#How much Greek do I need?

[jeannereames]

Dr. Reames, a simple question from someone interested in history but who is not part of the academic world: in order to study Alexander the Great and Ancient Greece in general, how much Ancient Greek does one have to learn? Would you need to learn Demotic Greek or the many other dialects, such as the one from Macedonia? As in, you’d need to learn one or more versions of Ancient Greek?

Thank you in advance! I always enjoy your responses!

How Much Greek Do I Need to Read about Alexander?

It depends on how far you want to go…what’s your end-goal?

If you’ve no desire to make it a profession, the good news is you need very little Greek.

Most ancient Greek and Latin texts are available in translation in the major languages of (European) Classical studies: English, French, German, Italian. Now, if you want them in Polish, or Japanese, or Bengali, you’ll have more of an issue. But the Loeb Classical Library (and LOEB ONLINE) has English translations of virtually all extant (still existing) Greek and Latin sources, and if you’ve got access to a (larger) college library, they probably have them, even if you have to ask them to get things out of storage. Latin is red (PA6156); Greek is green (PA3612). Budé is the French version of Loeb, btw.

Loeb texts also have Greek and Latin on the facing page, but I mention them because they’ve got translations of (almost) everything. One can find cheaper versions without the Greek/Latin from Penguin, Oxford, et al. But those don’t have, say, Aelian, or Athenaeus, or the obscure texts of Plutarch’s Moralia. Loeb does. That said, the Alexander histories (Arrian, Curtius, Plutarch, Diodoros, and Justin) are all available in relatively cheap translations. Much earlier, in answer to a different ask, I listed our main sources on Alexander, extant and lost. It’s a longer read, but perhaps of interest.

(See below for more online sources in translation.)

So, no, you don’t need Greek. But, if you’re at least moderately serious about reading beyond pop history, you will want to learn a few Greek words to better “get” Greek sensibilities. Say, timē (τιμή), which means honor/public standing/esteem, but has all these attendant connotations. If you start reading the Serious Stuff (articles and academic books), authors will throw these around so it’s useful to know them, as they tend to carry an entire freight of meaning we don’t want to explain every time we use them. These are words I make my students learn in my intro to Greek History class (2510), so there aren’t many. (Undergrads put up with only so much, ha.) For Alexander, it’s also useful to know the Greek names of some units, such as the Somatophylakes (the royal Bodyguard of 7), or the Hypaspists (the specialist hoplite phalanx, not the same as the Foot Companions), or even the name of the long pike (sarissa). But you can make do quite well with a vocab of maybe 30± Greek terms.

It's only if you want to pursue research at the advanced (graduate) level that you’d need Greek. Even then, it’s mostly Attic Greek. The only time you’d need dialects is for quite specific study and/or epigraphy (inscriptions). Epigraphers are language specialists. Most of us, even the “pros,” don’t work at that level. But yes, if you’re getting into extensive examinations of passages, it’s good to understand the language for yourself, not have to trust a translation. Translations are, by definition, interpretations.

I hope that encourages some folks to embark on reading the original (primary) sources. Of more import for these is to understand HISTORIOGRAPHY. Even those who can read the Greek, but lack historiographic training, tend to take stuff at face-value when they shouldn’t.

Go HERE for a discussion of historiography (with regard to Alexander). Again, it’s part of a specific ask, but I explain why we need to know something about the historians who are writing our texts, in order to understand those texts. It’s another longer read, but essential.

Almost forgot! If you prefer video, I've also talked about the sources on TikTok: Part I: Intro & Lost Alexander Sources and Part II: Extant Alexander Sources

Some Useful Online Sources to Bookmark:

Perseus (at Tufts.edu): clunky as hell because it’s old (in internet years), but indispensable. English/Greek/Latin/other texts in translation and original language, plus all sorts of other tools, including an image bank. Pitfall: these are translations outside copyright, so old and sometimes problematic. Still, it’s free, and so-so much stuff here. Every person dealing with the ancient Med world has this one on speed-dial. (You can find other online sources with various texts, but Perseus has, again, almost everything; it’s the online Loeb.)

