A List of Greek Language Text and Reference Books

With Notes on their Usability.

LANGUAGE

The books listed here are mostly part of my personal collection built up over the years from scrounging used bookstores and other sales. Only a few of these books are currently or continuously in print but you will find worthwhile hunting for older hardback editions. Why? They often have better tougher bindings and covers and last longer in better shape than more recent editions.

Louis Bevier Jr. BRIEF GREEK SYNTAX

Caratzas Bros New York Reprint of an older edition Date of original not given

The majority of the examples in this text come from Xenophon’s Anabasis.

There are also quotations from the Orators, Aristophanes, Plato, and others.

George Curtius. A Smaller Grammar of the Greek Language

An abridgement from a larger grammar text and presumably translated from German since the original edition was published in Leipzig.

This is the 1870 Sixth Edition. 215 pages .

It says something about 19^th century binding that this little volume is in fairly good shape apart from damage to the spine and some fraying on the edges of the cover with hardly any discoloration or other staining. The inside front and back covers provide an amusing and informative list of old texts. The typeface on some pages is smallish but well spaced. It describes what we would call morphology in the first part, calling it “etymology”, which includes the letters and their sounds and accents, then the declensions of nouns and ending with irregular verb conjugations. The second section is devoted to Syntax.

William W. Goodwin A GREEK GRAMMAR MacMillan.

This book is a standard text that has been continually in print since 1879.

Although it is based on traditional grammar it is still one of the essential texts.

JACT. Reading Greek. 1978. This very modern text has its many critics. Frankly I feel the Index could be much improved and better organized however it is a standard university text. JACT is the Joint Association of Classical Teachers.

There is also a Latin text following the same methodology.

Liddell and Scott Greek – English Lexicon. The Abridged Version.

If you intend to be a serious student of Classical Greek language you must acquire this book or have regular access to the full version. It gives words from Homeric and Epic and other dialects up to the time of Plutarch and New Testament Koine.

And if you don’t know Lexicon means dictionary please see my note about dictionaries!

North M. A. and A. E. Hilliard Greek Prose Composition. Ninth Ed. 1969

Even if you’re not interested in mastering Prose Composition it’s still useful!

Each section begins with grammar summaries. There is an English to Greek vocabulary along with appendices on verb forms, prepositions, particles and accents and the general vocabulary at the end.

C. W. E. Peckett and A. R. Munday. THRASYMACHUS. 2^nd. Ed. 1970.

Quite obviously a book aimed at the junior forms of a boy’s school (as so many are – did it never occur to anyone girls might prefer a little less “war” and a little more of personalities and poetry. Perhaps a text with more excerpts from later writers like Plutarch or using more Meander and Aristophanes please?) There are many useful reference tables and lists in the grammar section. Excellent text and layout design!

F. Ritchie First Steps in Greek Longmans 1963 Apparently a Rewriting of an Older Text called A Practical Greek Method. A small and slender orange 100 page hardback of a side convenient for carrying in a travel bag or overcoat pocket.

Thomas D. Seymour. Introduction to the Language and Verse of Homer.

Caratzas Bros. New York 1981 A Reprint of an 1885 edition.

Covers language style syntax and metre.

F. Kinchin Smith and T. W. Melluish Teach Yourself Books GREEK 1947.

A simple delightful little book with a wide variety of illustrative quotes ranging from the Anacreontea to the New Testament and Plutarch and some of the simpler epigrams from the Greek Anthology. It has the failing of excluding the accents while including the breathings. The authors justify this on the grounds accents were a Hellenistic invention and they want the student to rapidly acquire reading skills. This is the edition with the Adventure with a Lion cartoon!

F. E. Thompson An Elementary GREEK SYNTAX 1898 Fifth Impression Longmans

Described by the Author as an Outline of Greek Syntax summarizing what a sixth form (final year of high school) student would be expected to know in his time. A compact work designed for easy carrying. I find myself picturing students carrying it in a jacket pocket and revising on the way back to school after holidays.

G. S. Thompson GREEK PROSE USAGE A Companion to Greek Prose Composition. Macmillan 1955 A Useful little book for Attic Style as the author has taken most of the samples from Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, and Demosthenes, however the exact sources of many of the quotes are not given.

CLASSICAL CULTURE - REFERENCE

Stop – before you acquire any Greek books do you have the following? Try to read or acquire a few books on basic introductory linguistics and language history and have a good English dictionary – say the Oxford or the Macquarie editions, or something that matches that standard and do you have Roget’s Thesaurus? Knowing synonyms is useful for translation! Read some books on Traditional Grammar too!

You should of course have a copy of at least one work on Greek mythology.

