From Alpha to Omega

A Beginning Course in Classical Greek

Third Edition

Anne H. Groton St. Olaf College

Focus Publishing / R. Pullins Co. Newburyport MA 01950

Third Edition Copyright 2000 Anne H. Groton Printed in United States of America

10 9 8 7 Corrected and reprinted March 2001

ISBN 10: 1-58510-034-X ISBN 13: 978-1-58510-034-7

This book is published by Focus Publishing / R. Pullins Co., PO Box 369, Newburyport MA 01950. All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be produced on stage or otherwise performed, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted by any means electronic, mechanical, by photocopying, recording, or by any other media or means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

1006TS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface Lesson Lesson Lesson Lesson Lesson Lesson Lesson Lesson Lesson 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Introduction: The Greek Alphabet Introduction: The Greek Accents V-Verbs: Present Active Indicative, Present Active Infinitive, Present Active Imperative First Declension: Feminine Nouns, Part 1 First Declension: Feminine Nouns, Part 2 V-Verbs: Future Active Indicative, Future Active Infinitive Second Declension: Masculine Nouns Second Declension: Neuter Nouns; Adjectives: First/Second Declension First Declension: Masculine Nouns; Substantives V-Verbs: Imperfect Active Indicative; Correlatives V-Verbs: Middle/Passive Voice; Prepositions em; Enclitics Demonstratives Personal Pronouns Contract Verbs (-v, -v, -v); Contracted Futures Third Declension: Stop, Liquid, and Nasal Stems Third Declension: Sigma Stems; Adjectives: Third Declension xi 1 9 13 21 29 33 39 45 53 59 65 73 79 83 89 97 103

Lesson 10 Lesson 11 Lesson 12 Lesson 13 Lesson 14 Lesson 15 Lesson 16 Lesson 17 Lesson 18

V-Verbs: First Aorist Active and Middle Indicative, First Aorist Active and Middle Infinitives, First Aorist Active and Middle Imperative 109

iii

iv
Lesson 19 V-Verbs: Second Aorist Active and Middle Indicative, Second Aorist Active and Middle Infinitives, Second Aorist Active and Middle Imperative; Reflexive Pronouns V-Verbs: Perfect Active Indicative, Perfect Active Infinitive; Pluperfect Active Indicative Interrogative tw and Indefinite tiw V-Verbs: Perfect Middle/Passive Indicative, Perfect Middle/Passive Infinitive; Pluperfect Middle/Passive Indicative Relative Pronouns; pw; Expressions of Time V-Verbs: Present Active Participle, Future Active Participle, First and Second Aorist Active Participles, Perfect Active Participle V-Verbs: Present Middle/Passive Participle, Future Middle Participle, First and Second Aorist Middle Participles, Perfect Middle/Passive Participle Direct and Indirect Questions; Alternative Questions V-Verbs: Aorist Passive Tense V-Verbs: Future Passive Tense; Future Perfect Active and Middle/Passive Tenses; oda Third Declension: Vowel Stems, Syncopated Stems Deponent Verbs; Genitive Absolute; ew; odew /mhdew Adverbs: Positive Degree; Result Clauses Adjectives and Adverbs: Comparative and Superlative Degrees; Genitive of Comparison; Partitive Genitive Adjectives and Adverbs: Irregular Comparative and Superlative Degrees; -uw, -eia, -u Adjectives; Dative of Degree of Difference Numerals Subjunctive Mood: Present, Aorist, Perfect Tenses; Active, Middle, Passive Voices; Independent Uses of the Subjunctive (Hortatory, Prohibitive, Deliberative) Optative Mood: Present, Future, Aorist, Perfect Tenses; Active, Middle, Passive Voices; Independent Uses of the Optative (Wishes, Potentiality) Conditions Conditional Relative Clauses; Relative Adverbs Purpose Clauses

117 125 133 139 147 153

Lesson 20 Lesson 21 Lesson 22 Lesson 23 Lesson 24 Lesson 25

161 167 175 183 189 195 203 211 219 227

Lesson 26 Lesson 27 Lesson 28 Lesson 29 Lesson 30 Lesson 31 Lesson 32 Lesson 33 Lesson 34 Lesson 35