Stoa Org Static: a version of the original where you don’t have to sign in. Takes you to various super-helpful pages, including the Online Suda (a Byzantine encyclopedia you can search: look up “Hephaistion” there. *grin*) Bunch of other helpful links.

Wiki Digital Classicist hypertext list of topics ranging from the Beasley Library (of pottery) to the Coptic Gnostic Library and various online journals. Just click around, see what’s there.

Topos Text: clickable map of places which includes all references to them in ancient sources. So if, say, you want to know where X places is, mentioned in Arrian, you can find it on the map.

PHI Searchable Greek Inscriptions: I have used the tar out of this. It’s much easier than Inscriptiones Graecae, and comes with English translations.

More Online Resources: more links. This is just one of various collections out there.

Again, ALL this stuff is free. Even when you may have to pay (like Loeb Online), the amount of material you can now lay hands on even without a uni library is fantastic.

JSTOR: requires a subscription, but, if you’re a college student or can get access via a uni library, you can look up material for free. Problem: JSTOR has different subscription packages, and only the really big Class-A Research schools have large holdings for Classics. I’m regularly foiled in things I need, as my library is smaller. I use ILL (Interlibrary Loan) a lot. If you can’t get what you want via your school JSTOR or ILL, sometimes you can purchase a solo copy of an article via JSTOR Google Scholar. But (hint) always check the journal’s website itself. It might be cheaper there! (The Ancient History Bulletin, for instance, is super-cheap; check their archives. Karanos [Macedonia only] is FREE.) Same thing sometimes with books. Certain publishers have rental options, Open Access, etc.

Also Academia.edu first: Your savior…if the author is a member, and has uploaded the paper you want. We frequently face restrictions on what we’re allowed to upload, and when. Yet we may list an article we can’t yet release publicly. That doesn’t mean we won’t send it to you privately via email if you message us and ask nicely. 😊 Especially if you’re not providing an entire wishlist, or asking for a book for free. It depends on the person, and whether they have a PDF.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Started a new book series, and has been a journey...an Odyssey, if you will.

[gingermintpepper]

So, one of the most interesting things that's come from my recent exercises in writing the Olympians as young deities is all of the very fun and somewhat painful conversations that come from the young deities acquiring and consequently settling into their domains.

Apollo and Artemis especially have been really fascinating under the microscope. They start off identically, with extremely similar interests and similar domains over the hunt and wilderness. They spend their days under the stars and foraging for fruit and dancing and singing in the fields, two rustic god-children exploring and learning together. Then Apollo goes off on his own to slay Python.

Now, a lot of things change when Apollo kills Python. That is the act which transforms the bow from a tool of survival and sport to an instrument of murder, bloodshed and ultimately war. It is Apollo's first act of wrath which separates him from Artemis - both spiritually because she has not yet shed blood herself as a goddess and physically because it leads to his exile. Most importantly however, the slaying of Python is the act that grants Apollo his knowledge.

If violence is what first separates Apollo from Artemis then it is knowledge which keeps them apart.

This can refer to a lot of things; that Artemis continued to be at home with the wild beasts of the forests and mountains while Apollo grew to prefer the domesticated sheep and cattle, that Artemis continued to avoid mortals while Apollo grew to know their ways and endeavoured to teach them more. The point that has been the most interesting to me however has been Artemis, who remains free of slaughter, and thus remains pure and Apollo, who becomes acutely and entirely too aware of it, and thus must be constantly purified.

Apollo's infatuation with medicine specifically is the place where this becomes most apparent. When he leaves for his exile to travel as a mortal, without nectar or ambrosia, without power, Apollo is without the privileges of the divine for the very first time. He sweats, he smells, he grows weary when he travels, he grows hungry and thirsty. He experiences fatigue and nausea, the fever of sickness, the chill of infection, the delirium of poison. The blood Apollo shed does not only make him impure spiritually, it strips him of the purity of his birth and station. Likewise, medicine is not a divine practice. What use do the unkillable immortals have for something as finicky as medicine when they have nectar and ambrosia? Apollo however, knows of the pains of the flesh and the suffering of the mortal coil. He pursues medicine in all its horrors and difficulties because of the knowledge he gained with blood.

