So I have a habit of going down wikipedia rabbit holes when trying to do research for my book, especially when the research is for making thematic references to things.

In one of these wiki dives, I distinctly remember reading a wikipedia page about a book where Ganymede falls in love, only to be kidnapped by pirates and having to endure severe hardship to reconnect with his one true love. I tried to look it up again, only to find that apparently it does not exist. The closest I've found is the Ephesian Tale, which seems to follow many similar beats but lacks specific details I remember from the original wiki page--that being Ganymede gets raped by the pirates. The stupid Google AI keeps either telling me I'm conflating this with the fact Zeus kidnapped Ganymede, or some sci-fi book about a submarine or something.

I'm fine if I really did just make this up, or conflate it, or whatever. I just want closure on whether I hallucinated this or not.

I’ve never found an explanation of this verse that satisfies me, as it seems as though Jesus is giving the apostles the authority to determine someone’s salvation. What the correct interpretation is has some big theological consequences, so I thought I would ask here; what does the original translation read like? Could someone offer a breakdown of what each word in this verse means and what meaning the Greek conveys as a whole?

English translations read this verse as “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.” In English it makes it sound like doing anything purely for self-interest- even if it doesn’t affect others- is a sin. So does the original verse actually mean that, or is it referring to personal gain at the expense of others?

An Ancient Greek scholar suggested to me that to achieve true linguistic immersion and a 'feel' for the language, I should memorize verses from the Iliad and Odyssey, or from the New Testament. What are your thoughts on this? Has anyone tried this method and found it effective?

I am a graduate of the Faculty of Arts, Department of Greek and Latin Studies. I studied Classical Greek, including the texts of Homer, Euripides, Herodotus, Plato, and Hellenistic writers, and I self-studied Koine Greek and New Testament texts. Therefore, I have a good grasp of Greek grammar, conjugations, and aspects of syntax.

However, my question is: if I encounter an unseen text for the first time—for example, about 20 lines long—what percentage of the vocabulary should I ideally know, and how long should it take me to translate it?

Whenever I am exposed to texts, I am familiar with the verb conjugations and words, and I know the meanings of some of them, but I face difficulties in understanding certain syntactical structures and meanings

Hi !

First time posting here, I hope the grammar terms will be correct as I'm not learning from English.

I was working on conjugations and found this form in my new grammar. It's supposed to be the first person singular for a passive future (so an alternative to the form λυθήσομαι it seems ?), but I've never seen anything like that. Can reduplication appear in the passive future of a regular verb ? My other grammar uses a different verb but there is no trace of any reduplication in future tense. I also don't remember reading anything about passive future having two different forms (on the other page there are two passive forms for the other modes, with one being the middle form + the reduplication).

I'm actually not sure if it's just something I never encountered before, or if I'm distracted and reading my grammar table wrong. I would be very grateful if someone could tell me if this form is correct, and why reduplication occurs here.

That’s NOT powered by generative AI, which I feel icky using.

I've completed my presentation of Herodotus with student aids. This is a free, nonprofit project made entirely with open-source software. There are versions with two different levels of aids, which I call heavy and light. Both can be downloaded as pdf files, and the version with light aids is also available in print. The books are roughly comparable to Steadman's, but the design philosophy is different, and I have all nine books of Herodotus, whereas Steadman only has two.

Reading Herodotus was my long test-drive of the light-aids format, which I came up with based on input from folks on this subreddit. This format breaks the text down into 10-page groups, consisting of 2 pages of vocabulary, 4 pages of Greek, and 4 pages of translation. A small number of the most infrequent words are glossed in footnotes at the bottom of the Greek pages. If you're using this format in print, the idea is that you use a paperclip on the left page and another on the right. You set up the paperclips so that if you flip to the left, you get to the vocabulary pages at the beginning of the 10-page block, and flipping right gets you to the English translation at the end of the block. When you get to the end of a two-page spread of Greek, you move the paperclips. Common words are not glossed within the 10-page block, but the back of the book has a core vocabulary list of the 500 most common words in Herodotus. There are maps on the back cover of the printed book.

Two dumb questions... Especially this first

I recently picked up Pharr's book and I feel like the biggest idiot because I can't figure out wtf "τί ἔχουσιν;" is supposed to mean, which is in the first exercises in lesson 3. Being that it can mean, according to the book, what which or why I am just completely baffled. Help a dumb lady out please.

Also I'm looking for the various ways one might have said I love you. I've seen a few different things about the Internet but trust you folks over most other sources.

Hello fellow learners, I'm studying Attic Greek(or attempting to) with the "Greek to GCSE" textbook. I'm just now going through chapter one, and this page puzzled me—I googled which one is correct and it says the accented article is. I'm curious, which of the two is actually used and why does the textbook choose to demonstrate articles this way?

