/lit/ - Literature

>>10955721
what is the best latin poem and what is the best greek poem?

High school senior here.
How are my chances of actually getting a job after PhD? What am I supposed to do while in college?

I don't want to slave away in an engineering position. I like math and the idea of electrical engineering but I'm not going to be comfortable in making useless machines all day and working more on a spring than innovating/creating a family.

I don't have parents
Someone help me.

>>10955721

Are any of the great classical authors slowly falling out of favor? Can you think of any?

A number of figures are regaining their former luster, but I wonder if the converse is also true.

>>10955775
You know how absurd this question is, right? Ah well. Traditional answers: The Aeneid and The Iliad/Odyssey. If you want my opinions, ask more specific questions.

>>10955777
I didn't have a family either. It's okay; it's all up to you now.

STEM is a much safer path for job security. I would not suggest you study the humanities if you aren't going to one of the top schools in the country and you are not confident that you can adapt to different lifestyles. That being said, it's easy to double major if you take your studies seriously, and I am immensely happier as I am than I would be as a code monkey.

>>10955810
All the time. Tides of study are fickle. No one cares much about Lucretius outside of academic anymore, for instance, whereas Statius is coming back in a big way.

>>10955721
why should i bother learning latin as opposed to deepening my understanding of greek

>>10955824
>No one cares much about Lucretius outside of academic anymore, for instance

Wow. That's crazy.

I've also noticed regional differences. They care a lot more about certain figures in France than in the anglo world, but I suppose that shouldn't shock anyone.

>>10955721
Who's the best Greek lyric? Your favourite satyrical writer? Why do you browse here?

What does ξανθός mean?

"στῆ δ’ ὄπιθεν, ξανθῆς δὲ kόμης ἕλε Πηλεΐωνα"

>>10955721
I have one great rec, one good rec and one shitty generic rec. Can I go to a good grad school?

>>10955721
I remember you, you were great. However, as a STEMfag, I have to ask you; how often do you have to publish papers in your field? Or does it work somehow differently for humanities?

>>10955855
>ξανθός
not that guy, but it means "fair" or "golden"
in your sentence i think it's referring to hair

>>10955721
Would you agree with the statement: "The Iliad is ancient Greek Dragon Ball Z"?
>>10955777
Nice trips. EE major here graduating in a month. I don't want to practice engineering either, so I'm not- I've got a comfy corporate job with a nice career trajectory lined up. Engineering is a degree that can prepare you for anything- law, medicine, academia, consulting, business, you name it. As long as you have an engineering degree, the absolute worst case scenario is you have an intellectually stimulating $80k/yr 9-5 job.
Electrical engineering is good, too, since there's a lot of subdisciplines within EE that are miles away from "making useless machines all day," like DSP.
You say family is a priority for you- that alone is reason to study engineering. Family requires stability, and engineering provides that.
Sorry for the rant- just my two cents.

>>10955916
I appreciate your wisdom.
Congratulations for making it through and getting a life line up.

Do you think academia is possible, then? I heard you need experience first. I was thinking that would only be the case if you were researching strictly engineering principles

>>10955916
>The Iliad is ancient Greek Dragon Ball Z
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West

>>10955956
Engineering->academia directly doesn't really happen, and you wouldn't want to anyway. If you get an engineering PhD you can make much better money in industry- you do that for a while, make your riches, and then go back to academia for a comfy lifestyle, not so much for the money. If you want to be a pure academic, engineering is not the discipline to do that in.
Best of luck with your life, anon.
>>10955958
Yes, Chinese Dragon Ball Z exists.

>>10955827
Do both. Iif you love literature, it is strange you wouldn't want to get closer to it in any way possible.

>>10955833
Even crazier how much research is regional. We all pretend like we are up to date on the French German Italian stuff, but to be frank language insulates us more than we admit.

>>10955839
We have too little Greek lyric to pick favorites. You could read the entire canon in an afternoon. Satire is a catch all genre. If you count Petronius, the Cena. If not, the golden ass. Juvenal is about the only author I don't like reading. I browse out of habit. The "start with the Greeks" meme picked up around here when I was starting to seriously study Classics and shitposting was a nice break in the day. I mainly left after /pol/ but was thinking about this board last week and came back.

>>10955855
>>10955895
That poster was right. Talking about Achilles' ("Peleioona's", son of Peleus') "tawny" hair. Iliad somewhere, I'm sure. If you can figure out what color that really is, you'll be a famous classicist.

>>10955864
No way. Get 3 at least good recs.

>>10955866
Idk what stem is really like, but it's a constant pressure over here. CV's of the more established candidates run like 8 pages long with papers and conference talks. Publish or perish.

>>10955916
More like the dark souls of classics (but actually wtf are you talking about)

>>10955824
why Statius? is Thebaid that good? some archaeological link to the text?

>>10955721
why are you all such gay, bloodsucking, ugly faggots? why are you so weak?

>>10955721
So what's the consensus on the Homer translations? I missed the thread.

