Honestly, I don't remember if I approached it with any plan. I probably learned the vocab pretty thoroughly, because I hate dictionary work when reading, and spent time reading and rereading the texts.
I remember finishing Book I of the English edition but I'm pretty sure I didn't get very far with Book II. At that point, I think I could muddle my way through easy-ish prose with some guesswork and some dictionary work so I think I shifted to more reading, using readers and the like*. But, to be fair, my Greek never was that great, certainly not up to par with my Latin.
*Not heavily annotated extracts of Classical authors but rather things like Salamis in easy Attic Greek and Chambers' Greek War of Independence (1821-1827). The goal was always to read a lot rather than agonising over a few lines.
At some point (and this mirrored what happened to my Latin), I realised I was more interested in Late Antiquity/Christian works than in Classical literature, which was fortunate since it provided me with a lot of not too difficult texts. I'm especially fond of things like the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, the Pratum Spirituale, etc. All of these can be read using the bilingual Greek-Latin Patrologia Latina, which was a great way to work on both languages at the same time. Around that time, I also made use of Whitacre's A Patristic Greek Reader.
Initiation au Grec Ancien by Vernhes and other Ancient Greek Resources
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Re: Initiation au Grec Ancien by Vernhes and other Ancient Greek Resources
guyome wrote:At some point (and this mirrored what happened to my Latin), I realised I was more interested in Late Antiquity/Christian works than in Classical literature, which was fortunate since it provided me with a lot of not too difficult texts. I'm especially fond of things like the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, the Pratum Spirituale, etc. All of these can be read using the bilingual Greek-Latin Patrologia Latina, which was a great way to work on both languages at the same time. Around that time, I also made use of Whitacre's A Patristic Greek Reader.
Are there specific editions of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers or the Pratum Spirituale you would recommend or did you access them online?
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Re: Initiation au Grec Ancien by Vernhes and other Ancient Greek Resources
guyome wrote:At some point (and this mirrored what happened to my Latin), I realised I was more interested in Late Antiquity/Christian works than in Classical literature, which was fortunate since it provided me with a lot of not too difficult texts.
It basically reflects my experience as well and I can only regret that the majority of textbook materials fetishize 'Classical' Latin and Greek.
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Re: Initiation au Grec Ancien by Vernhes and other Ancient Greek Resources
At that time (around 2009), I think I mostly read them from Migne's Patrologia Graeca (vol. 65 for the Sayings and vol. 87 for the Pratum). Probably not the best edition around but it is easily found online and, as I mentioned, the Greek-Latin layout was a big plus for me.cito wrote:Are there specific editions of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers or the Pratum Spirituale you would recommend or did you access them online?
Later (around 2017), I asked Santa for Fr. Jean-Claude Guy's 3-volume modern scientific edition of the Sayings. It is published as part of the Sources Chrétiennes collection, which means it is a bilingual Greek-French edition with a critical apparatus. The volumes in this collection are pricey (link to vol. I of the Sayings) but their scholarship is generally well regarded, as far as I can tell.
I'm not a huge fan of bilingual editions (I find them too distracting) but by that time my reading skills had decayed thoroughly for lack of use and I was glad to have these volumes.
Here is a page from volume II of Guy's edition:
As for the Pratum, I don't know if there's a good edition somewhere. The Sources Chrétiennes volume is French only, as were the very first few volumes of the collection.
All this talk made me eager to brush up on my Greek now!
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