235

Lesson 36

243 251 257 265

Lesson 37 Lesson 38 Lesson 39

v
Lesson 40 Lesson 41 Lesson 42 Lesson 43 Lesson 44 Lesson 45 Lesson 46 Lesson 47 Lesson 48 Lesson 49 Lesson 50 emi; Indirect Discourse (ti/w) fhm; Indirect Discourse (with infinitive) Indirect Discourse (with participle); Crasis More Uses of the Infinitive; prn Verbal Adjectives in -tow and -tw Clauses of Effort and Fear MI-Verbs (ddvmi, sthmi) MI-Verbs (tyhmi, hmi) MI-Verbs (deknumi); Unattainable Wishes banv, gignskv; Directional Suffixes; Accusative of Respect Redundant m; Uses of m o and o m; Attraction of Relative Pronoun Word Lists Greek-to-English Glossary English-to-Greek Glossary Appendixnouns, definite article, pronouns, adjectives, numerals, adverbs, verbs Index 271 279 287 295 303 311 319 329 339 347 355 363 381 413 443 497

PREFACE
When I set out to write From Alpha to Omega during my sabbatical in 1990-91, I was motivated by the desire to produce an elementary Greek textbook that would fit the St. Olaf College calendar, the St. Olaf College student, and the vigorously traditional St. Olaf College Classics curriculum. This meant that the book had to be divided into no more than fifty chapters, half of them to be completed each semester; that every grammatical concept had to be explained clearly and carefully, in language neither too simple nor too sophisticated; and that the readings for each lesson had to be selected with a view toward preparing students to read Plato in their third semester of Greek. Because we have only three class meetings per week, I limited the number of exercises in each chapter to ten Greek-to-English translation sentences, five English-toGreek translation sentences, and (beginning in Lesson 5) one short reading. I also restricted to ten or so the number of vocabulary words to be memorized per lesson. In a society no longer inclined to value a Classical education, those motivated enough to study ancient Greek need all the encouragement they can get. For this reason I strove to make the textbook as pleasant and accessible as possible without sacrificing its rigor. The sentences to be translated in each chapter are designed to help students learn the vocabulary words and constructions introduced in that lesson, while reviewing familiar ones. The readings give students experience in translating whole paragraphs of more or less real Greek, in which new vocabulary and syntax are mixed with old. I drew the readings for Lessons 5-25 from Aesops most amusing and curious fables. For Lessons 26-50 I chose what I thought were interesting as well as instructive passages, usually spread over two or more lessons, from the New Testament, Demosthenes, Xenophon, Thucydides, Lysias, Arrian, Aristotle, and Plato. Although I was wary of overwhelming the students with too many glosses and explanatory notes, I did try in each reading to retain as much as I could of the original Greek. At the back of the textbook are chapter-by-chapter word lists, followed by Greek-to-English and English-to-Greek glossaries containing

xi

xii
all vocabulary words and all other words found in the readings, along with the number(s) of the lesson(s) in which they appear. The book concludes with an appendix of paradigms (including the dual forms not explicitly taught in the textbook) and an index. It has been a happy surprise to me to discover that the books format suits other academic schedules as well as St. Olafs. For example, all fifty lessons have been covered successfully in one and a half semesters by a class that meets four times per week, in two ten-week trimesters by a class that meets five times per week, and in a nine-week summer intensive course. When pressed for time, some teachers have preferred to assign only the sentences, not the reading, in each lesson; others have continued to assign all the readings but only half or so of the sentences. Students are free to use the skipped exercises for additional practice or for review before a quiz or examination. From Alpha to Omega would never have seen the light of day without the wise counsel and support of my St. Olaf colleagues, particularly Professor James May, and without the talents of the obliging staff at Focus Publishing. I am also grateful to my colleagues at other schools who were daring enough to test a brand-new textbook and with their eagle eyes spotted scores of typos and other errors that I had missed. Let me single out for special thanks Professors John Gibert (University of Colorado), Clara Shaw Hardy (Carleton College), John Lenz (Drew University), Leslie Mechem (Skidmore College), and Richard Wevers (Calvin College). Finally, I wish to thank all the dedicated students who struggled cheerfully and patiently through one of the earlier versions of the book and succeeded in learning Greek even from its flawed pages. I hope that they will be pleased with this final version of a textbook created not only for them but, to a large extent, by them. k padvn smikrn rjmenoi, mxri oper n zsi, ka didskousi ka nouyetosin. From early childhood, their whole lives through, people teach and admonish them. Platos Protagoras 325c