>>10956004
>wtf are you talking about
Dragon Ball Z is popular because it codified the battle shonen genre. Big fights, larger-than-life protagonists, and a certain visceral thrill- "did he just move so fast we couldn't even see it!?"
The Iliad certainly has more depth in its themes, such as in Achilles' struggle with mortality. But it seems to me much of the Iliad's appeal is its similar epic scale. Did Diomedes just throw an entire boulder at Hector? Did Achilles just fight a river and win? Did Goku just go Super Saiyan?
So allow me to ask a better question. Obviously, the Iliad was popular among the Greeks. Was its popularity more due to its thematic depth or the epic scale of the story and its characters?

How similar are Latin to Italian and ancient Greek to modern Greek? I am an Aramaic speaker who, like many speakers today, has never taken one class in the language, and I can understand 80% of classical Syriac (which was spoken and written in the pre-Byzantine Roman Empire and was influenced by Koine Greek) after just listening to it for dozens of hours. I was just wondering how much the change is compared to those two. I think not a lot. My dialect was not spoken in the same area.

>>10956103
At least 80%.

>>10956103
>Latin to Italian
Mutually incomprehensible by far. Worse than reading Middle English, but not as bad as Old English.
If you want to properly get that, download the Canterbury Tales and try to read it.

>>10956052
Nah, not arch. I can't answer too thoroughly because I haven't read the original, just translations, but my hunch is just that it's an epic less dissected in the past. Fresh ground. Was considered "derivative" for a long time.

>>10956062
As far as academics see it:
Fagles for average readers / high school
Fitzgerald for poetic homer
Lattimore for student and those that want to get closer to text
Pope for English poetry, but not really classics

>>10956095
the ancient critics who wrote on homer, who memorized these poems, who were obsessed with them, just as the poems' students over time who chose to write literature responding to Homer were less interested in the "blockbuster" effect you are alluding to than the poem as an aesthetic and human document. I can't comment on DBZ's literary merits, but homer lives because most every poet and author since has felt the need to respond to these poems, often viscerally. But of course, the question is impossible to conclude, just like the popularity of anything modern. Why do we like, for instance, Apocolpyse Now! so much? Certainly some people would respond "the action."

>>10956103
Learning Latin and Greek definitely helps learning modern language, but they are not really recognizably the same language

I am a philosophy major. I would like to learn a bit of Ancient Greek and Latin to help with my classical philosophy studies. I picked up Wheelock's Latin and From Alpha To Omega on Ancient Greek at Half-Price along with Cassel's Latin Dictionary and a Greek-English Lexicon as well. Is it realistic to expect to make serious progress by the time Fall is in session if I study all Summer?

Also, do you think I should switch my major if I am interested in studying Renaissance Neoplatonism? What should I switch to? I was thinking I could translate a lot of those sorta texts instead of writing papers (I am a brainlet).

>>10956166
>As far as academics see it:

Academics favor Fagles and Lombardo.
You don't mention the latter.

>The most important question any new translation of Homer must face is this: what sets this version apart from the others, and in particular, how does it differ from the current favorites (an honor that I would give to the translations of Stanley Lombardo and Robert Fagles)?

http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2010/2010-02-11.html

This could either be fun or dumb. But philosophers are very infatuated with ancient Greek life and ancient Greek language. There are words which only having knowledge of could bring to us closer to some knowledge of life or the world. Off the top of my head is Heidegger writing on phusis.
But are there any words in English or some other modern language that reveals a lack in ancient thought?

>>10956166
we like apocalypse now because it's quotable.

tbhwyfamily though i prefer full metal jacket. it is the brutality of humanity set in a coming of age story. i love it because of what it says about adulthood and america. you're abused by the state in your youth (parris island), the successful individuals learn to deal with the abuse and do shameful things they regret (joker), and the losers go out in self-destructive ball of fire (pyle) raging against the system that oppresses them (gunny). Once you get out into the scary real world, it's life or death. People die all around you but at the end of the day you only care about going home at the end of the day. It's random and it makes no sense and the people in charge of your life are clueless and why are we here. Capitalism and spending tax money is the brainlet answer. The real reason we are here is because it's a mad world and there is no answer. Same conclusion Col Kurtz came to.

>>10956221
Depends on your own willingness to study. Intensive language courses are generally 6-8 weeks long and get one through a year of regular language study, but it would be tough to match intensive as an autodidact. Try your best and don't get discouraged. As far as your major, talk more with your professors because every one is going to do it differently.

>>10956257
"Favor" ellides the problem of purpose, unfortunately, but you are right that i forgot Lombardo. When I was an undergrad, we used his translation ("the essential homer") in our intro to Greek myth class, but to be honest I haven't seen him mentioned much since then. The problem, again, with "best" and "favor" is always going to come down to an individual. If you are trying to learn Greek, Lattimore is going to be way more helpful.

>>10956266
I want to think more about this. There are many abstractions that we explain and think about in different ways (like "sexuality", "political power" etc), but there are ways to express these ideas at least in most languages. I haven't read the relevant Heidegger or I might be more helpful.

