Argonautica

[NubusLatinae1770]

Salvete Omnes!

I am looking into learning ancient Greek, and have a few questions regarding dialectal variety.

I realize that the commonplace starting point in reading Ancient Greek is to learn Attic Greek, and then either to move onto Koine Greek or Homeric Greek, yet I have general interest in two particular authors: Sappho and Apollonius of Rhodes. Thus my questions:

1) Which dialect was the Argonautica written in? Inasmuch as it was written during the Alexandrian period, I would figure it is written in some form of Koine Greek, yet would like to know if any of you have read it, and could confirm the dialect.

If so,
2) What would be the best approach to reading Apollonius of Rhodes, i.e. which books would be necessary to proceed from Attic to Koine? (is the textbook series by the "Joint Association of Classical Teachers" any good?)

and,
3) How would one go about learning Aeolian dialect, inasmuch as Sappho and Alcaeus are concerned?

lastly,
4) Is the Koine of Apollonius (assuming he wrote in Alexandrian Greek) any different from biblical Koine?

Many thanks for your help!

 

[Iáson]

Sappho and Apollonius of Rhodes.

In general, the home city of an author is not often a good indication of their dialect.

The surviving fragmentary poems of Sappho are written in Lesbian, which is an Aeolic dialect of Greek. Unfortunately, we have very little Aeolic Greek apart from the surviving fragments of Sappho and Alkaios.

Apollonios of Rhodes wrote in 3rd century BCE Alexandria, but the Argonautica is an epic poem. The traditional dialect of epic poetry was a rather artificial form of Ionic ('Homeric' Greek) and this is what Apollonios uses. That said, from personal experience Apollonios is a lot harder to read than the Homeric poems in terms of grammar and vocabulary. It is nothing like biblical koine at all.

The standard approach to learning Greek is to learn Attic through textbooks based on Athenian authors like Xenophon and Plato. Ionic is not wildly different from Attic, and I don't know of any textbooks that start off with Ionic Greek, so this might be the best approach. It's going to be quite a steep learning curve to go from Xenophon to the Homeric poems or the Argonautica, though.

Lesbian Aeolic is an entirely different kettle of fish. Normally people just learn Attic or Ionic first, then memorise the sound changes/linguistic differences and read the poems with a commentary or translation.

 

[NubusLatinae1770]

Hello Iason,

Many thanks for your informative reply!

Is there a textbook you would recommend for learning Attic Greek?

 

[AoM]

Check out this thread.

THREAD: where-is-the-best-place-to-start

 

[NubusLatinae1770]

Many thanks AoM!