Three Quarrels
Agamemnon versus the Priest of Apollo,
Achilles versus Agamemnon, Zeus versus Hera
DGL Lexical-Grammatical Aids to
Homer Iliad I (Α)
‒ ⏑ ⏑ ‒ ⏑ ⏑ ‒‖
Μῆνιν ἄειδε Θεά
A running vocabulary With especially copious references to Smyth's Greek Grammar, Goodwin's Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb, Denniston's The Greek Particles, and Monro's Homeric Grammar while following the texts of Bekker (ϝ) and Monro & Allen. Walter M. Roberts III, PhD (UC Berkeley, Classics) When the Caliph Omar destroyed the libraries of Alexandria he is supposed to have
kept the public baths warmed for eighteen days with burning manuscripts, and great
numbers of tragedies by Euripides and others are said to have perished, quite
irrecoverably. I remember that when I read this as a boy it simply filled me with
enthusiastic approval. It was so many less words to look up in the dictionary—that was
how I saw it.
—George Orwell
Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in which they
were written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race.
—Henry David Thoreau
By privileging the Laws of Euphony we have entirely overthrown that sense of
randomness that is inevitably made to cling to Greek morphology if these higher-order
principles are neglected.
— Greek the DGL Way
ii DGL Lexical Grammatical Aids to Greek and Latin Texts
Introduction
DGL Lex-Aids are offered to students for use in their home study of authentic (i.e.,
unadapted) texts of Greek and Latin. The paramount status of unadapted literature has
been clearly stated in the Learning Standards for Classical Languages:
For students and teachers of classical languages, authentic materials are the products of the ancient world. For students of Latin and Greek, unadapted literature is the most important authentic material. All the remains of the classical world contribute to our knowledge of their practices, their perspectives, and their culture: literature, non-­‐literary records, artifacts, art, architecture, and all the things that archeologists unearth.1 The most direct route to the world and mentalities of ancient peoples is through direct
encounter with their literary and material culture products. Use of DGL Lex-Aids will
save students 70 percent—or more—of the time previously required to prepare a piece of
unadapted Greek or Latin for in-class translation. In simplest terms, DGL Aids exist to
relieve the tedium (and to increase the enjoyment) of reading continuous texts of
unadapted Greek and Latin. It is hoped that restoration of this practice—the epitome of
dignified leisure—will lead not only to a revival of classical studies and consciousness,
but as well to an uptick in overall advanced literacy and political intelligence.
1
Standards for Classical Language Learning (American Classical League, 1997), p. 234. iii But first a confession—DGL Lex-Aids mark the acting-out of a set of deeply personal
compulsions. Their evolution runs as follows. A week into Elementary Greek, I found
myself—by virtue of a trip to (the now defunct) Astor Place Books (across from historic
Cooper Union)— an owner of Smyth's Greek Grammar. I proceeded to carry the book
wherever I went. Despite this devotion and impressive provenance, I barely escaped the
first-year course. (Both semesters I flat out failed each final exam; but, since the
professor saw how hard I was working, he was kind enough to grant me a B+ at the end
of each term.)
Advanced to the third semester course, I found reading actual Greek—Herodotus' account
of The Ionian Revolt—incomparably thrilling. I began to compile sloppy lists of words in
a pink hardback notebook. This practice continued as I jumped up two-semesters to read,
in the spring of my sophomore year, selections of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics with
the incomparable Leonardo Tarán. (The previous year, I had read portions of the Ethics in
English—a part of the Common Core at Columbia College; but had found the argument
incomprehensibly obfuscated, despite the fine translation. Reading it now in the original
the argument was crystal clear— albeit at a cost of six hours per page spent thumbing
through the lexicon and construing the syntax.) Now, there was no turning back.