>>10956280
"Quotable" is hugely important though. Consider the oral tradition that existed for millenea before the writing we actually do have. Good stories were "quotable." Easy to memorize and regurgitate in applicable settings. Like Tarantino. I can't make any broad pronouncements on the meaning of literary art there, but that has to count for some kind of merit, no? And your reading of FMJ definitely holds with how I remember the movie. I would suggest you read some of Lucan's Civil War and Seneca's tragedies for a look at ancient stoic literature moving against the same mad world.

>>10956330
Going to apply for classics at uni. Any tips to help my chances? Any really interesting books about the classical world?

>>10956330
you're right about quotability being important. familiar epithets and phrases are what make homer as you know ofc. i don't think most people including myself recognize how important it is though. i'll tell you who does: stand up comics. they have an ear for that shit. which words are funny, which aren't, what sentences are too long or awkward. i'd be very interested to see a study of why things are funny. besides the surprise/originality of the punchline forming in your head, why certain words or phrases are funny. it's a whole science.

your posts have pierced me above the nipple, and a black cloud falls over my eyes

>>10956330
He talks about it in different texts, but I was thinking about his Introduction to Metaphysics. He gets into the loss of the fabled "Being" that happened through the latinization of philosophy.
Heidegger's reclamation of phusis:

>This fundamental Greek word for beings is usually translated as "nature." We use the Latin translation natural, which really means "to be born," ''birth." But with this Latin translation, the originary content of the Greek word phusis is already thrust aside, the authentic philosophical naming force of the Greek word is destroyed. This is true not only of the Latin translation of this word but of all other translations of Greek philosophical language into Roman.

[...]

>Now what does the word phusis say? It says what emerges from itself (for example, the emer- gence, the blossoming, of a rose), the unfolding that opens itself up, the coming-into-appearance in such unfolding, and holding itself and persisting in appearance—in short, the emerging-abiding sway. According to the dictionary, phuein means to grow, to make grow. But what does growing mean? Does it just mean to increase by acquiring bulk, to become more numerous and bigger?

>Phusis as emergence can be experienced everywhere: for example, in celestial processes (the rising of the sun), in the surging of the sea, in the growth of plants, in the coming forth of animals and human beings from the womb. But phusis, the emerging sway, is not synonymous with these processes, which we still today count as part of "nature." This emerging and standing-out-in-itself-from-itself may not be taken as just one process among others that we observe in beings. Phusis is Being itself, by virtue of which beings first become and remain observable.

>>10955824
Do you say so about attending a top school because of the reputation it can afford? What if there is a smaller less renowned university that ultimately has better professors?

>>10955721
What do you think about Euripides and The Bacchae in particular? It seems most classicists generally prefer the other two playwrights.

>>10955721
Do you know Spanish? If so, do you have any opinions on the versions of Horace by Fray Luis de León?

>>10955721
What's it like to study Classics (more specifically, Greek) at uni?

>>10956473
This is good to think on and exactly the kind of work expected of a philologist. With a verb as common as phuo though (whence phusis) pronouncements like that one are tenuous and more to serve Heidegger's theory than help one think in Greek.

>>10956763
Job security, more or less. If you aren't sure you want to study it and confident in yourself, classics at the not-ivy's is a risky move. It may (and often is) better for an individual's intellectual development, but harder for finding a job. That being said, there are some schools with famous classics programs that are exceptional here.

>>10956980
I haven't studied it, but reading it in English is why I chose classics in the first place.

>>10956998
I "learned" spanish in high school, but haven't practices since then. Puedo hablar contigo un poco, sed en realidad no debeo (judge?) la literatura ni traducciones

>>10955721

how long did it take to learn to read homer?

>>10955721
how do you like teaching undergrads (I assume it's not a grad class?). All the proffs I've met who do that instead of focusing on research fucking hate it and look suicidal, but then again I'm in a stem field.

>>10955721
>>10957625
Follow up question, have you ever heard of proffs fucking grad students, particularly female professors with male grad students. We're not in the same field, but there's a whole lot of sexual tension between me and my PhD adviser so I need as many opinions as possible so I know where I'm at in terms of social acceptability.

>>10955721
I'm taking a course on Greek philosophy in the Fall. What are some texts I can read to prepare myself and get a head start?

Thoughts on "Start with the Greeks"? Is it really essential? Settle this once and for all OP.

>>10957620
8 week intensive Greek course for me, then I slogged through it the first time. "Reading" smoothly? 2 years ish I'd wager.

>>10957640
I used to be one of the weirdos that actually really preferred teaching, and in theory, still do. The problem, though, is that you just see so many students put in so little effort again and again. Most students in my first Latin classroom were fucking communications majors who were required to take languages to graduate. None of those kids were bright or motivated, no matter how much of myself I gave to the class.

I think what ends up happening to a lot of profs is twofold: prioritization and pessimism. The latter I mentioned above. By the former, priorities, I mean that profs have essentially negative job security until they are tenure track. Most profs at most schools are some level of visiting / assistant / lecturer etc which means that they need to be busy applying to teach elsewhere (1-3 year contracts) and writing research to get jobs. Students can't come first if you want to keep teaching, unfortunately.
>>10957640
Doubtful. It is pounded in our heads not to do this anymore. Used to be common tho so who knows.

>>10957657
Ask the prof/TA for an old syllabus. They'll be happy to provide.