Robert Graves book on The Greek Myths is still quite useful despite the 50 year out of date anthropology and archaeology references. Why is this book still useful? It covers everything from creation myths thru to the Theban and Trojan Wars ending with the final adventures of the heroes who survived those wars. Best of all it mentions and cites every place in Greek and Latin literature that those myths are used so you can read them in their original texts and compare earlier and later versions of the stories!

If you’re not familiar with “Traditional Grammar” you might want to try to find

J. R. Bernard. A Short Guide to Traditional Grammar. First Edition.

I believe its gone into a third edition due to its popularity. Anyone who’s been forced to read a badly written Functional Grammar textbook would understand why Bernard’s work is a recommended text. Functional Grammar has useful ideas but I have rarely seen them well presented. Bernard’s Guide is short concise and accurate yet simple.

Dryden’s PLUTARCH”S LIVES

Yes there are later translations of Plutarch’s Lives of Famous Greeks and Romans.

Dryden’s however is a classic in its own right. Try to find a copy. Please!

It’s like having a copy of Shakespeare’s Plays or Chaucer – you may only look at it once a year but you’ll be glad you have it!

LEMPRIERE’S CLASSICAL DICTIONARY

A big chunky paperback reprint 1994 Bracken Books London of a book that was first published in 1788. Grrr they copied the original very small font. However it may be useful for the home library if you can find it as most of us can’t afford to have our own copies of the Oxford Classical dictionary and not all libraries do either! Worth having to use the magnifying glass!

Gilbert Murray’s Five Stages of Greek Religion.

My war-time “economy” edition is in better shape than many younger paperbacks.

An out of print book of the sort you see referred to in foot-notes in older essays for an excellent reason. It is one of the best works dealing with an evolutionary rationalist anthropological interpretations on Greek religion and mythology and finishs with an excellent translation of Sallustius’ Peri Theoon Kosmou. “On the Gods and the World”.

Gisela Richter A Handbook of GREEK ART. A Survey of the Visual Arts of Ancient Greece. Phaidon. 1959. My copy is the Seventh Edition of 1974. That says something about how useful and excellent this book is.

R. V. Schoder. ANCIENT GREECE FROM THE AIR.

Schoder fortunately was able to obtain the loan of an aged Dakota and pilots from the Greek Air Force to do aerial COLOR photography of sites.

It is a truly wonderful work that demonstrates why aerial photography is such a useful tool for archaeologists and historians looking at the geographic contexts of sites.

The BLUE GUIDE to GREECE Third Edition. 1977. Actually any edition would be as good. Why did this travel guide catch my eye? Okay it’s thirty years out of date and some, well probably a lot of the travel directions, will have changed especially (choked off irony sound) in down town Athens, but it has GOOD maps NOT effected by Greek military censorship. Ancient and modern versions of names are given and the location and distance to the nearest modern Greek city, town, or village, and there are also temple and city plans, and the history notes cover all periods from the Neolithic up to modern times.

Postclassical Byzantine and Demotic Greek Language.

Manoli Triadafillidi. Mikri Neo(h)elliniki Grammatiki. 1975. 2nd ed.

The First Edition was in 1949. A Grammar of Modern Demotic Greeek.

This is written in Demotic – you will need at least basic Demotic and a Dictionary thereof since some of the words used to describe Demotic grammar are Byzantine or later creations and not Classical.

J. T. Pring The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Greek 1982 1986

Greek to English and English to Greek sections.

A useful work for both students of Modern and Classical Greek but notice due to it being a combined edition of two earlier separate works the Greek to English section prints in the Greek in a bold type but the English to Greek section uses a different smaller Greek font. There is some discussion of the differences between Katharousa and Demotic.

The GREEK NEW TESTAMENT

I use the UBS (United Bible Societies) Third Edition.

I also recommend the older versions of the IVS press commentaries and use

A Linguistic Key to the Greek New Testament in 2 Vols.

This is a translation from the German of a commentary that explains practically every word and phrase. It does have a Protestant bias though.

A general note on Translations and Original Texts.

The three major publishers in English would probably

Oxford University

They publish Greek and Latin texts and have an online archive OCT and a series called The World’s Classics covering English, European and other Classics.

Penguin Viking has its own famous Classics series started in the 50s.

You might want to consider also acquiring their edition or one in hardback of C. A. Trypanis’ The Penguin Book of Greek Verse which covers verse from Homer to the Twentieth Century and gives the original text or an excerpt there from and a prose translation below.

LOEB – the student’s friends a long running series in compact hardbacks of bilingual texts with the Greek or Latin on the left side and a English translation and notes on the right facing page.