Le Baron wrote:He read entire texts (in Latin and Greek) in parts live on YT during the lockdown.
If he worked with the texts before his online sessions and then discussed them, it doesn't mean he sight read them in the first place.
As a nonnative English speaker I'm pretty comfortable in everyday and academic situations (though my English is, of course, not perfect). And although not a native speaker, I can easily read out loud a random play of Shakespeare. However, if I haven't read this play before with a dictionary and glosses, a lot of things would still escape me.
It's the same with Latin and Greek. In general, good readers of Classics are re-readers. Here's a
relevant article. I don't agree with all the claims it makes (and the pessimistic conclusions). But it signals some difficulties — a long tail of low frequency words which in case of highly crafted and sophisticated texts are essential for understanding the author's idea. The only way you can store them in your long term memory is either by constant reviewing of vocabulary, or by limiting your expertise to specific texts.
In general though, isn't it the same correlation between speaking and reading classical works in living languages? You can feel pretty comfortable in your L2 otherwise, while reading classics (depending on the author, of course) might still be a significant challenge. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that I'm separated from Goethe by 200 years, while in case of Latin and Greek it is 2000 and even more.