>>10957671
As essential as reading literature

>>10955721
What would you say is the value of reading the Iliad? Why should people know it?

>>10956473
I'm not OP, but that's beautiful. Can I recommend Merleau-Ponty's lectures on Nature to you? Just read the first page even and see if it jogs your interest. Very similar project.

>There are words which only having knowledge of could bring to us closer to some knowledge of life or the world.
This in particular is one of the most important (and somehow still most neglected) triumphs of the last 250-300 years of knowledge and philosophy. When you realize that Heidegger is not doing cultural anthropology but a restorative phenomenology of how Being first emerged at all, it hits you like a ton of hammers.

>But are there any words in English or some other modern language that reveals a lack in ancient thought?
This is fascinating too. How DOES geist generate new meanings and understandings - like, say, novel abstract concepts - where there was nothing like them before? Even if we can somehow understand ideas like phusis by their emergence from "the flesh of the world," if we want to actually understand that process in a way that doesn't collapse into boring monism, we're going to need a new transcendental deduction of the faculty of meaning-constitution itself.

Definitely check out Merleau-Ponty but also maybe check out the classic movements of German philology in the 20th century. They became obsessed with the possibility of philologically reconstructing and recovering the "urworte" or urphanomen (in Goethe's words) of culture and geist. Seems antiquated now but only because we're in a relativist mode and no one cares about the transcendental anymore.

Hope you study phenomenology and save us all some day anon

Noob question, what's the word underlined in red?

>>10957625
Still not OP but it's mostly horrible busywork. Protip: TAs are retards. Grad students are just undergrads + 1 or 2 more years of farting around. The creepiest shit is when I see people TA for the first time and they go from "random retard who can barely write a paper" to "KING PAPER GRADER, EXPERT ON GRADING PAPERS" who grades with an iron pen.

Grad students are not magical creatures. They're (we're) mostly retards. Undergrads should not kiss grad student ass at all.

>>10957640
I've heard of it happening exactly once between a female teacher and a male student and it ended badly and caused a lot of drama. I would be extremely careful if I were you. The problem isn't getting caught, it's when the person stops being interesting and fun and starts being a crazy manipulative psycho even when you're done with them, and you're stuck with them because they have power over you.

>>10957755
Arche, meaning metaphysical, causal, and transcendent ground or principle of something that manifests or appears, but not necessary temporal "cause" (in the sense of event-causing-event).

Paul Bishop edited a good book on it: The Archaic.

>>10957745
>Definitely check out Merleau-Ponty but also maybe check out the classic movements of German philology in the 20th century.
Oops, meant to say 19th century.

Schelling, Schlegel, Max Muller, etc

>>10957733
What do you think are the most interesting works of literature related to the Greeks?

>>10955721

>got the T E lawrence version of the odyssey

is there a better one?

considered learning ancient greek or latin, just for shits.

What do you think about:

The Peloponnesian war?
The Aeneid?
The Metamorphoses?

Was going to Read my odyssey then the following three in really any order. But curious about your opinions on good translations + maybe an order or possibly other good reads.

>>10956139
The Canterbury Tales is not extremely hard to understand for an English speaker who is willing to take some time. Would Sir G. and the G. K. not be a more apt comparison?

>>10955721
Did the greeks often use Zeus as the catalyst for many of their myths as a form of scapegoat to them causing their own problems?

They blame the gods for their issues, zeus being king of gods, it seems to add up to me

>>10956004
>No way. Get 3 at least good recs.
does it help if I go to HYP? I think I'm too late to make a good enough relationship for the 3rd to be anything but generic

>>10955721
>hey /lit/ im reasonably well adjusted and happy AMA

get the fuck out of here

>>10957733
Can you read books in Greek and Latin as smoothly and easily as in English? Do you still sometimes need to look up words in a dictionary?

I am Greek and I find it extremely expensive to buy modern Greek translations of the ancient texts, they are cheaper in English however. Should I buy them in English even if I am Greek? I have already bought Aeschylus' tragedies in a collected volume (there was an offer iirc) and it's very fun to read. I have downloaded pdf's of Kazantzakis' translation of the 2 ancient epics and that one is pretty amazing as well. Really wish translations are cheaper.
So, this would be the correct place to ask if you have any nice pdf's that will help me revisit my ancient Greek studying years, correct?

>>10959439
pay debts

>>10955777
Whats your social background? STEM being a good career move is not totally a meme but it only really applies to plebs/lowe middle classes, most of the people in the really good jobs in finance are just squirarchy with connections and a degree in fuckin art history or something

>>10959441
I am.

>>10955721
Have you read the relatively new translations by Anthony Verity? Theyre supposed to be in the vein of Lattimore. Thoughts? Are they worth picking up if I already have Lattimore

>>10955721
How well up are you on Eng. Lit? I mean Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton and the like, not contemporary novels. Are young claccisists now parochial in their reading?

>>10959439
Desu find the best version and just spend the money on a nice harback Iliad/Odyssey, at the least.

>>10959461
I plan on buying a lot of ancient greek books when I have the money for them/once I finish some other obligations. They are pretty useful.

