Review and Next Steps

Twenty-one lessons ago you were learning which way to curl a ζ. Now you can read the first lines of Xenophon, Plato and Homer with a vocabulary list. This lesson puts the course in one place, so you can check a form in ten seconds instead of hunting through old lessons. Print it, or copy the tables by hand, which is better. Then pick what to do next.

Grammar summary

The article (lesson 7)

Dual (lesson 21): τώ for nominative and accusative, τοῖν for genitive and dative, all genders.

First and second declension (lessons 5 and 6)

θάλαττα is the Attic spelling; Ionic and Koine write θάλασσα, with the same endings. Every first declension noun has a circumflex on the ending of the genitive plural: χωρῶν, θαλαττῶν.

Third declension (lesson 14)

Learn every third declension noun with its genitive: the genitive gives you the stem.

Pronouns (lesson 10 and lesson 19)

The unaccented forms μου, μοι, με, σου, σοι, σε are enclitic. αὐτός, αὐτή, αὐτό declines like ἀγαθός except for the neuter -ό; alone in an oblique case it means "him, her, it"; next to a noun without the article, "-self"; with the article, "the same" (lesson 10).

λύω at a glance (lessons 8, 9, 12 to 18)

First person singular for the finite moods; the participle is the masculine nominative singular. Dashes mark forms that do not exist.

All forms checked against Smyth's λύω tables (section 383 and following). Two signs worth keeping in your head: an augment means past indicative and nothing else; a long thematic vowel (ω, η) means subjunctive, and οι or αι before the ending means optative.

εἰμί, "be"

Infinitive εἶναι, participle ὤν, οὖσα, ὄν, imperative ἴσθι.

Constructions in one table

Pronunciation chart

A compact version of lesson 2's charts, restored Attic only. Remember that restored Attic is a scholarly reconstruction, not a recording. Erasmian classrooms and modern Greek speakers will sound different, and you should be able to understand both.

Principal parts of ten common verbs

These ten cover a large share of the verb forms you will meet in Xenophon and Plato. The forms follow the Dickinson College Commentaries Greek Core Vocabulary, except πράττω, given here in its Attic spelling (DCC lists πράσσω). A dash means the form is rare or not in use; where the DCC list omits a form, this course has filled it from Smyth or Morpheus only when the form is common.

Three patterns to notice. Some verbs have a middle future with an active meaning: ἀκούσομαι, λήψομαι, ὄψομαι, "I will hear, take, see" (lesson 12). Some take whole principal parts from different roots: λέγω, φέρω, ὁράω, ἔρχομαι. And πράττω has two perfects: πέπραχα "I have done," πέπραγα "I have fared" (εὖ πέπραγα, "I have done well, I am well off"). Ionic and Koine write πράσσω, as they write θάλασσα.

Next steps

The worst thing you can do now is stop reading Greek for six months. The second worst is jump straight into Thucydides. Here is a sensible order.

1. Reread this course's Readings. All of them, aloud, without the vocabulary help. If a passage from lesson 13 is still hard, the grammar from lesson 13 is not settled yet.
2. Read a lot of easy Greek. A graded reader gives you that. W. H. D. Rouse's A Greek Boy at Home (1909), a story written in Greek with a vocabulary at the back, is in the public domain and on the Internet Archive. The big modern courses, such as Athenaze and the Joint Association of Classical Teachers' Reading Greek, are built around continuous stories that grow harder chapter by chapter, and working through one after this course will review everything and add what this course did not reach (contract verbs in full, -μι verbs, conditions, more participles).
3. Pick one real author with a commentary. Xenophon's Anabasis book 1 is the traditional first text, for good reason: clear Attic, a good story, and short sections. Plato's Apology or Crito is the classic second. Many student commentaries exist, in print and online; Dickinson College Commentaries publishes free annotated Greek texts. Read a section a day.
4. Learn vocabulary by frequency. The DCC Greek Core Vocabulary ranks the most common words; if you know them, a large share of any page will be familiar.
5. Speak and write. There are reading groups, online and in person, that read Greek aloud together, and a growing set of teachers and summer programs that teach classical Greek as a spoken language, some in restored Attic and some in a modern-style or Erasmian pronunciation. Look for one through a local university's classics department or a classics society. Even a weekly hour of reading aloud with other people helps a lot.
6. Koine, if you want it. The common Greek of the Hellenistic and Roman world grew out of Attic after Alexander. Its grammar is a little simpler: no dual, more prepositions, less optative, σσ instead of ττ, and some sound changes on the way to modern Greek. A reader of Attic can move to Koine prose in a few weeks. The reverse is harder. That is one reason this course started with Attic.
7. Homer, when you are ready. Epic Greek has its own vocabulary and forms (lesson 21 gave a taste). Use Autenrieth's Homeric Dictionary, free on Logeion and Perseus, and a commentary on Iliad 1 or Odyssey 1.

Pictures, Numbers and Infographics

The alphabet

The five cases

Greek through time

The ancient dialects, schematically

How much Greek is there to read?