John P. Piazza, M.A.

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Teaching Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek can be taught as a real language as well, though fewer people are doing this than with Latin. For those who are interested, I have collected a few resources here which will hopefully be of some help to teachers. If you have any suggestions or contributions, please do forward them to me.

W. H. D. Rouse. A Greek Boy at Home. Blackie and Son, 1909.

This is a graded continuous and entertaining narrative, which would make a great supplement to any curriculum. Long out of print, so here is a pdf of the whole thing (22mb). You can also download the vocabulary for this book, which contains many Greek synonyms instead of English equivalents This reader is meant to accompany his First Greek Course, also in pdf for download.

Akropolis World News.

A summary of world news in ancient Greek. Unfortunately, this site is no longer producing new material, but there are extensive archives. Perhaps someone out there would like to continue this worthwhile project.

Peckett and Munday. Thrasymachus: a New Greek Course. Bristol Classical Press, 1965 and later reprints.

Each chapter begins with an extensive narrative or dialogue in Greek, followed by a dicsussion of the grammatical concepts. These authors are influenced by Rouse’s approach, as they acknowledge in the preface. An online supplement can be found here and here.

Saffire and Freis. Ancient Greek Alive. University of North Carolina Press.

This book includes classrooom scripts, samples of which can be downloaded here.

Balme and Lawall Athenaze: an Introdiction to Ancient Greek.

This is a two volume-course which is structured much like the Oxford Latin Course, in that it is a reading appoach, which is meant to be used in high school as well as college classrooms. Luigi Miraglia has adapted the Italian edition to emulate Hans Ørberg’s Latin textbook, Lingua Latina per se Illustrata, and if you are willing to encounter some Italian, it may be worth tracking down. Order it directly from Luigi. View a description here: http://www.vivariumnovum.it/Libri_greci.htm

Woodhouse. English-Greek Dictionary. Online searchable version.

http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/Woodhouse/

English to Greek disctionaries are the most difficult to find, because it is assumed that nobody is composing in Greek, and that the English-Greek section of most textbooks will suffice for the basic exercises. Woodhouse is out of print and very expensive, so it is nice to find an online version. For smaller dictionaries, see the Oxford Pocket Classical Greek Dictionary by Morewood and Taylor, as well as the vocabulary in the back of North and Hilliard’s Greek Prose Composition.