>>10959463
How 'foreign' is Homeric Greek to you? Similar to say, Chaucer in the original, or even more difficult?

>>10955721
This might sound like a dumb question but are Greek plays commonly performed live? I'm living in Britain and ive no clue where to look if i want to see Aeschylus or Aristophanes performed

>>10955721
can you create an analogy between reading a latin or greek translation and reading the original texts?

is it like having off brand snacks? worse?

Thoughts on Late Antique literature? Any hidden gems? Syriac and Coptic works are OK too.

I'm working on a thesis on Nonnos and am surprised how little attention some authors from that period have gotten.

>>10959501
It is very foreign, the grammar is all over the place, the syntax is weird, the vocabulary is the only thing that is KINDA similar, there are many differences of course. I would say that at this point it's a very different language from the modern one, but of course, it is to be expected, there is a huge gap (like 3000 years). The fact that there are any similarities at all is more weird to me.
Pindar is even harder for me, reading his works in the original is useless for me since I can't make sense of almost anything. Obviously, the more recent the text, the better I understand it.

OP here again
>>10957827
I'll go ahead and say this with respect to reading any classic in translation: you can read almost any classic in translation in like an afternoon. The slightly longer ones (eg Thucydides) in a weekend. I will always say just go for it because the time investment is so short and they've all got something to offer.

The metamorphoses did almost nothing for me in English, but have definitely become my favorite Latin epic. Almost every fiction I write is directly responding to Ovid.

>>10957993
My man, you know how absurd a generalizing this is? Yes or no here would be useless for us both.

>>10958141
Honestly, just go to a post bacc or get a master's. 1-2 years, funded, easy to get recs.

>>10958576
I have no doubt that I've been here longer than you, little frog poster. But I will leave after this thread. /lit/ isn't what it used to be.

>>10959433
1) Rarely. 2) Yes. Greek has quite a few variant dialects that really mix things up, and Latin is a language in use for like 1000 years. Some things come more easily than others.

>>10959439
Try both! If cost is a problem, use a library.

>>10959456
Nope sorry.

>>10959459
English "classics" (all the authors you mentioned) I've read, although never really studied. Shakespeare is incomparably more fun if you know Latin. I can't speak for others, but my friends are generally less interested than I in literature broadly and more interested in antiquity. (Ooph forgive that sweeping generalization)

>>10959735
Not commonly. Check out university theaters. They are way more likely to do it.

>>10959776
Worse. Imagine your favorite song, and take out all the instruments. Replace them with one guy singing his favorite parts of the melody and calling that his song. At best, translations themselves can be new music created from the old (read more Borges if you want to think more about this), but they are nothing compares to the original.

>>10959782
I really wish I had more to say here. I've read bits of the Dionysicca in English, but really my work has a hard stop after the "high empire." I have no doubt later authors are writing works as beautiful and moving, but to keep my job I kind of am required to focus on the "sexy stuff" so to speak

>>10960069
Forgive the typos, I'm a dirty phone poster. And I'm not responding generally to the
>defend the classics
questions because, to be honest, if you don't see a reason to read these books on your own, I don't really care to convince you.

>>10960069
>it used to be
What time frame are you thinking of?

>>10960069
>Try both! If cost is a problem, use a library.
Ah, see, I absolutely NEED to have the book in my collection, gotta show off!

>>10955721
Euripides nuts, that's what I have to say to your classics degree bitch.

>>10955721
How can you imagine your focus on the classics would be different if it wasn't your career? Since leaving college and doing something wholly unrelated to classics I've found it increasingly difficult to engage with things in the same way.

Also any opinions on ancient historians on the high empire? Sources whose quirks you have a fondness for.

>>10960217
pseud pleb

don't you think homer has been mistreated for centuries by being dissected in classrooms since he really wrote for entertainment

>>10960163
Before /pol/ and the rise of the new nationalist right, pretty much. Not trying to make a political comment myself, but the shift on this board around the time the first Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra got finished a few years ago was huge.

>>10960217
Read them first; buy the one you want.

>>10960383
I wouldn't care about the language nearly as much if I weren't teaching it. I envy the freedom to read anything you want, but I'm glad for the motivation to dig more deeply into texts.

>>10960514
You know that's an absurd dichotomy. I promise you that classicists who dissect homer are enjoying that work and are entertained by it more than about anyone you could imagine.

But just some basics, to say "homer wrote for entertainment" betrays a huge, huge misunderstanding of antiquity and epic generally. I don't mean to condescend, but: "homer" is likely himself fictional, a composite of hundreds of poets retelling and singing similar stories. Their work was highly ritualistic and very strictly structured. These were literary competitions building on centuries of oral story telling traditions. You see how weird it is to even imagine there could be a single purpose? How unreal it would be to say this was "entertainment?" Some of the oldest works of the western canon are literally commentaries on Homer. Thousands of years old. Entertainment? Nah

>>10960600

How do you reconcile being a professional who studies the works of amateurs?

>>10960600
I've become much more interested in antiquity as of late. What are your favorite texts coming from the Roman Republic?

