more The aim of this book is to make Zeus the Tragedian by Lucian of Samosata (c. 120 CE –190) accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide every- thing necessary to read each page, so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Greek while enjoying one of the most entertaining authors of antiquity. In Zeus the Tragedian Lucian weaves an amusing dialogue out of a whole range of literary genres and styles, making full use of his impres- sive mastery of classical literature and language.
This book presents the Greek text of Aristophanes’ Birds with a facing English translation. The ... more This book presents the Greek text of Aristophanes’ Birds with a facing English translation. The Greek text is that of F.W. Hall and W.M. Geldart, (1907), from the Oxford Classical Texts series, which is in the public domain and available as a pdf. This text has also been digitized by the Perseus Project (perseus.tufts.edu). The English translation and accompanying notes are those of Ian Johnston of Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, BC. This translation is available freely online (records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/). We have reset both texts, making a number of very minor corrections, and placed them on opposing pages. This facing-page format will be useful to those wishing to read the English translation while looking at the Greek version, or vice versa.
This book presents the Greek text of Aristophanes’ Clouds with a facing English translation. The... more This book presents the Greek text of Aristophanes’ Clouds with a facing English translation. The Greek text is that of F.W. Hall and W.M. Geldart (1907), from the Oxford Classical Texts series, which is in the public domain and available as a pdf. This text has also been digitized by the Perseus Project (perseus.tufts.edu). The English translation and accompanying notes are those of Ian Johnston of Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, BC. This translation is available freely online (records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/). We have reset both texts, making a number of very minor corrections, and placed them on opposing pages. The English translation has a line-formatting and numbering system that is different from the Greek text. To avoid confusion, we have eliminated those line numbers and indicated only the equivalent Greek line numbers in brackets in the English translation. The English translation sometimes assigns choral passages to different members of the chorus, which we indicate by introducing dashes into the Greek text. Otherwise we have followed the formatting of the OCT, regardless of the translation formatting. We hope these choices will make it easier to go back and forth between English and Greek.
This book presents the Greek text of Aeschylus’ Oresteia with a facing English translation. The ... more This book presents the Greek text of Aeschylus’ Oresteia with a facing English translation. The Greek text is that of Herbert Weir Smyth, which is in the public domain and available as a pdf. This text has also been digitized by the Perseus Project (perseus.tufts.edu). The English translation and accompanying notes are those of Ian Johnston of Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, BC. This translation is available freely online (records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/). We have reset both texts, making a number of very minor corrections, and placed them on opposing pages. This facing-page format will be useful to those wishing to read the English translation while looking at the Greek version, or vice versa.
The aim of this book is to make The Dialogues of the Courtesans by Lucian of Samosata (c. 120 CE... more The aim of this book is to make The Dialogues of the Courtesans by Lucian of Samosata (c. 120 CE –190) accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page, so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Greek while enjoying one of the most entertaining authors of antiquity. These dialogues are another example of Lucian presenting unusual perspectives on Greek culture and literature, this time by creating amusing dialogues that occur mostly among the professional companions, hetairai, who formed a special form of upscale entertainment for elite men in the classical period. The women in these dialogues sometimes interact with male clients, but in most of them we find only women, as they speak of their hopes and fears and the business of love.
This volume presents the Ancient Greek text of Euripides’ Electra with a facing English translati... more This volume presents the Ancient Greek text of Euripides’ Electra with a facing English translation. The Greek text is that of Gilbert Murray (1913), from the Oxford Classical Texts series, which is in the public domain and available as a pdf. This text has also been digitized by the Perseus Project (perseus.tufts.edu). The English translation and accompanying notes are those of Ian Johnston of Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, BC. This translation is available freely online (records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/). We have reset both texts, making a number of very minor corrections and modifications, and placed them on opposing pages. This facing-page format will be useful to those wishing to read the English translation while looking at version of the Greek original, or vice versa.
This book presents the Greek text of Euripides' The Bacchae with a facing English translation. Th... more This book presents the Greek text of Euripides' The Bacchae with a facing English translation. The Greek text is that of Gilbert Murray (1913), from the Oxford Classical Texts series. The English translation and accompanying notes are those of Ian Johnston of Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, BC. This facing-page format will be useful to those wishing to read the English translation while looking at the Greek version, or vice versa.
This book presents the Greek text of Aristophanes’ Frogs with a facing English translation. The G... more This book presents the Greek text of Aristophanes’ Frogs with a facing English translation. The Greek text is that of F. W. Hall and W. M. Geldart (1907), from the Oxford Classical Texts series. The English translation and accompanying notes are those of Ian Johnston of Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, BC. This facing-page format will be useful to those wishing to read the English translation while looking at the Greek version, or vice versa.
The aim of this book is to make The Judgement of the Goddeses by Lucian of Samosata (c. 120 CE –... more The aim of this book is to make The Judgement of the Goddeses by Lucian of Samosata (c. 120 CE –190) accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page, so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Greek while enjoying one of the most entertaining authors of antiquity.