Whenever I was either perplexed by a syntactical construction or less than certain about a
morphological paradigm, I would range through the pages of Smyth's Greek Grammar
until a satisfactory answer presented itself. I soon settled into daily use of the
Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon of Liddell and Scott. There followed the
establishment of an inflexible rule: whenever I looked up a word—whether to discover,
recall, explore, or simply enjoy its plurality of meanings—I dutifully recorded that word
and its varied or singular meanings.
Like the Dickens character—Doctor Strong—my pockets grew full with tiny scraps of
paper.
In time, I developed a two-columned display. I began to set the Greek (or Latin) word in
the left column and its English meaning (or meanings) far across the page in the right
column—for ease of review with a lengthwise folded piece of loose-leaf. A mania for
"school" and ultimately more scholarly commentaries followed. Finally, in order to more
quickly survey the manifold of significances presented by Cunliffe's Lexicon of the
Homeric Dialect, I developed a three-colored system of highlighting: orange for the
categorical notices (e.g., 2 pers., aor. I., c. inf., etc.), pink for the English definitions
themselves, and yellow for special morphological forms or notable Greek idioms.
Tools in place and methods established, I followed suit for the next thirty years. The
result is a prodigious horde: ringed binders (recently converted to PDF format) of
running-vocabularies to every Greek or Latin text I have ever read. Necessary evils, they
represent the labor required—at least by me—to obtain a reasonably satisfactory level of
proficiency in reading Greek and Latin. Products of ox-like plodding, having begun as
"personal notes," more and more, a mental shift occurred: I aimed to produce documents
iv that others might find useful. What began as a personal quest transmogrified into a
pedagogic mission.
A simple, but persistent, agony drove these compilations: Why should generation after
generation of students have to spend so much time—stop and go, stop and go—looking
up in their lexicon every second, third, or sixth word of a Greek or Latin text? Might
future students be relieved of this endless tedium? Could I not—at least—re-read my
favorite texts without having to look up (again!) the most obscure words? I love to look
up words because I hate to look up words! Odi et amo.
But in far too often, the hate of toil overcomes the love. ((As undergraduates classicists
we joked about how many books one had to have open on one's desk in order to read
Greek: a lexicon, a grammar, a commentary, a text, and even {God forbid!} an English
translations of the text in question! Thirty years later, catching a glimpse of my labors on
the Iliad, a professor of religion who had long since abandoned hope of conquering
Greek exclaimed: "That is why I never got over the hump." A few weeks earlier, my
former Classics department Chair exclaimed in somewhat amazed fashion: "You do all
the work for them.") So even in their manuscript form, I believe that many will find these
Lex-Aids quite welcomed and useful. Many people wish to read Greek and Latin, but not
everyone has "the philological bent" —not everyone channels the spirit of Doctor Strong.
As compared to other running vocabularies on offer to readers of Greek and Latin texts,
the distinguishing feature of DGL Lex-Aids is their use of white space. White space
facilitates assimilation of the proffered information, allowing the eye to move easily over
the whole presentation. Along with other formatting features, it permits the user to
v choose and extract exactly what he or she needs—the specific information suitable to his
or her level or interest. Additionally, it allows users to personalize the presentation with
their own notices.
DGL Formatting™ is considerably more user-friendly than the currently standard
formatting initiated by such texts as Pharr's Virgil and carried forward most recently in
the Greek texts of Geoffrey Steadman. Steadman lists bare vocabulary at the bottom of
the page in alphabetical order. This requires the student to roam up and around the
bottom of the page in search of the word he or she requires; and to glance continually up
and down from the ancient text, to and from listed words every time he or she is in doubt
as to whether or not the word they are unsure about had (or has not) been supplied. The
end result is a great deal of excess eye movement—and strain! In contrast, DGL-Aids lists
vocabulary in the order in which it appears in the text (i.e., not alphabetically). This
allows the student to survey with one single sweep of the eyes all the vocabulary
provided for the passage in question. Limitations of subjectivity notwithstanding (i.e.,
different readers will inevitably be in need of different words), I am convinced that even
the "raw" manuscript versions of DGL Lex-Aids will save students a great deal of time
and greatly increase their enjoyment by decreasing drudgery.