Redpill me on the Eleusinian Mysteries

>>10960726
Caesar and Cicero (not OP)

>>10955721
What do you think about the theatricality in Greek drama? Given that they were all performed and written accordingly. I'm referring to dramatically masturbatory scenes like Helen naming and identifying the Greek forces in the Iliad, or the court trial in the Oresteia.

>>10960779
Cheesy as fuck but very charming at tjr same time.

Very good thread
Thanks OP

>>10955721
How does modern Latin learners know their pronunciation is right (or, at least, correct more or less)?
Sorry if the question is dumb.

Perhaps there are few genuine written tips for the correct pronunciation of several phonemes, but (and that's just my conjecture) there is nothing like a thorough and profound textbook on Latin pronunciation, right? And, anyway, a textbook is nothing compared to actual recorded audio of how this or that language sounds (or should) or the speech of a native speaker.

>>10960711
Explain?

>>10960726
Start with Vergil, maybe Caesar or Cicero. What are you interested in?

>>10960779
"Dramatically masturbatory?" Is this some keyword I haven't come across? You mean scenes that are irrelevant to plot?

W/r/t the Iliad, catalogs are a trope of epic. Grab any commentary or intro text to epic to find out way more.

>>10961298
All for you, my man. Make the world a better place.

>>10961709
No this is actually a great question and up for debate. We have actually developed a bunch of different modern Latin accents -- Catholic latinists pronounce differently from British from English. Church Latin is its own beast, but both the British and English Latin are supposedly the "reconstructed pronunciation," working from all the evidence we can compile (poetry, ancient grammars, old jokes, linguistic shifts in different locations, etc), but they end up sounding pretty different still! The tldr here is we are trying are best but likely would be pretty incomprehensible to a Roman, even though we now can understand one another. Make sense? It is pretty quixotic, when you think about it

>>10961972
Thank you very much, sir.

So, since they don't have a single audio record to mimic the pronunciation from (of the certain region in the certain period of history), they are merely pretending that they "speak" Latin. Am I right? (I understand that any language is a living language and they all exist in perpetual motion and change.)

I mean, _even the most basic vowels sound differently_ in let's say modern French, Spanish and English. How can we really know how this or that phoneme sounded centuries ago in Latin?

>>10955721
Can you link to
>discussing Homer translations the other day.
please

>>10962129
Pretending is far too strong a word. Pronunciation is not nearly as important as grammar, vocab, and style. It sounds as close as we can get, based on pretty good evidence, but I'd wager a Roman would sound different. But again, I would still say confidently that we speak Latin, altho with a funny accent.

>>10962310
Don't have the archive link. Any questions?

>>10961972
It's probably good that we don't speak Latin exactly like the Romans did, purely because that's how pretty much every other language is

>>10962439
Actually, not really good, but "realistic"

>ywn have a patient classics father guiding you through the cannon as you learn Latin for the first time as a carefree happy upper middle class white kid on a beach in LA

>>10960600
>You know that's an absurd dichotomy. I promise you that classicists who dissect homer are enjoying that work and are entertained by it more than about anyone you could imagine.
we read homer at school and i can assure you no one enjoyed themselves. besides they weren't written to be dissected (unlike, say, virgil)

homer was a man, he wrote a short draft for the iliad, the homeridae made it into the 24 books (in the spirit of their father with some stylistic differences), who we know wrote for entertainment for festivals and royal courts that understood greek. not to say it's a single purpose, just the dominant motive. the dactylic measure he used was from dance songs not court epics, and he mentions festival songs throughout. no?

>>10955721
when do you first come to 4chan, and on average how many hours do you spend on it a day?

>>10963440
>homer was a man, he wrote a short draft for the iliad, the homeridae made it into the 24 books (in the spirit of their father with some stylistic differences), who we know wrote for entertainment for festivals and royal courts that understood greek. not to say it's a single purpose, just the dominant motive. the dactylic measure he used was from dance songs not court epics, and he mentions festival songs throughout. no?

Saying something with dismissive confidence doesn't make it true, you know.

>>10963566
sorry, but nor does it make it false

>>10963440
>we read homer at school and I can assure you no one enjoyed themselves
I mean, I'm sorry your high school class didn't enjoy pondering one of the most puzzling and creative works of human intelligence, but you not wanting to read critically does not allow you to make bold on authorial intention, ancient reception, and literary merit.

And your second paragraph, is this meant to troll? You know the "Homeric question" is one of the most fiercely debated topics in classics. How do you presume to answer it with such confidence?

You are neglecting the entire ritual-poetic tradition of antiquity every time you imply these were "for entertainment."

>>10963530
2008, and I used to (08-12) browse daily. For the next ~5 years I mainly stopped browsing but would check in every month or so. /pol/ killed my desire to come back here almost completely, so this thread is the most time I've spent here in years.

>>10963575
You not doing your research is why it's false, mate.

>>10963749
do you post on the Latin discord?

I've been browsing 4chan 8-12 hours a day since I graduated highschool back in 2016 and I feel my brain is fucked beyond repair. Any tips besides the obvious?

>>10955721
how do you feel about the new testament as a greek classic? I know its a collection of different works, but does Romans or John or Revelations or anything stand out at all in anyway?