Artemis then, cannot understand the medical Apollo. When her brother returns possessed by this spectre of ill-gained knowledge, she does not recognise him. Who is this boy who scores the deer and studies the shape of their intestines before he cooks them? What good is there in rescuing a chick with a broken wing? The Apollo-of-the-Wild in her memories would have done the correct thing and left the thing for dead - let the forest take what is its due. Who is this Apollo whose hands are always stained to the wrist in the blood and gore of the living? What is his fascination with the mechanics of mortal bodies? Artemis does not know and Apollo does not tell her.

That has, by far, been my favourite effect of the whole Python watershed moment to explore recently.

[habitina]

no i think some of you don't get it. the nagireo and orpheus and eurydice myth parallels are basically writing themselves. and they go BOTH WAYS

nagi would look back every single time, he has looked back every single time, he has been looking nowhere else the whole time. and reo of course is terrified of watching nagi go back to his old life without him because he'll be alone but there are more important things for him to do. he has to live onn for both of them. do you guys get it . gripping your shoulders and shaking you do you get ittt

[sherdnerd]

My number one classics ick is when a scholar will just insert untranslated passages of Greek and Latin into their paper. good job on the artificial inaccessibility you guys, glad you were able to gatekeep the field so none of those dirty peasants may learn stuff. its just for us cool guys who speak Greek or Latin

[arttsuka]

Can someone download/screen record/do something (I need the audio) from something off of Disney plus?

[alicepao13]

"But Odysseus' jetpack" The serious part of Epic the Musical and the one that is up for debate and criticism is the songs. Not the animations. I didn't think that needed explaining.

[johaerys-writes]

I get happy whenever I'm reminded you don't hate tsoa because I'm not safe even on my own server LMAO I always hate the "Oh the book villainizes Thetis and Deidamia and Pyrrhus" take because I didn't come out of that book thinking those three are the epitome of evil, and I'm very new to Greek Myths when I first read the book. I think it's more telling about the reader if they came out of that book shaking their fists at Thetis and Deidamia but hey maybe I'm just biased because I like the book ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (Same thing with 'I don't like how Achilles is portrayed as good there' because oh my god did you not catch whose POV this book is written from)

Honestly I will never understand the hate that TSOA has garnered in recent years. I swear it didn't use to be like that lol. It's like people forgot that just because they don't PERSONALLY like something doesn't mean that everyone else shouldn't. Instead of saying "well, not my cup of tea!" and moving on with their lives and enjoying the numerous other adaptations that exist, they have to make it into this "problematic" piece of media and attack anyone who likes it. I literally don't get it.

And it's not like I'm some crazed TSOA defender that can't handle valid criticism btw! I'm not saying that it doesn't have its shortcomings or that it's the greatest book that ever booked, but I often get frustrated bc the only criticism I see is wrong and stupid. People getting all up in arms about Patroclus not fighting or about Thetis' and Deidameia's portrayal... why? Why do you have to do that? If it isn’t to your taste, then just create your own version. Why attack an author for their interpretation of the source material? And even if TSOA was so far removed from the source material (which, trust me, it isn’t, as I've tried to explain here many times to no avail) who said that a good adaptation is the one that is 100% faithful to the source material? Why even create an adaptation if it's just going to be parroting Homer and including every little detail from the Iliad in it? Just go and read the Iliad then. Why bother making something new?

And if accuracy or a "correct" (whatever the hell that means) portrayal of the characters is the most important thing, then let's go ahead and cancel Euripides and Virgil and Publius Papinius Statius and Shakespeare too while we're at it, because if they had published their shit this day and age they would have received tons of hate by all the tumblr and discord keyboard warrior crowd.

(Btw, I fully agree that someone's takeaway from the book about Thetis and Deidameia says way more about them than the book ever did. If you're mad at Thetis just because she was mean to Patroclus or at Deidameia because she reacted like a traumatised 16yo would, then I really don't know what to tell you! And of course, you're allowed not to like them but you really don’t have to try to make it everyone's problem!!)