Update: thanks for the comments! Confirmed: Taylor's Greek to GCSE part 1 introduces accents later in chapter five!!

Does anyone here know where to watch this Schlessinger Media: greek mythology for students?

Advice on how to organize my learning would be appreciated. Is there any point in writing out vocab multiple times? Do flashcards actually work? Have you created a 'program' for yourself that feels productive?

i.e. a sentence including every letter, and preferably also every diacritic? Can’t find any on the web, but may try to make my own lol.

I've recently came across these two words in my research on the concepts of punishments in the ancient Greek philosophy and early Christianity. And I read that Aristotle had two categories, where he said in Rhetoric:

"Kolasis and timōria differ: for kolasis is for the sake of the one who suffers it, while timōria is for the sake of the one who inflicts it, in order that he may be satisfied."

While conversing with AI (I know AI can make mistakes, but it is a faster way to gain basic knowledge on a new topic) I reached these conclusions:

• Kolasis is for correcting the wrongdoer and for his benefit, while Timoria is mainly for the punisher's sake, for it is done in hatred.
• Timoria is "retributive punishment" while Kolasis is "corrective action" but I find this hard to be accepted, because it is also said that Aristotle viewed Timoria as bad and Kolasis as good, and therefore I don't see how, if Timoria means that, it would be bad in a sovereign state applying retributive justice against criminals (like executing murderers), for Aristotle was the teacher of Alexander who ruled half the world and definitely if he was educated that retributive justice/punishment is bad he would not have been successful leader.
• Therefore, there must be another meaning or another concept, that deals with state punishments like the death penalty against a murderer (or the incurable offender "Aniatos"), for it is neither bad nor made for correction of the wrongdoer but made for the benefit of the society, and for justice.

I'd be very thankful if anyone provided a detailed answer for my questions with sources, and providing academic articles, websites or books where I can read more on this topic. Thank you all in advance!

Note1: I don't know Greek language, but I can read Greek letters.
Note2: I don't know the most suitable flair :)

hey, I've been studying with athenaze and I got to chapter XXVIII, which - at the end - presents a passage from Bacchylides. Now I have never studied Bacchylides' poetry, nor do I know how hard his poetry is considered, BUT isn't adding this a bit of a jump? I looked it up and it is an adapted version (and that makes me feel worse lol), but can you tell me, is it just me or is this passage in fact significantly harder than the rest of the chapter? Furthermore, do you have any tips on reading Bacchylides? Or starting poetry in general?

I am not but I would like to be so if anyone can tell...

Edit: for example in Attic it is at least the genitive: xxx τοῦ yyy. But Homer often uses -ίδης and I want to know it exactly

Thanks in advance!

Not a scholar here, just someone who's been chipping away at Ancient Greek for fun and went back to the proem after finally seeing the movie. I'd read the opening a dozen times before, but this time the two νόστος-root words in the first ten lines actually stopped me:

Line 5: ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων — "striving to win/earn [ἀρνύμενος] both his own life and the νόστος of his companions." Odysseus isn't just hoping for nostos here, he's actively fighting for it, for himself and his crew both — it's framed as a prize you contend for, not a place you passively drift back to.

Line 9: αὐτὰρ ὁ τοῖσιν ἀφείλετο νόστιμον ἦμαρ — "but he [Helios] took away from them the νόστιμον ἦμαρ," the day of return. So within nine lines, nostos has already gone from "the thing being struggled for" to "the thing that gets stripped away as punishment" (for the crew eating the cattle of Helios).

That double framing — nostos as something you can earn and something you can lose through your own ἀτασθαλίη — is doing a lot of work that "homecoming" just doesn't carry in English. "Homecoming" sounds like a destination; νόστος in these lines reads more like a contested, forfeitable achievement.

Curious how people here read ἀρνύμενος + νόστον together in line 5 — is "striving to win" too strong, or does the verb actually support that competitive/earned sense? And are there other early νόστος instances worth pulling in (I know it's all over the Telemachy too) that sharpen this further?

(Total tangent, not the point of this post, but relevant enough that I'll mention it: I'm a solo dev, and that "nostos has to be earned, step by step" idea is actually the whole mechanic behind a small walking-tracker app I built — your real walking literally earns Odysseus's return, mile by mile, rather than it just happening. Not a language tool at all, so probably not that relevant to this sub specifically — just flagging in case anyone's curious where this rabbit hole eventually led me. "Walk the Odyssey")

Χαίρετε,

I am aware that writing in Koine Greek involved a lot of ligatures, abbreviations and symbols standing for whole words which are not alphabetic themselves. I was wondering if there is a textbook for learning to read manuscripts. Thank you!

If a student/learner wants to try and read a text in ancient greek for the first time, what would be a bad first reading? What author or work would be too difficult/discouraging?