Fall 2005. Susan Prince, Instructor
princes@colorado.edu
phone (303) 492-7658
Announcements:
The objectives of this third-semester course in Ancient Greek are to develop fluency in reading, especially prose texts, and to make the transition from using textbooks to using unadapted texts, commentaries and dictionaries. To these ends, we will review morphology (word forms) and syntax (clause structures), build vocabluary, and read selected texts from the Greek author Lucian of Samosata (born about 120 CE), who, while not a figure of Classical Athens (typically dated 480-330 BCE), and probably not even a native speaker of Greek (his first language was probably a Semitic tongue), became a studied imitator of classical Greek and so, in a certain way, more "classical" than the classical ever was.
Lucian, whom one could call the Mark Twain of Greek literature, is the author of about 80 surviving prose pieces of various form and length, ranging from short dialogues (usually farces on dominant discourses of the classical past) to biography and pseudo-autobiography to long prose fiction. When you start laughing, you will know you're understanding him. We will begin our course with the excerpts in Keith Sidwell's Lucian (Bristol Classical Press 1986, reprinted 2001), then proceed to attempt a continuous read through True Histories (the earliest example of science fiction, including a trip to the moon and a Jonah-like experience inside a whale) in the edition of C. S. Jerram (reprinted by Bolchazi Carducci 1991). True Histories was written as a spoof on the travels of Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey, as well as many other famous ancient travel stories, some still extant and some lost. In its turn it has become a stimilus to works such as Gulliver's Travels, and comparison to episodes of Star Trek and even A Bug's Life are ready at hand.
For background on Lucian, see Christopher Jones, Culture and Society in Lucian (Harvard UP 1986) and R. Bracht Branham, Unruly Eloquence: Lucian and the Comedy of Traditions (Harvard UP 1989). On Lucian's popularity as an author in Europe from Erasmus through the eighteenth century, see Christopher Robinson, Lucian and his Influence in Europe (Duckworth 1979). The most recent bibliography can be found in Tim Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire: The Politics of Imitation (Oxford UP 2001) and J. L. Lightfoot, Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess (Oxford UP 2003). A full commentary on True Histories has been published by Aristoula Georgiadou and David H. J. Larmour (Brill 1998). A. M. Harmon's introduction to Lucian's writings and manuscript tradition (from the 1913 Loeb edition) is available online here.
Not only a great writer in his own right, Lucian has also been claimed as the model for the Greek prose in Andrew Wilson's recent translation of J. K. Rowling's first Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. See Wilson's web-based reading aids (including a Greek font, SPIonic, that you can download for free) and a recent review by Tad Brennan.
Other related links:
A useful site developed for vocabulary aid in reading the Greek New Testament, which is roughly contemporary with Lucian's Greek. You can download words in flashcard format.
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