What are your thoughts on pic related?

>>10963819
sorry about the ant pic

what resource(s) would you recommend to someone who wanted to teach themself latin?

>>10963783
Well get off 4chan and do more productive shit

What's your favourite sandwich filling?

>>10964825
Olive and hare

>>10955721
You speak Latin. Have you pledged your allegiance to sacred Rome? Why or why not?

>>10963749
primary school, actually. and it's not as puzzling as all that, though it is muddled in parts ('homer himself sometimes nods').

>How do you presume to answer it with such confidence?
i don't see why the hell not. if you've been taught you need to treat this subject with some reverence; not so. if i'm wrong, you should tell me how, not dull down the conversation. anyone can call me a liar/fool/ignoramus, i thought you were a learned type.

you're doing him a great disservice if you treat homer as a dante or milton, that is, a solemn intellectual task. the iliad, like cervantes or late shakespeare, was life - tragedy salted with humour. and the iliad was entirely seperate from the akkadian creation epic, the hittite song of ullikummi, the ugaritic baal et al., their authors were temple priest who set themselves to exalt their gods and praise their rulers, and did not need to think in terms of popular entertainment. homer, on the other hand, satirized agamemnon, and is utterly cynical about the olympian gods (perhaps what made it holy writ in peisistratus’ day, when the greeks were already practising free philosophic speculation). homer might not be surprised his work is still known today, but he would be greatly surprised, however, to know they are are studied in classrooms, conned by scholars, dissected by pedants and fed in synthetic and quite distasteful doses to students.

if i've said anything out of order, forgive me

>>10955721
okay my man real talk of the Nine Lyric Poets who do you think is greatest and why and you can't choose Pindar.

>>10955721
Feel free to ask /lit/ anything you are currently struggling on

>>10965118
jej

>>10963769
No

>>10963783
Get busy with other shit.

>>10963816
Haven't read it; my failing not its

>>10963824
Sure. I mean, I would just move through the myths and have Edith or something as a guidebook rather than reading it cover to cover first. Missing a ton, but you know. Such is the nature of these things.

>>10963966
Lingua Latina, anki, and discipline

>>10964825
Basically a cheese steak but with grilled chicken

>>10965019
Mate, the difficulty with the "tell you where you're wrong" deal here is your ideological hubris. You already know what you want to believe and don't care about counter arguments. Assigning any authorial intent to an entire oral tradition is just bonkers. The idea that you can in any way speak for "Homer", a literal fucking phantam collection of by hundreds of poets over centuries, and know what he desires writing his poetry? Again, some of the oldest works of the western tradition are commentaries on Homer. Every educated Greek and most educated Romans for the first 400 years of their empire had this shit memorized. Dissecting homer is the oldest literary endeavor we have any evidence for; just because you don't want to it doesn't make it useless. Livius Andronicus, pretty much the oldest Latin author anyone can study, began the tradition of Latin letters with his Odusia, a classroom translation exercise of Homer. Can you begin to see how much larger that this criticism you so despise is?

>>10965102
>why can't you choose Linear
Because Anacreon and Sappho exist

Would you happen to have a pdf copy of Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans
Leonid Zhmud

Who is your favorite Greek? As in who do you respect the most or who had the most interesting life?

>>10966061
>Lingua Latina

Why would you recommend that heap of trash?


Get anything but these shit books.

>>10955721

What's the best way to learn Greek and Latin?

I have high school knowledge of it but I need to learn more before I apply for my master's in classics

Can you suggest any books?

What do you think of Chapman's Homer? I was thinking of reading it because I'm more interested in English Renaissance poetry but haven't really read the Odyssey or Illiad.

>>10966544
not OP

Cambridge, Wheelock, or Shelmerdine are all fine for Latin

JACT 2nd edition, or Hansen & Quinn (pirate it and prove to yourself you can do a hundred pages before buying it, it's famously dense) for Greek

You can self study but you will need online help, or at least the ability/patience to google things you don't understand. These will be mostly grammatical concepts you find confusing, when reading the book's terse description of them 50 times doesn't clear up the confusion.

Beyond that, it's mainly practice and repetition. Go through the book carefully, and don't proceed unless you actually learned and can apply what you've just been taught. Drill all vocab sections. Don't torture yourself to memorize everything or feel like a failure if you make mistakes, but do the work of drilling and memorization will come.

I recommend re-doing the textbook once you've finished. I did Shelmerdine and it was grammar heavy, so I redid it to fill in any gaps or things that had gotten fuzzy, then I blazed through all the fat chunky story sections in Cambridge Latin volumes 1-5 for practice and extra vocab, then I just started reading Caesar with a Loeb side-by-side translation

Greek is harder. You will spend much much more time reading textbooks because you have to memorize EVERYTHING. You need to be able to recognize verb forms, which have a lot of overlap and confusing similarities and triple-redundant forms, and you also need to have a good working knowledge of tons of nouns (with all 6 of their principal parts, so you know how to mutate them in any given situation) simply down pat. Once you come out the other side of that, you will find that reading certain Greek prose is surprisingly easy because of how formulaic the language is, but you will also find that other Greek prose is so colloquial and specialized that learning each author's style is a bit like learning a new dialect.