Preface to the Third Edition

For the corrections and improvements in this third edition, I am indebted to a whole host of enthusiastic students and colleagues. My sincere thanks to all of you.

1.

2.

Lesson 1 1

LESSON 1

INTRODUCTION
The Greek Alphabet

rx d toi misu pantw (Well begun is half done.) one of Pythagoras sayings, quoted by Iamblichus in Pythagoras 162

Greek belongs to a large and colorful family of Indo-European languages, all thought to be descended from a very old (and now lost) language spoken by people who roamed over the Eurasian continent during prehistoric times. Other prominent members of the family are the Italic (including Latin and the Romance languages), Germanic (including English), Celtic, Baltic, Slavic (including Russian), Armenian, Iranian, and Indic languages. The Greek language has been in continuous use for more than three thousand years; its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation have been evolving gradually over the centuries. There is a great deal of difference between, say, Greek of the seventh century B.C. and Greek of the first century A.D., even though they are both ancient from our point of view. Moreover, each geographical region of Greece had its own dialect. Some authors wrote in their native dialect; others, working within an established literary genre, wrote in the dialect(s) that tradition demanded. The ancient Greek taught in this book is Classical in date and Attic in dialect. It is the sort of Greek that would have been used by educated people during Greeces Classical age (roughly the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.). These were glory days for Athensartistically and intellectually as well as militarily. Much of the literature surviving from the Classical period is written in Attic, the dialect of the Athenians (Attica is the name of the district that includes Athens). The philosopher Plato, the orators Lysias and Demosthenes, the historians Thucydides and 1

2 Lesson 1 Xenophon, the comic playwright Aristophanesto name just a few of Athens most famous authorsall wrote in Attic. Once you are familiar with Attic, you will find it relatively easy to learn Greeks other literary dialects: Epic (e.g., Homers Iliad and Odyssey), Ionic (e.g., Herodotus Histories), Doric (e.g., the choral songs in Attic tragedies), Aeolic (e.g., Sapphos poetry). Knowledge of Classical Greek also equips you to read Greek of the Hellenistic age, the period following the Classical age. The local dialects gradually died out and were replaced by Koine (the name means common), a dialect derived in large part from Attic and used from the third century B.C. to the sixth century A.D. throughout the Greek-speaking world. The New Testament is written in a literary form of Koine. In 403 B.C., after years of using their own alphabet, the Athenians officially adopted the more precise alphabet used by speakers of the Ionic dialect (a close relative of the Attic dialect). This Ionic alphabet became standard for Greek; in later centuries the Coptic, Gothic, Armenian, and Cyrillic alphabets were derived from it. (Our Roman alphabet goes back to the Greek inhabitants of Chalcis in Euboea, who spoke an AtticIonic dialect; when they colonized parts of Italy, they passed on their alphabet to the Etruscans, from whom the Romans acquired it.) Of the Greek alphabets twenty-four letters, the first nineteen were adapted from letters in the Phoenician alphabet and thus have Semitic names; the last five were invented by the Greeks. Only the large, capital forms of the letters existed in antiquity. It was not until the ninth century A.D. that scribes devised cursive forms that could be written quickly; these evolved into the small letters now in use. The pronunciations suggested below are those thought by scholars to have been used during the Classical age. Pronunciations enclosed in square brackets are less authentic but more commonly used today.

3.