Lucian's The Judgement of the Goddeses is one of Lucian's shorter works and is a great text for intermediate readers. It is in dialogue form and fun to read, with few complicated sentences. The dialogue relates the story of Paris' fateful decision to award first prize to Aphrodite in a beauty contest. Aphrodite had promised Paris the most beautiful woman in the world (Helen, the wife of Menelaus) as a bride if he chose Aphrodite. This becomes the cause of the Trojan War, the greatest of the classical epic stories. In typical fashion, Lucian presents the characters in the story humorously, the goddesses as well as Paris. Each of the goddesses tries to pry some information about Paris out of Hermes, complains about the unfair practices of the others, and shamelessly bribes the judge. For his part Paris is interested only in the relative value of the bribes, but this does not prevent him from insisting that he inspect each of three beauties naked. There are hints of the relentless hostility that Athena and Hera, the two losers in the contest, will come to hold toward the Trojans in the epic tradition.
The aim of this book is to make The Assembly of the Gods by Lucian of Samosata (c. 120 CE –190) ... more The aim of this book is to make The Assembly of the Gods by Lucian of Samosata (c. 120 CE –190) accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page, so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Greek while enjoying one of the most entertaining authors of antiquity. This short dialogue presents Momus, the god of blame, arguing that numerous gods and their entourages should be expelled from heaven for being fraudulent immigrants. These figures range from gods and heroes with a human parent to various "eastern" deities, whose unhellenic appearance and behavior is objectionable. A number of famous mythological stories are referred to as evidence of the unsuitability of various gods and goddesses to their home on Olympus, but not without implying that the behavior of Zeus himself is often petty and hypocritical.
The aim of this book is to make Dialogues of the Gods by Lucian of Samosata (c. 120 CE –190) acc... more The aim of this book is to make Dialogues of the Gods by Lucian of Samosata (c. 120 CE –190) accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page, so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Greek while enjoying one of the most entertaining authors of antiquity. The dialogues present various gods and goddesses discussing some of the most famous episodes in mythology, wittily displaying their faults and concerns.
Lucian's Dialogues of the Gods is a great text for intermediate readers. The dialogues are breezy and fun to read with relatively simple sentence structure. Typical for Lucian, classical literature is the source for most of the material, with amusing takes on traditional stories and scenarios. In these vignettes the Greek gods are shown to be petty and jealous beings rather than the august gods of Homer or tragedy.
The aim of this book is to make the Dialogues of the Dead by Lucian of Samosata (c. 120 CE –190) ... more The aim of this book is to make the Dialogues of the Dead by Lucian of Samosata (c. 120 CE –190) accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page, so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Greek while enjoying one of the most entertaining authors of antiquity.
Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead is a great text for intermediate readers. The dialogues are breezy and fun to read with relatively simple sentence structure. Typical for Lucian, classical literature is the source for most of the material, with amusing takes on traditional stories and scenarios. Since the underworld is the place of final judgment, it is the perfect location to have various figures from history and legend meet and reflect on the choices they made in life. Wealthy men, famous kings, heroes of old, and the gods themselves are all subjected to Lucian’s satirical gaze, but always with a combination of learned wit and cleverness.
The aim of this book is to make the story of “Cupid and Psyche” from Apu-leius’ The Golden Ass a... more The aim of this book is to make the story of “Cupid and Psyche” from Apu-leius’ The Golden Ass accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Latin. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Latin while enjoying one of the most delightful stories from antiquity.
The aim of this book is to make Lucian’s Dialogues of the Sea Gods accessible to intermediate stu... more The aim of this book is to make Lucian’s Dialogues of the Sea Gods accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Greek while enjoying one of the most entertaining authors of antiquity.
The aim of this book is to make Hippocrates’ On Airs, Waters and Places and the Hippocratic Oath ... more The aim of this book is to make Hippocrates’ On Airs, Waters and Places and the Hippocratic Oath accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page. The commentary is almost exclusively grammatical, explaining subordinate clauses, unusual verb forms, and dialectic peculiarities. The page by page vocabularies gloss all but the most common words. We have endeavored to make these glossaries as useful as possible without becoming fulsome. A glossary of frequently occurring vocabulary can be found as an appendix in the back, but it is our hope that most readers will not need to use this appendix often. Brief summaries of a number of grammatical and morphological topics are interspersed through the text as well, and there is a list of verbs used by Hippocrates that have unusual forms in an appendix. The principal parts of those verbs are given there rather than in the glossaries. Special topics, such as directions and geography, are also presented briefly, along with a medical glossary.
