Customer Reviews

Homeric Greek II: 002 (Reading Course in Homeric Greek)

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Traditional courses in Greek that begin with the Attic dialect have had to contend with a major obstacle: finding clear and accessible Greek that will convince students that learning the language is worth the effort. Plato is often obscure, Xenophon can be boring. But Homer, though he writes in an artificial dialect, is always clear, always engaging, and has the advantage of being the fountain of Greek literature. Schoder's textbook, like Clyde Pharr's, is an attempt to bring the best of Greek literature to the beginning student. Volume One is devoted to the basics of Greek grammar and begins with Book 9 of the Odyssey. Volume Two rounds out the grammar and continues with selections from the Iliad. A student who has worked through both volumes will be ready to read the Greek lyric poets and begin reading prose with Herodotus. Classicists, in their conservative desire to begin with "good Attic," are usually wary of such an approach, but are probably secretly envious of students who can begin at the beginning, and with the best. The transition to reading Attic is not difficult, and Schoder provides some guidelines on how to make the switch. The student who gives up his or her studies after working through this method will go away feeling satisfied, and can dabble in Homer with ease. The only caveat is that this book has frequent misprints, so it would be advisable for the independent student to check the paradigms and exercises with a good lexicon (Cunliffe's is best for general purposes)and the paradigms in Clyde Pharr's textbook as well, which has fewer misprints (but is otherwise not as user-friendly). The format is clear and attractive. The text is generously supplied with photos of Greek monuments and artworks. An inspirational quote stands at the beginning of each lesson, usually from a historical figure (e.g. Thomas Jefferson, Oliver Wendell Holmes) about the joys and benefits of learning Greek. An excellent and adventurous way to approach Greek for the high school or college student.

update: The publisher has made the first eighty pages (which go up to the middle of Chapter 24) of this book available as a free sample to download, on their website "pullins dot com." So you can order the book now and start studying today with the free sample while you wait for your hard copy to arrive.

As others have mentioned, you need book 1 first. It took me about a year to track it down, but I did find eventually.

The strong point of this book is that there are a lot of exercises. Your vocabulary really gets a good work-out.

On the down-side, the book was written assuming that students would have a teacher, so important things like the difference between the aorist and the imperfect are handled in only one paragraph.

The other issue I have is that a lot of the exercises are drawn from the New Testament, which is Koine Greek, and translated into the Homeric dialect. This is a bit like a Latin course giving quotes from Dante translated into classical Latin--sure, it can be done, but it makes more sense to use the original language. (Other exercises are drawn from Plato, Aristotle, et al, also not Homeric, but not as distant as Koine)

This is the second book, but it there doesn't seem to mention of that. Without the first book, which is out of print, it seems to be to pretty much a waste of money to spend on unless you can get that first book. Everywhere I looked for that first book I could not find it.

There is no mention that this is merely book 2 of a three book series. What good is book 2 without, at least, book 1 which is out of print. I returned my copy. Save your money.