Lesson 1 3 THE ALPHABET OF CLASSICAL GREEK Greek Letter A a B b G g D E Z H Y I K L M N J O P R S T U F X C V 4. d e z h y i k l m n j o p r s, w t u f x c v Equivalent to a b g d e z e th i k, c l m n x o p r s t y, u ph kh, ch ps o Name of Letter lfa alpha bta beta gmma gamma dlta ciln zta ta yta ta kppa lmbda m n j mikrn p = sgma ta ci?ln f x c mga delta epsilon1 zeta eta theta iota kappa lambda mu nu xi omicron pi rho sigma2 tau upsilon phi chi psi omega Pronounced like the italicized letter(s) in the English word: ah better gamble; before g, k, m, j, x = nasalized n [or before m = gamble] delete etch wisdom [or gadzooks] error [or ace] sweetheart [or author] pizza [or i = pit; i = pizza] candy lantern music nuclear taxi off pillow rockyrolled or trilled -r signal; before b, g, d, m = z tardy French u [or u = foot; u = boot] uphill [or telephone] backhand [or candy or German -ch] tipsy aw [or oh]

Of Greeks seven vowels (a, e, h, i, o, u, v), e and o are always short; h and v are the long versions of e and o; a, i, and u are sometimes short, sometimes long. Short and long refer to the vowels quantity (i.e., the duration of its sound); in the Classical age long vowels were held out about twice as long as short ones. Apparently the quality (i.e., the sound) of a, i, and u did not change much when those vowels were held out; h and v, on the other hand, were not only longer but also more open in pronunciation than their short counterparts, e and o.
1 2

After epsilon used to come digamma, W (sounding like w), until it fell out of use. Sigma has the form w only when it is the last letter in a word; otherwise it appears as s. Some scholars prefer to use !, a lunate sigma; it has the same shape regardless of where it comes in the word.

4 Lesson 1 5. A diphthong is two vowels combined in pronunciation; the sound of the first either merges with or glides into the sound of the second. The two vowels together form one long syllable. Classical Greek has eleven diphthongs. The first eight listed below are called proper diphthongs because, in each of them, both vowels continued to be pronounced. The last three in the list are called improper diphthongs because the iota in each of them eventually became a silent letter (in the Classical age, however, it was still pronounced). PROPER DIPHTHONGS AI Ai ai AU Au au EI Ei ei EU Eu eu HU Hu hu OI OU UI Oi Ou Ui oi ou ui Pronounced like the italicized letter(s) in the English word: aisle ouch eight etch gliding into -oo error gliding into -oo [or ace gliding into -oo] oily ooze French u gliding into -ee [or ui = wee]

IMPROPER DIPHTHONGS AI HI VI Ai Hi Vi & ah gliding into -ee [or exactly as a] error gliding into -ee [or exactly as h] aw gliding into -ee [or exactly as v]

When written on the same line as the other vowel, the iota is called an iota adscript; when written below the line, it is called an iota subscript. The ancient Greeks always wrote the iota as an adscript, but since the eleventh or twelfth century, it has been more customary to use subscripts in improper diphthongs, except when the a?, h, or v (and/or the i itself) is capitalized. NOTE During the Classical period the letters epsilon, omicron, upsilon, and omega had the names e, o, , and . The longer names they now have (meaning plain e, small o, plain u, big o) were created for claritys sake by grammarians in the Byzantine age; by then o had come to sound like v, and the diphthongs ai and oi had come to be pronounced like the plain vowels e and u, causing confusion. Many Greek words begin with an h-sound followed by a vowel or a diphthong; this h-sound (called aspiration) is indicated not by a letter but by a mark () called a rough breathing, which is placed above the vowel or above the second letter of a proper diphthong (e.g., -, a-). If the word does not begin with an h-sound, a smooth breathing () is used instead (e.g., -, a-). Every vowel or diphthong that comes at the begin-

6.