What the young scholar finds here then, are selected lexical (and morphological) aids.
Inclusion or exclusion of any particular word is driven by the following assumption: if the
word is not here recorded, you should already know it; if you do not already know it, you
should secure it in memory as soon as possible! This greater degree of selectivity, the
assumption that the student has obtained mastery of at least the most basic vocabulary of
Greek and Latin, makes these lists a good deal more useful than the lexicalmorphological aids available through the Perseus Project of John Hopkins. For that site
provides information for every single word—even the most elementary. This amounts to
clutter, as the intermediate classicist is burdened with needless information. So much
more plentiful, it is all the less useful.
At present these Aids exist in three different forms. First, and most numerous, are those
offered in manuscript form—the "raw" and unpolished (e.g. Aristophanes Frogs and De
vi Rerum Natura III). They exist as originally drafted—in my neat and personal hand—but
have not been recast in Word-document form. The manuscript version of Frogs was
compiled while consulting the Clarendon Press commentary of Kenneth Dover; the
manuscript version of De Rerum Natura III was compiled while consulting the
Cambridge commentary of E.J. Kenney. It is hoped that students will be enabled to spend
less time looking up rare words and more time following the argument of these masterful
editors.
Horace Odes Book I represents the second form of Lex-Aids. In Word-document form, it
offers a no-frills, two-columned running vocabulary of Horace's unique diction, presented
in the order in which the words appear in the poem. Since it is intended to serve as an
auxiliary to the classic "school" commentary of Charles E. Bennett (revised by John C.
Rolfe, 1958), in deference to that magisterial work, it is entirely bereft of comments.
With such assistance, perhaps at least the first nine poems of the collection (Horace's
glorious "Parade"—where each poem dances forth in a new and different choriambicbased meter: ‒⏑⏑‒) might return to the curriculum.
To transform my "raw" versions (of the first form) into "cooked" Word-document
versions (of the second form) would require several lifetimes. Perhaps, in time, this task
will be completed under the auspices of the Detroit Greek and Latin Educational
Foundation. But with only one lifetime at my present disposal, and with the numbers of
Greek and Latin readers dwindling ever more with every tick of the clock, one simply
cannot await that merely speculative outcome. The benefit that might accrue (even from
the "raw" Lex-Aids) to the scant and scattered rump of Greek and Latin readers ought not
be forestalled. Few and forlorn—the last of the Mohicans—perhaps, with this additional
aid, their ranks might even grow.
vii The third form of Lex-Aids is far more ambitious. Three Quarrels (Agamemnon versus
the Priest of Apollo, Achilles versus Agamemnon, Zeus versus Hera): LexicalGrammatical Aids to Iliad I represents the apotheosis of my student notes, and attempts a
complete redesign (patent pending) of the "school commentary." As such, Three
Quarrels serves as the signal-ship of DGL's Normandy invasion—the fight to return
Ancient Greek to the regular curriculum of American elementary and secondary schools
(cf. Greek the DGL Way). Three Quarrels is a teacher's manual/self-tutorial textbook
tailored for the benefit of independent learners, teachers of Latin, and beginning or
intermediate students of Greek of ALL ages. With the aid of a linguistically adept parent
or teacher (or dogged use of Mondi and Corrigan's A Student Handbook of Greek and
English Grammar), it enables any middle or high school student of sufficient grit to
assimilate the core of the DGL curriculum. Used in conjunction with Pharr's Homeric
Greek and Owen and Goodspeed's Homeric Vocabularies, it allows any earnest adult to
become a reader (and singer!) of Homer.
