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3554 results in Classical languages

Page 55 of 178

  • Preface to the second edition (2015)

  • Joint Association of Classical Teachers' Greek Course
  • Book:
    The Intellectual Revolution
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    19 February 2015, pp xi-xi

  • Summary

    Preface to the second edition (2015)

    The second, fully revised and reset edition of Reading Greek (2007) consists of two volumes, one of Text and Vocabulary and one of Grammar and Exercises. The fully revised and reset second editions of The Intellectual Revolution and A World of Heroes contain the same selections of authors and follow the same principles as the first editions in the provision of vocabulary and learning vocabulary, and rely on Greek Vocabulary in the same way, but there are two vital differences:

  • all help is given in the order in which it appears in the text;

  • the help now includes extensive grammatical and syntactical notes, together with comment of the sort one would expect to find in an edition of the works in hand.

    • The revision of The Intellectual Revolution was undertaken by Keith Maclennan (Euripides), to whom the Project is (again) most grateful for his care and expertise, and Dr Jones (Thucydides and Plato). Dr Jones is responsible for the final editing.

    My very best thanks go to Professor Colin Leach for work on the proofs and to Cambridge University Press’s Leigh Mueller and Elizabeth Hanlon for the care they took over the editing of this new edition. Thanks also go to Cecilia Mackay for gathering the pictures and permissions.

  • Target passage: The Sicilian expedition (History 6.30–2, 7.70–8.1 (passim))

  • from Part II - Thucydides
  • Joint Association of Classical Teachers' Greek Course
  • Book:
    The Intellectual Revolution
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    19 February 2015, pp 83-108

  • Summary

    Sections 13–22 act as the introduction to this target passage.

    (Twice before during war, in 427 and 425/4 BC, the Athenians had been involved in Sicily, on both occasions on a small scale and in answer to requests for help from allies. Now in 415 BC they were faced with another request, this time from Egesta, and their minds were fixed on much larger prizes.)

    The decision to invade Sicily

    Athenian motives: the Egestaians provide an excuse to invade Sicily (6.6–7)

    Such is the list of the peoples, Hellenic and barbarian, inhabiting Sicily, and such the size of the island which the Athenians were now determined to invade. In fact they were ambitious to conquer the whole of it, although they had also the specious aim of helping their kinsmen and other allies on the island. But they were especially encouraged by envoys from Egesta, who had come to Athens and requested their help more urgently than ever.

    The Egestaians had gone to war with their neighbours the Selinountines upon questions of marriage and disputed territory, and the Selinountines had won the alliance of the Syracusans, and attacked Egesta hard by land and sea. The Egestaians now reminded the Athenians of the alliance with the Leontinoi in the time of Lakhes (427), during the previous war, and begged them to send a fleet to their aid. Among a number of other considerations, they urged as their main argument that, if the Syracusans were allowed to go unpunished for their depopulation of Leontinoi, to ruin the allies still left to Athens in Sicily and to get the whole power of the island into their hands, there would be a danger of their one day coming with a large force, as Dorians, to the aid of their Dorian kinsmen, and as colonists, to the aid of the Peloponnesians who had sent them out, and joining these in pulling down the Athenian Empire. The Athenians would, therefore, do well to unite with the allies still left to them, and to make a stand against the Syracusans; especially as they, the Egestaians, were prepared to supply enough money for the war.

  • Introductory passage: Akhilleus and Hektor (Iliad 22.1–130)

  • from Part I - Homer
  • Joint Association of Classical Teachers' Greek Course
  • Book:
    A World of Heroes
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    19 February 2015, pp 6-22

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Akhilleus, enraged by the death of Patroklos at the hands of the Trojan hero Hektor, has gone berserk, and single-handedly driven the Trojans back from the Greek lines towards Troy. The Trojans have been saved from complete rout by the intervention of Apollo who, disguising himself as the Trojan Agenor, diverted Akhilleus long enough for the Trojans to retreat within Troy’s gates. This extract begins with Akhilleus railing at Apollo for deceiving him.

    In Book 16, Homer describes the death of Patroklos at Hektor’s hands and in Book 18 makes it clear that this was a tipping point: on hearing the news, Akhilleus decides to take his revenge on Hektor, even though he knows it will lead directly to his own death. Book 22 describes that revenge, after which Homer turns our attention to Priam and his family, who will have a major part to play in working out its consequences. This will culminate in Priam’s night journey to the Greek camp to ransom his son’s body. The poem will end with eulogies on Hektor by the three women in his life (Andromakhe, Hekabe and Helen), and his burial by the Trojans. Akhilleus’ original anger will have run its course.

  • Introductory passages: What is ἀρετή? (Protagoras 310b–320c (passim))

  • from Part III - Plato
  • Joint Association of Classical Teachers' Greek Course
  • Book:
    The Intellectual Revolution
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    19 February 2015, pp 115-130

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Protagoras (c. 490–420 BC) was born at Abdera on the North coast of the Aegean. He was the first, and in many ways the greatest, of the sophists. He had a long and successful career, travelling widely throughout the Greek world and made a considerable amount of money from the fees that he charged for his instruction. He claimed to teach his pupils how to attain personal and political success, and in his teaching emphasized the importance for such success of skill in clear expression and argument.

    In this dialogue, in which Socrates is the speaker, the youthful Hippokrates asks to be taken to the famous teacher Protagoras, who has just arrived in town. Socrates’ aim is to ensure that the young man knows what he is letting himself in for, but it is quickly apparent that Hippokrates has not considered sufficiently closely what he expects to learn from Protagoras and what effect the knowledge will have on him. When Protagoras has defined his teaching in terms of the personal and political success it will bring, Socrates seriously wonders whether such a thing can be taught at all, drawing an example from the practice of the Athenian Assembly in session.