Lesson 1 5 ning of a word must have a breathing to show whether it is aspirated (rough) or unaspirated (smooth). A breathing is placed to the left of a capital letter (e.g., H-, E-) unless the capital letter is part of a proper diphthong (e.g., E- ). In an improper diphthong the breathing goes above the first vowel, never above the iota (e.g., -, i-, Ai-). A word beginning with upsilon or rho always has rough breathing ( -, u-, = -). Rho is the only consonant ever written with a breathing. Of Greeks seventeen consonants , nine are stops (also called mutes); these are further classified as labials (p, b, f), dentals (t, d, y), or palatals (k, g, x). Two are liquids (l, r); two are nasals (m, n); one is a sibilant (s); three are double consonants: z (= sd, later ds), j (= ks, gs, or xs), c (= ps, bs, or fs). A Greek word is not permitted to end in any consonant except n, r, w, j, and c. (The words k and ok, which both end in kappa, are the only exceptions to this rule.) If one stop (p, b, f, t, d, y, k, g, x) is followed by a different stop or by a liquid (l, r) or a nasal (m, n), they are usually pronounced together (e.g., fy, bd, kt, yl, xr, gm, pn). If one liquid or nasal is followed by a different liquid or nasal or by a stop, they are pronounced separately (e.g., r|n, l|y, m|p; mn is an exception). Repeated consonants are always separately pronounced (e.g., l|l, p|p, r|r, s|s, t|t), as are the two sounds in a double consonant (z, j, c). When a sigma is followed by another consonant (not s), they may be pronounced either separately or together. A Greek word has as many syllables as it has vowels and diphthongs (e.g., ye-a = 2 syllables). If a vowel or diphthong is separated from the next vowel or diphthong by one consonant or by two or more consonants pronounced together, the break between the syllables comes right after that vowel or diphthong (e.g., f- la, -kron, o- strow [s regarded as part of the consonant cluster]). If there are two or more intervening consonants, of which the first two are separately pronounced, the syllabic break comes between those two consonants (e.g., fl-la, rxvn, n-yraj, os-trow [s regarded as a separate sound]). Since it is impossible to show the break in a double consonant, just put a hyphen before the double consonant (e.g., t-jiw). Greeks in the Classical age used little, if any, spacing or punctuation. Later, four punctuation marks were devised: the comma (,) and the period (.), exactly like their English counterparts; the colon or high dot (:), corresponding to a semi-colon or colon in English; and the question mark (;), equivalent to an English question mark. There are no special marks to indicate exclamations or quotations; some publishers of ancient Greek texts now use modern quotation and exclamation marks for their readers convenience.

7.

8.

9.

WORD LISTS

LESSON 3 grfv ylv yv ka (ka...ka) klptv m o paidev spedv fulttv LESSON 4 gor ew k n pistol suxa ye pmpv skhn xra LESSON 5 kov blptv dspoina pe peid ylatta

yerpaina kelev klnh mora (Mora) ra LESSON 5 READING gnov lektrun boleuma nnuxow diow ponv LESSON 6 ll (ll') llttv dikv ti xv krh (Krh) mllv mhkti oka okti plin LESSON 6 READING Afrodth gal gamv e mw 363

364 Word Lists neanaw peirv trpow LESSON 7 delf delfw nyrvpow p (p', f') yew ppow lyow lph dw potamw xarv xar LESSON 7 READING liew blpv lkv mpeira st(n) xyw rxomai polw sagnh LESSON 8 gayw jiow polepv bow dron rgon erskv yhsaurw kalw lepv tknon t futn LESSON 8 READING mpelow gevrgw dlow peirv poiv skptv LESSON 9 ynatow njiow despthw doulev dolh dolow leyerow kakw mayhtw neanaw okthw prterow LESSON 9 READING bursodchw exomai keramew khpourw now poyv polw LESSON 10 lyeia d (d') ynatow (Ynatow) kndunow lgv mn mn...d mn... d prttv fegv flh flow

This third edition of From Alpha to Omega is accompanied by Ancillary Exercises by Jon Bruss 0-941051-61-7 Answer Key by John Gibert 0-941051-19-6

For the complete list of titles available from Focus Publishing, additional student materials, and online ordering, visit www.pullins.com.

ISBN 10: 1-58510-034-X

Focus Publishing

I S B N 978-1-58510-034-7

R. Pullins Company PO Box 369 Newburyport, MA 01950 www.pullins.com

781585 100347