The aim of this book is to make Lucian’s On the Syrian Goddess accessible to intermediate student... more The aim of this book is to make Lucian’s On the Syrian Goddess accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page. The commentary is almost exclusively grammatical, explaining subordinate clauses, conditions etc., unusual verb forms, and dialectic peculiarities. The page by page vocabularies gloss all but the most common words. We have endeavored to make these glossaries as useful as possible without becoming fulsome. A glossary of all words occurring three or more times in the text can be found as an appendix in the back, but it is our hope that most readers will not need to use this appendix often. Brief summaries of a number of grammatical and morphological topics are interspersed through the text as well, and there is a list of verbs used by Lucian that have unusual forms in an appendix. The principal parts of those verbs are given there rather than in the glossaries. We have provided brief explanations of allusions and proper names, but the comprehensive commentary by J. L. Lightfoot can be consulted for details on the literary and religious character of the work, and she includes a generous bibliography of critical studies of the text.
All rights reserved. Subject to the exception immediately following, this book may not be reprodu... more All rights reserved. Subject to the exception immediately following, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher. The authors have made a version of this work available (via email) under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. The terms of the license can be accessed at www.creativecommons.org. Accordingly, you are free to copy, alter and distribute this work under the following conditions: 1. You must attribute the work to the author (but not in a way that suggests that the author endorses your alterations to the work). 2. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. 3. If you alter, transform or build up this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license as this one.
The aim of this book is to make Book One of the Argonautica (or The Voyage of Argo) by Apollonius... more The aim of this book is to make Book One of the Argonautica (or The Voyage of Argo) by Apollonius of Rhodes accessible to intermediate students of ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Greek, while enjoying the only extant example of ancient epic between Homer and Virgil. The Argonautica is a great text for intermediate readers. The sentence structure and syntax are fairly simple, and although the vocabulary is often exotic and full of novel formations, there is also a good deal of repetition of key words. Apollonius' Greek is purposefully mannered, based largely on Homeric diction and style, with many direct and indirect illusions to the Iliad and Odyssey, but also marked by the cultural context of his own time.
The aim of this book is to make the Dyskolos of Menander (342 – c. 290) accessible to intermediat... more The aim of this book is to make the Dyskolos of Menander (342 – c. 290) accessible to intermediate students of ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Greek while enjoying our most complete example of “New Comedy.” The Dyskolos is a great text for intermediate readers. The sentence structure and syntax are straightforward and vocabulary is repeated frequently throughout the play. Menander’s Greek shows only a few minor variations on the standard Attic of the classical period. The play’s language is also conversational and thus provides a good balance to the more formal Greek of tragedy and other canonical genres.
The aim of this book is to make the Double Indictment of Lucian of Samosata accessible to interme... more The aim of this book is to make the Double Indictment of Lucian of Samosata accessible to intermediate students of Ancient Greek. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to understand each page, so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Greek while enjoying one of the most entertaining authors of antiquity.
The aim of this book is to make the Truculentus of Plautus (d. 185 BCE) accessible to intermediat... more The aim of this book is to make the Truculentus of Plautus (d. 185 BCE) accessible to intermediate students of ancient Latin. The running vocabulary and grammatical commentary are meant to provide everything necessary to read each page so that readers can progress through the text, improving their knowledge of Latin while enjoying a fun example of ancient comedy. The Truculentus is a great text for intermediate readers. The sentence structure and syntax are straightforward and vocabulary is repeated frequently throughout the play. Plautus’ Latin is archaic with a few minor variations on classical Latin, but these cause only minor problems at first. His Latin is also conversational and thus provides a good balance to the more formal language of Virgil and other canonical authors.
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Revised edition (2022)
Lucian's The Judgement of the Goddeses is one of Lucian's shorter works and is a great text for intermediate readers. It is in dialogue form and fun to read, with few complicated sentences. The dialogue relates the story of Paris' fateful decision to award first prize to Aphrodite in a beauty contest. Aphrodite had promised Paris the most beautiful woman in the world (Helen, the wife of Menelaus) as a bride if he chose Aphrodite. This becomes the cause of the Trojan War, the greatest of the classical epic stories. In typical fashion, Lucian presents the characters in the story humorously, the goddesses as well as Paris. Each of the goddesses tries to pry some information about Paris out of Hermes, complains about the unfair practices of the others, and shamelessly bribes the judge. For his part Paris is interested only in the relative value of the bribes, but this does not prevent him from insisting that he inspect each of three beauties naked. There are hints of the relentless hostility that Athena and Hera, the two losers in the contest, will come to hold toward the Trojans in the epic tradition.
Lucian's Dialogues of the Gods is a great text for intermediate readers. The dialogues are breezy and fun to read with relatively simple sentence structure. Typical for Lucian, classical literature is the source for most of the material, with amusing takes on traditional stories and scenarios. In these vignettes the Greek gods are shown to be petty and jealous beings rather than the august gods of Homer or tragedy.
Lucian’s Dialogues of the Dead is a great text for intermediate readers. The dialogues are breezy and fun to read with relatively simple sentence structure. Typical for Lucian, classical literature is the source for most of the material, with amusing takes on traditional stories and scenarios. Since the underworld is the place of final judgment, it is the perfect location to have various figures from history and legend meet and reflect on the choices they made in life. Wealthy men, famous kings, heroes of old, and the gods themselves are all subjected to Lucian’s satirical gaze, but always with a combination of learned wit and cleverness.