Why Greek

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There are many reasons to study ancient Greek, from an interest in historical linguistics to a personal fascination with ancient culture. The study of Greek has great practical merit as well. To read Greek, you will need to hold a complex system of facts in your head and manipulate these facts with both precision and imagination— a capability useful, even critical, in just about any higher occupation you choose to pursue. Greek students outperform on GRE, LSAT, and MCAT exams, and that is not a surprise.

But most people, rightly, study Greek in order to meet in the original language one or more of the great minds that wrote in Greek. The list is breathtaking: Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, to name just a few of the more obvious.

This intensive course has as its explicit goal to prepare you to read authors in the original Greek. We will read Greek of increasing complexity as the year goes along, and by semester’s end we will be reading mostly unadulterated Greek.  After finishing the course, you will be prepared to continue reading Greek at the intermediate level (Greek 203), and to read simple prose, from Aesop to the New Testament, more or less independently.

Textbooks

• Athenaze: An Introduction to Ancient Greek, Books 1 & 2. Revised 3rd edition. Maurice Balme and Gilbert Lawall. Oxford University Press. 2016. ISBN 9780190607661.

• Athenaze: Workbooks I &  II. Revised 3rd edition. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190607685.

• Memrise (free): Classical Studies graduate student David Stifler and I have created a Memrise course (“Duke – Elementary Greek with Athenaze”) to help with memorizing vocabulary. This online facility works on all computers and devices. To use, register with Memrise (memrise.com or app), and search the courses tab for “Duke Athenaze.“

Class logistics and goals