This is intended to be an invitation from a student of Ancient Greek to others who may want to join a 'virtual classroom'. An instructor may not be there 'in person' at all times, or he/she will perhaps not always be the same person; however, the classes are available for whoever is available. Students will hopefully ask one another questions and try to find asnswers to questions while studying, just like I imagine colleagues in a regular classroom would do.

Biblical Greek

The basic material used for this class is Gresham Machen's 'New Testament Greek for Beginners'. I have chosen it simply because it was my first Greek manual. Moreover, it already is in the public domain and is available on the Internet, so it was quite readily available to be converted into HTML as presented here.

Additional material has been included, mainly in relation with pronounciation and accent; this is indicated in the basic text of Machen's manual as applicable. Audio samples have been included in the first few lessons for vocabularies and paradigms.

Actually, the idea of this 'virtual classroom' came after I completed a study of about half of Machen's manual and wanted to find a way to continue the study in some kind of systematic manner. I imagined that other people may want to join, and lessons may be added as needed. Even though the possibility was there that nobody would join this initiative, I thought that it would bring about some learning benefit for me anyway, by systematically submitting myself to processing the material - reading, writing, etc.

It should be mentioned that English is not my native language. Indeed, I began preparing the material in Romanian language, but, since the basic source (Machen's manual) is in English, I thought it was just fair to make this idea easy to find and check for English speaking persons.

An Answer Key is provided for the translation exercises:

The Iliad

The material related to Book I has been prepared as a support for a reading group. It contained originally the Homeric text, an English translation and a scansion of it. The Koine paraphrase by Theodorus Gaza was later added, following this thread on textkit.com forum. The other books have also been added in the meantime.

Herodotus' Histories - Book 1

This material has been prepared as a support for a reading group. The Greek text is presented here together with additional tools, such as vocabularies and gramatical notes, as published by Geoffrey Steadman in his Herodotus’ Histories Book 1, Greek Text with Facing Vocabulary and Commentary, 2nd Edition". This material is being revised as the activity of the reading group goes on.

Pronounciation

Says Machen:

'Throughout the entire study, great care should be devoted to pronunciation, and the Greek sentences should always be read aloud both in the preparation of the lessons and in the work of the classroom. In this way the language will be learned not only by the eye, but also by the ear, and will be fixed much more firmly in the memory.'

As there appear to be several opinions among scholars and students regarding the pronounciation system to be used, I have made my choice, which is described in this material.

Audio Samples

The related page contains Ancient Greek text, read in accordance with the pronunciation system proposed in this material.

Vasile Stancu