  • Introductory passages: Xerxes at Abydos (Histories 7.44–53)

  • from Part II - Herodotus
  • Joint Association of Classical Teachers' Greek Course
  • Book:
    A World of Heroes
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    19 February 2015, pp 89-99

  • Summary

    Introduction

    According to Herodotus, Darius, incensed by the Persian defeat at Marathon in 490 BC and still seeking vengeance for the burning of Sardis by the Ionians in 498, had been preparing a second expedition when he died (486). Xerxes, his son, inherited the throne and, as Herodotus tells it, his father’s desire for conquest and revenge. In the earlier part of Book 7, Herodotus gives a picture of the process of decision in the court of Xerxes. Mardonios urges the expedition, while Xerxes’ uncle Artabanos argues against it. The issue is settled by a dream, which threatens Xerxes with dire consequences if he does not go. Artabanos persists in his objections, claiming that dreams are nothing but confused recollections of the day’s events (7.16b; this prompted one nineteenth-century author of a standard History of Greek Literature to assert ‘Nothing can be so frivolous and absurd as the theory of dreams propounded here.’ In the post-Freudian era, which assessment seems more modern?); but later he too sees the same dream and changes his mind. Four years of preparation follow, during which vast engineering projects are set in motion (a canal across the Mt Athos peninsula, a boat bridge over the Hellespont), and the greatest army and navy ever seen is assembled (see Figure 25, p. 90). A massive undertaking indeed: Xerxes assembled his army, of perhaps some 100,000–150,000 men (modern estimates considerably modify Herodotus’ figure of 5 million), and marched them to Athens, a distance of well over 1,000 miles.

    Throughout this build-up, Herodotus takes care to show us Xerxes᾿ character. He turns savagely on Artabanos when he first argues against the expedition and just as quickly calms down again and changes his mind the next day. He whips the Hellespont and throws chains upon it when his first boat bridge is destroyed by a storm. When asked by Pythios the Lydian (who has shown him great loyalty) to spare the eldest of his five sons from the war, Xerxes replies by having this son cut in two and marching his army between the halves of his body. Now, on the eve of the invasion, Xerxes reflects on the expedition with Artabanos.

  • Introductory passage: Oedipus the king (Oedipus Tyrannus 300–862 (passim))

  • from Part III - Sophocles
  • Joint Association of Classical Teachers' Greek Course
  • Book:
    A World of Heroes
    Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    19 February 2015, pp 130-150

  • Summary

    Introduction

    When the play opens, Thebes is in the grip of a disastrous plague. Oedipus has sent Iokaste’s brother Kreon to the oracle at Delphi to inquire what should be done. Kreon reports that the oracle orders that the killer of Laios (king of Thebes before Oedipus) should be expelled. Oedipus utters this solemn warning (219–75; the lines in this passage are presented in the order proposed by R. D. Dawe, Sophocles Oedipus Rex – see ‘Further reading’ above):

  • I shall speak as one who played no part either in the story,

  • or in the deed. Were I working unaided,

  • I would not get far, without some evidence.

  • As it is, since it was after the murder that I became a citizen among you citizens,

  • to all Thebans I make this proclamation:

  • If any of you knows at whose hands

  • Laios, son of Labdakos, was murdered,

  • I order him to tell me everything.

  • If he is afraid, because he might be confessing his own guilt,

  • I say that he will suffer no harsh punishment:

  • he shall leave this country unharmed.

  • And if anyone knows a foreigner to be the killer,

  • he must not keep quiet. I shall settle

  • the reward, with my thanks as well.

  • But if you remain silent, and anyone in fear

  • protects a friend or indeed himself,

  • from this my edict, hear what I shall do:

  • Whoever he may be, I lay this order on the people

  • of this land, whose power and throne I control.

  • Do not take him in, do not greet him,

  • or have him join in your prayers or sacrifices to the gods,

  • or give him the lustral bowl. All are to drive him from their homes, since he

  • is our desecration, as the Pythian god

  • has revealed to me just now.

  • If any fail to do this, I pray the gods

  • to give them neither crops grown from the earth

  • nor children from their wives. Let them perish

  • by a fate like this, or one still worse!

    • (The Chorus of men of Thebes now suggests that Oedipus would do well to consult the blind prophet Teiresias. Oedipus reveals that he has already been summoned, and shortly he arrives, guided by a slave. The extracts begin with Oedipus’ address to Teiresias.)

A World of Heroes
  • Selections from Homer, Herodotus and Sophocles
  • 2nd edition
  • Joint Association of Classical Teachers' Greek Course
  • Published online:
    28 May 2018
    Print publication:
    19 February 2015
  • A World of Heroes is a reader designed for students who have just completed an introductory course in ancient Greek and wish to read substantial passages of ancient authors in the original language. It introduces three of ancient Greece's most important authors, Homer, Herodotus and Sophocles, and includes such gripping and influential stories as the battle of Thermopylai (from Herodotus' Histories); the death of Hektor (the Iliad) and the fall of Oedipus. Notes accompanying each passage provide extensive help with vocabulary and translation, and each section contains a brief introduction to the author and his work. The first edition of the book proved very successful with students and instructors for more than three decades. This, the second edition, includes the same texts as the first but provides much more help with translating and understanding them in order better to meet the needs of modern students.

Page 55 of 178