More precisely, ANY high school Latin teacher who has even a bit of Greek in his or her
background (and a copy of Smyth on hand!) will be able to assist a young student
participating in DGL's online hub of Greek & Latin instruction. Likewise, ANY adult
(with a copy of both Smyth and Mondi & Corrigan) will be able, by close study of the
first 100 lines—Agamemnon versus the Priest of Apollo—both to introduce themselves to
Homeric Greek and to greatly enhance their understanding of English language and
grammar. To mince this material so as to both suit and delight the clever elementary
student is the signal mission of Detroit Greek and Latin. (The Learning Standards for
Classical and Modern Languages mandates that first language learning should begin no
later than first or second grade; so, here again, there is no turning back.)
So, while this wider pedagogical purpose—its use as a teacher's manual—requires some
measure of mythological and literary comment, the signal character of Three Quarrels is
its systematic exposition of morphology and grammar. To this end, the two-columned
main text of running vocabulary positively bristles with references to Smyth's Greek
Grammar, Denniston's Greek Particles, Monro's Homeric Grammar, Goodwin's Moods
and Tenses of the Greek Verb, and other important works. The grammatical references
viii are abbreviated (e.g., [S: 35] = section 35 of Smyth). Fuller quotations from these works
(as well as my own occasional remarks) are clearly set off by the use of bulleted points.
The absence of square brackets means that the lion's share of information referred to
stands quoted in the bulleted points immediately following.
But here again the use of "white space" enables the user to navigate the whole with
ease—either attending to or completely disregarding proffered information as individual
whim, taste, time, or need dictate. The degree and intensity of the citations and quotations
from these works renders Three Quarrels a veritable "Everything you every wanted to
know " about Homer's Greek vis-à-vis Smyth's Greek Grammar and about the subtlety of
meaning offered by the Greek particles! ("To catch the subtle and elusive meaning of
these often apparently insignificant elements of speech challenges the utmost vigilance
and skill of the student."—S: 2771). Three Quarrels is, therefore, a labor of devotion to
two of my most favorite texts: Homer's Iliad and Smyth's Greek Grammar.
In one area alone does Three Quarrels leave the student entirely on his or her own: the
use and meaning of the Greek prepositions. Here there is no better starting place—
especially for elementary age students—than the Geometric Arrangement of the Greek
Prepositions found as Table II in Bruce M. Metzger's Lexical Aids for Students of New
Testament Greek. ("All prepositions seem to have been adverbs originally and mostly
adverbs of place." [S: 1636 a]) And while Smyth (§1675-1702) provides a convenient
overview of the use of Greek prepositions, there is simply no getting around consulting
either Cunliffe or the intermediate Liddell and Scott when push comes to shove and one
stands toe-to-toe with some obscure token of ἐπί.
To whom (and how) will Three Quarrels be of use? For undergraduate students of Greek
making the transition from an elementary course in Attic Greek to the reading of Homer,
Three Quarrels will facilitate an easy and seamless transition. For students returning to
ix Greek after an absence of a few or many years, Three Quarrels will facilitate a thorough
review and consolidation of past material and knowledge. For independent learners and
teachers of students participating remotely in the DGL curriculum, (in conjunction with
Pharr's Homeric Greek) Three Quarrels will allow them to teach themselves Homeric
Greek. For advanced students of Greek, Three Quarrels will lead them deep into both
Homer's uses of particles and Bekker's restoration of digamma.
At the lowest level of use—the review of vocabulary PRIOR to approaching a specific
portion of text—the user places a lengthwise folded sheet of paper over the right (or left)
column for a quick and easy test: How well am I acquainted with the vocabulary specific
to this next portion of text? At the next level of use—reading the quotations from Smyth,
Goodwin, Denniston and Monro (and my own comments) the user is exposed to singular
and important nuances of Homeric grammar. On the final level—closely following-up on
the copious references to Smyth's Greek Grammar—the user becomes thoroughly
familiar with the contents and layout of that work (a prestigious bookend is thereby
transformed into a trusted, true, and vital friend!) and numerous "irregularities" of
morphology and grammar are completely elucidated. (The final result is the
transformation of a prestigious bookend into a trusted, true, and vital friend.)
