Reading Greek
Carl Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Dec 24 15:10:09 EST 2002
> Carl Conrad wrote:
>
> >> I would agree fundamentally with this; more often than not, the Apology
> >> has been the starting-point for second-year courses in Greek that I
> taught
> >> over the years. The one caveat about the Apology is that it's got a lot
> of
> >> colloquial idiomatic stuff in it that replicates the mannerisms of
> >> Socrates as Plato remembered them (or chose to represent them)--so you do
> >> need a good commentary to help with those since you don't find those
> >> colloquialisms very readily in a lexicon
>
> Dear Carl,
> I have been (slowly) working my way through Biblical Greek at night and on
> weekends.
> I had been thinking about reading some Plato in Greek, this has pushed me
> over the
> edge. Could you recommend a "good commentary" suited for studying Plato in
> Greek?
The commentary by John Burnet that Brent Hudson mentions is good, but I
think it helps more with cultural background and philosophical concerns
than it does with the Greek problems likely to confront one without much
background in classical Attic. I have a page on my web-site originally
prepared to help out first-year students who want to keep alive their
Greek during summer months before starting the second year. There are two
or three commentaries listed there for early Platonic dialogues that I
think may be more helpful than the the Burnet one:
http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/moregrk.html
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
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