(ALSO the "I don’t like TSOA bc Achilles is portrayed as good" is hilarious to me bc newsflash, Achilles is portrayed as "good" in the Iliad as well, and in a staggering amount of both ancient Greek art and modern adaptations :)) but I guess that is impossible to grasp if you haven't moved on from your high school's Iliad class and your Achilles-hating professor)

[carnivalls]

Killing myself a thousand times over. Do I want the setting of Good Intentions to be past based (fantasy greece meets the industrial revolution) or futuristic (fantasy greece meets itself after a stupidly ambiguous amount of years)

[horror-enthusiast-xemi]

Heyyyy.. So how do we feel about shipkids?

Her name is Eudora and I have gotten a biiit attached to her^^

I also apologize for the shit quality, my camera kinda sucks. Also I'm not 100% sure her outfits are time period accurate, these were mainly a fun design that I'll keep for now! (But if you do have any design ideas I'd like to hear them)

[f0xgl0v3]

Thinking about Menoetius, Prometheus, epimetheus, and Atlas…

[gingermintpepper]

Day 4: Aristaeus

Interpretation notes and trivia below the cut!!

All rise for the entrance of my president !! Honestly, of all the figures and characters that were up for debate when I first started thinking about this story and who I wanted leading the charge Aristaeus was not one of them. Originally, I'd always known that Asclepius and Orpheus would be worked in somehow - they've always been favourites of mine in terms of children of Apollo (even if Orpheus as the child of Apollo and Calliope is less popular classically) and I expected my pick for the third child of Apollo to be involved to be similarly mortal like Iamus or Tenes but the more I looked into Aristaeus the more I fell in love with him! Ultimately, he's meant to be both a foil and a reflection of his father - a boy who grows up thinking his father's footsteps would always be warm only to realise that following in them would lead to death and destruction. While his status as a rustic and hunting god is still important here, Aristaeus' interpretation is much more focused on his connection to the Etesian wind and his quelling of the dog star Sirius which is why his hair in particular is so long and spiralling. All in all, more than any other figure I've chosen to interpret and represent in my work Aristaeus is the god I hope more people get interested in and research! I think there are a lot of important stories in his various myths and travels and I definitely want more people to discover and fall in love with them as I have!

Some fun trivia:

Apollo's firstborn son. Because he was born mortal on account of his very mortal mother, Apollo immediately took him to Olympus to eat ambrosia to begin his transition into divinity. Apollo would continue to feed Aristaeus small amounts of ambrosia and nectar for the next ten years until the child fully shed his mortal skin and was reborn as a god.

Due to the nature of making mortals deathless (namely the fun part of the process where they are completely remade and lose their mortal memories) Aristaeus spent most of his early life with his mother and siblings where they all pitched in to reteach him his family, his hobbies, his favourite things and ultimately how to live and love. Aristaeus was very attached to his maternal family because of this and his early acts of ingenuity were mostly born from his wish to make things easier for his family.

Aristaeus is the only one of his children Apollo hand raised full time. In those days, Aristaeus adored his father and believed him completely upright and blameless, the true face of a benevolent deity and the kind of man he aimed to be when he was full grown.

They would later have many bitter arguments and conflicts, the first and perhaps most impactful of all being their disagreement over Actaeon, Aristaeus' firstborn son. He wanted Apollo to teach him stating that it was a normal thing for a grandfather to do but Apollo vehemently refused to have any part of Actaeon's rearing, stating that he was not his child and that it was highly inappropriate for him to educate another god's son. When Actaeon later dies, Aristaeus blames a not insignificant part of that on Apollo - something that only worsens when he learns that it was Artemis who cursed the boy and that Apollo was always aware Actaeon would die young.

Spends most of his time travelling from place to place. Doesn't really like Olympus and prefers to spend his time minding animals or tending to fields. Is on wonderful terms with Demeter and Persephone and often makes decadent exchanges of olive oil and preserved meat for exotic flowers and fruit for his bees.