Spared the labor of separating specific bits of useful information from the close and dense
presentation of a standard scholarly commentary, white-spaced formatting quickens
considerably the pace of the intermediate or returning student's assimilation of critical
lexical and grammatical knowledge. Having unraveled the morphological, syntactical,
and lexical knots of the text, the student is then free to explore the world of advanced
scholarly commentary and discussion at will and with ease. (For, first and foremost must
come the construal of the Greek!) In this regard these lexical aids represent a retooling
for the 21st century of the old-fashioned classic: the "school commentary."
The way I imagine the notes being used (and the way I actually do employ them to this
day when re-reading a text) is simply to take 3 to 6 pages worth of notes, glance over the
x entries and then proceed to read the portion of text in question. This "fly over" of the
selected vocabulary will either test or confirm one's knowledge of the meanings of those
words, since the mind will automatically concentrate on the ones it does not know or
recognize. The bottom line: much relief from the tedium of paging back and forth in one's
lexicon.
But let me assert what follows with ever so much force: BEST, BEST practice is to read
the Latin or Greek words OUT LOUD as you peruse them—so that the English meaning
imbues itself to the SOUND of the Greek or Latin word (Cf. The Logic of Translation).
Never forget: silent reading was not the norm in the Greek or Roman world. For them,
language was first and foremost ACOUSTIC, AUDIBLE and ARTICULATED.
(Aristophanes' word for snore in the opening of the Clouds (ῥέγκω) was thought to
mimic the sound of a snorting horse. Recall that when one encounters ἐλέγχω . . .
ἐλέγξω in Plato's Socrates.) Attempting to learn Greek or Latin without employing the
mouth to articulate what the ears can (then) hear, is like fighting a heavyweight fight with
both hands tied behind one's back! That is to say, the more senses one involves in the
process of learning, the deeper the roots of assimilation are struck
.
I am fully convinced that use of these lists will save students literally hundreds, if not
thousands, of hours fingering back and forth in the lexicon. The fully polished Three
Quarrels promises even more: diligent follow-up of the references to Smyth's Greek
Grammar will render one thoroughly familiar with the layout and contents of that
essential work. Having transitioned from the textbook one used in Elementary Greek to
the inexhaustible font of Smyth, the student will be thoroughly outfitted for a life of
reading Greek: Homeric, Ionic, Aeolic, and Attic. Familiar now with the depths, shoals,
and shallows of Smyth, far from having been given a fish (i.e., the running vocabulary),
the student will have been taught to fish.
Anyone who maintains that Ancient Greek is easy to learn is simply a liar; but that it can,
at least, be made easier to learn, and that the rise to proficiency need not be (as it is now)
prohibitively steep and arduous — this is the premise upon which DGL has been founded
and upon which these Lexical-Grammatical Aids are offered. Most simply said, it ought
to be possible for a collegiate engineering or pre-med student to minor in classical Greek!
xi This effort to return Ancient Greek to the elementary and secondary schools of America
is just beginning. It will take cooperation and input from across the field—and the
generous support of private donors—to make it a reality. Three Quarrels puts itself
forward as the flagship, Lex-Aids to Horace's Odes offers itself as a humble trireme, the
manuscript versions of Lex-Aids stand as raw material — standing timber as it were —
ready for transformation into future armadas.
With successful launch of this fleet, we classicists may begin to see our enrollment and
retention levels in intermediate and advanced collegiate courses begin to rebound. Only
with such a rebound will our field be assured a robust continued existence, with
augmented—rather than ever diminishing—employment chances for our PhD classicists.
But much more than this is at stake. In balance, on razor's edge hangs nothing less than
the future of advanced literacy (and critical thinking) in our American society.
Good Luck and Godspeed!
Walter Melvin Roberts III, PhD (Classics: UC Berkeley)
Founder and Director, Detroit Greek and Latin
July 24, 2014
ii