It takes a lot longer to start ENJOYING Greek than it does Latin.

>>10966614
>>10966061
>Lingua Latina

Suggestions on Learning Latin, from Peter V. Jones & Keith C Sidwell?

>>10956004
>Even crazier how much research is regional. We all pretend like we are up to date on the French German Italian stuff, but to be frank language insulates us more than we admit.
Wait, it's possible to get a PhD without being fluent in French, English, German and Italian, in the field of Classical Studies? The absolute state of American Academia. I'm a major starting a Masters soon and I already mastered French, English, some German and bases in Italian.

>we have too little Greek lyric to pick favorites
What the absolute FUCK are you talking about? Ever heard about Pindar? Bacchylides? Simonides' Fragments are considerate.

>>10966061
>picking "Anacreon" or Sappho over Pindar
I have read neither : the post.

>>10966061
>The idea that you can in any way speak for "Homer", a literal fucking phantam collection of by hundreds of poets over centuries, and know what he desires writing his poetry?
My only knowledge of Homer is through second-hand knowledge of Parry : the post.

>>10959782
What's your thesis nigga

>>10966061
not a bit of it. i used to believe that homer was a terrible old bore, now i think he delighted in guying those sorts, you know.
and the iliad presumes popular knowledge of an earlier story cycle (the birth of helen, the apple of discord, etc.), achilles' story was homer's. and there's an implicit attitude in homer's stories.

>Again, some of the oldest works of the western tradition are commentaries on Homer.
because homer became the basis for all education when peisistratus turned it into a sacrosanct epic for political reasons. it is that solemn atmosphere that has prevailed.
besides if we go further back, the iliad, while popular, earned little reverence until the 5th century when jurists and grammarians treated it as a bible. xenophanes complained of homer's representation of the gods well before thucydides discussed him as a reputable theologian, if sometimes inclined to figurative language.

for 2,600 years homer has been done wrong; purists and classicists have buried the real meaning under the dust of their own platitudes and prosiness. the point missed by dreary generations is homer's caustic humour. his whole attitude to the gods is pure comedy (though he was at bottom a religious man).

>Dissecting homer is the oldest literary endeavor we have any evidence for; just because you don't want to it doesn't make it useless
i'm a literae humaniores student mon frere, it's not about me. i only care about homer. it is useless if you misunderstand it, isn't it. quite damaging in fact.

>>10967707
Stop replying to the pseud, who has NO direct knowledge of Homer whatsoever.

>>10967828
I don't doubt OP's capacities to teach athematic aorists to teens but I'm telling you, he has NO KNOWLEDGE of Homer whatsoever.

>>10955721
How long have you been a virgin?

>>10955721

What is the source for the cover art used on Fagles' Iliad?

I have written about this before, and I've determined the sources for the cover art of Fagles' Odyssey and Aeneid, in the sense of finding corresponding images on the internet (the images are credited in the book credits). Not so the Iliad.

>>/lit/thread/10450655

Have you been over Diels-Kranz? Any thoughts?

>>10966503
Because I've been teaching Latin for half a decade, and LL students consistently perform better in upper language classes.

>>10966544
Why aren't you taking undergrad courses in it?

>>10966572
It's an absolute treat. Enjoy it!

>>10967351
In America, it's rare that students learn any second languages well in high school. I'm jealous of your educational background. The Greek lyric that we have is no where near as substantial as most of the other heavily studied genres; that's all I was saying. You could read the whole thing in an afternoon, whereas Roman oratory / medical texts / epics / etc take a much longer time to acquaint oneself with.

>>10967358
>>10967364
>>10967847
I'll assume you are either the same person or two people so poisoned by this website that you post 99% the same content. Sorry you feel so dejected by whatever it is that's bothering you, but I hope that your frogs are cathartic.

>>10967707
>no one else in 2,600 years has ever been as smart as I am!
See how its hard to come at this with you? We are on totally different footing here. I promise those who study Homer are also considering his humor. I promise we also enjoy his work. What are thinking should change about how we read him, exactly?

>>10967719
>>10967847
Mate, can you even read Greek? Did you have some really impassioned undergrad lecturer that burned this arrogance and intellectual certainty into your mind?

>>10967916
Pic related, the death of Sarpedon. No idea why they wouldn't source it.

>>10967916
Gail Belenson, that's all I'm getting.

>>10968222
>I hope that your frogs are cathartic

I like you OP thanks for the AMA

>>10966061
>Basically a cheese steak but with grilled chicken
Oof. Maui Mikes used to make this, well.

>>10968222

Excellent, thanks for the pointer on the Iliad pic source. I think that I will actually annotate my pleb copy with this info.

>>10961972
What is the difference between British and English Latin?

>>10968263
It's all for you, friend. Make this board a better place every post.

>>10968790
Just pronunciation of vowels. Different modern Latin accents. Church Latin, however, is a whole nother beast.

>>10968844
Why are they called British and English Latin? And isn't Church Latin just pronounced with an Italian accent?

>>10968881
lol, youre kidding?