Big fan of wind and percussive instruments. Never liked the kithara because of how finicky it is and far prefers the hand drums and reed flutes of his mother's country. Exceptional dancer.

Will sell prized cattle for high quality and highly unique jewellry. Doesn't much care for gemstones but is an absolute gold fiend and has a massive collection of bracelets, anklets, nose and lip adornments and rings. Has never been north enough to hit India but got a ton of rare and different adornments from his Phoenician in-laws when he was married to Autonoë.

Hates dogs but doesn't mind wolves. Not a big horse fan either

Unlike other winds, he cannot transform into various animal forms. He's close enough to the Anemoi that he keeps up with the gossip but he's only really friends with Notos. Gets along poorly with Zephyrus whose preference for pretty youths has often led to them getting into physical altercations when they were younger. Aristaeus still holds a bit of a grudge about it.

Has a big stupid crush on Dionysus which is embarrassing because Dionysus also put him out of a job. Due to Dionysus' relative youth, he feels a bit conflicted about such feelings - mostly because Dionysus is on extremely good terms with Apollo and Aristaeus doesn't want him to get burned.

Despite kinda despising his father, Aristaeus is a pretty decent eldest brother and regularly keeps in contact with a lot of his siblings. He often delivers mead, flavoured honey and olive oil and uses it as an excuse to chat and catch up. Currently in a bit of a tiff with Asclepius because he's worried about him and his family.

Favourite colour is the rich gold of purified honey, favourite food is lokma and his favourite time of year is winter.

[crueclown22]

Hephaestus and Aphrodite mood boards ⚔️🐚

thank you @anaalnathrakhs for the request for hephaestus <3

[wheelercore]

I talk about tedipus a lot but karen has the making of a tragic Greek hero mark my words

[katakosmos]

regulus black was a poet and, therefore, he loved ancient greek. if you study it, maybe you can understand the immensity of this statement; if you study it, you'll know that there aren't enough english words that, even lined up one after the other without making any sense, can define "ancient greek". but i'll try to explain it, because understanding this is understanding regulus; understanding regulus is understanding, at least in part, greek; and understanding greek is, well, understanding everything.

regulus black loved ancient greek and, therefore, he loved life. it was his from the first moment, he nurtured it. and if you think that that night in the cave regulus let it go, you're wrong: he clung to it with all his strength and, when it finally slipped from his hands, it was torn to shreds and full of scratches. because regulus dug his nails into its back until it bled, so it wouldn't go away.

θυμέ, άνα δέ. my soul, emerge from the waves.

a life, new, immense, full of possibilities: it was the greatest gift he had ever received. and maybe yes, it wasn't beautiful, it wasn't perfect. but it was his life, the only one he had. and he loved it.

regulus black loved ancient greek and, therefore, he loved beauty. which is not an unattainable canon, it's just harmony in forms; it's the balance of nature. and so regulus loved poetry (as sappho says in fragment 16, the most beautiful thing is what we love) because poetry is the maximum form of expression of beauty: it's a perfect harmony of words and sounds, which creates its own melody, and it's the basis of human expression. in poetry emerge the purest and most ferocious feelings, and reading greek verses is like being hit repeatedly in the face, suffocated with a wet cloth. it's the masochism of every classical student.

as a result, regulus loved ancient greek because it's the perfect product of a wonderful culture. greek is the language of poets, lovers, thinkers: everything that exists has a greek word that identifies it. everything you've ever felt has a greek word that immediately makes it poetry. and regulus, who has the soul of a poet, does not need english to live; english is bare, it reduces everything to an asphyxiating simplicity. no, he needs ancient greek. he needs complicated words, words that, in a few letters, contain the perfect key to understanding life, words without even a translation.

χαρμολύπη, joy and pain. a word for both, at the same time.

συνδιαμάχομαι, fight until the end together.

ιοίην, may i go further.

only ancient greek can express such deep concepts using a single word. and knowing greek allows you to know the world.

regulus understood this. and that's why he was a poet.

[morningmask27]

I think I finally understand what fucking keeps me from reading all the texts I need to read for class. The structure of those sentences is way too fucking hard for me