/SWTG/ 2.0 PLANNING THREAD

*raises paw*

I'm in.

Book 6&7 of Thucydides' History. We could cut it down to the more important parts if necessary, but this is the section that raises the big questions.
The Melian Dialogue would also be pretty cash.

I'm in and a lot more hyped for this than I should be

Hope it all works out

Also I didn't realize OP had an actual background in teaching classics. That's pretty good

Also the closer we stick to one of the charts, the easier this will be to organize I expect. So we should look to that at least as guidance if not gospel

I am too. I hope this doesn't go south. Really looking forward to discussion with you guys.

Do you mind posting the typical Greek chart here? I don't have it.

Here's one...

... And here's two

Neat.
strawpoll.me/12094948

take this to show me where you guys want to be.

I'm in too.

I'd say background + The Epic of Gilgamesh, which forms part of the foundation of western literature and precedes Homer.

Whoa, nice dude.

OP I was in the last thread and I honestly couldn't tell if the Edith Hamilton's Mythology posts were trolling. I do not think the Iliad is a difficult text to research on your own, and a group reading of Mythology is utterly pointless. Most people have to read it in high school, it's short, it takes little reflection/ group analysis. There is nothing complex, there is no interesting discussion to be had, unlike the books that we tend to do group readings on. I made a bunch of points in that post trying to defend starting with the Iliad, which I think was a great idea.

The supplementary texts and amount of information on greek mythology are both accessible (in an intellectual sense of the word) and WIDELY prevelant, not to mention generally disseminated culturally in the west.

Sorry that that happened.

I'll see about Gilgamesh. Start looking for online sources if serious about taking that up, I'll try too myself

I honestly thought so too. No student of mine has ever been so clueless as to recognize who "son of Cronus" is. But I do not want to be rude to those who are not well versed in such topics.

I would like to get right into the Iliad again and try through the canon. It just depends on how many we have that are struggling to recognize the names and references

I like Stephen Mitchell's English version of the Gilgamesh epic. It's only 130 pages of double-spaced verse excluding the introduction.

>Not reading Homeric Hymns
>Not reading the Pre-socratics
>Not reading Pindar
>Not reading Aesop
>Not reading Euclid, Pythagoras and other Greek Mathematicians
>Not reading Fragments of Poetry

I think an understanding of Ancient Greece is important to understanding their literature. MIT's course on "The Ancient World: Greece" uses The Routledge History of the Ancient World:

>Greece In the Making, 1200-479 BC by Robin Osborne (400 pages)
>The Greek World 479-323 BC by Simon Hornblower (434 pages)

Other texts:

>Ancient Greece: A Very Short Introduction (216 pages)
>The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece by Josiah Ober (448 pages)
>Introducing the Ancient Greeks by Edith Hall (336 pages)
>A Brief History of Ancient Greece: Politics, Society, and Culture by Sarah B. Pomeroy (416 pages)
>The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome by Susan Wise Bauer (896 pages)

this is nice, as I've used some of these in class, but some are a bit expensive and I don't want this group to have to be pay to participate, so to speak.

That said, if one of you finds a torrent, post it here. I'm hardly torrent-literate, I'm afraid, but I will learn.

What if I'm too dumb for the classics. I started reading Les miserables and I was never able to finish it

I've read Iliad and Odyssey. Also the trojan horse one

I know most of the gods but what are some other accessible Greek stories like the ones I said

Every book I have named I can share the ebook of, so that is no problem. Bookzz and gen.lib.rus.ec have all of them.

>I've read Iliad and Odyssey. Also the trojan horse one

>Also the trojan horse one

please leave this thread

Nice chuckle boys. No worries user. Now's your chance to hop along your path to enlightenment.

This is absolutely wonderful. If that is the case, I would feel wrong not to delve into such works with you guys :)

I seriously don't like the idea of background reading. We're not college students, a rudimentary understanding of Ancient Greece from skimming wikipedia or whatever is more than enough to understand the Iliad.

The supplementary material should be optional. Having to read 800 pages of history is going to put off all the potential newcomers and besides, our imperfect understanding of Ancient Greece also helps to fuel discussion.

Realistically speaking, I don't expect more than 10 people to take part in this. The current thread for the War and Peace reading group has 15 IPs. I doubt we will even have 5 when we're halfway through the Greeks which collectively are a lot longer than W&P. So let's not discourage newcomers with boring history books.

random question, which philosopher proposed the idea of time as a strung out infinite sequence? i want to say it was someone in response to Zeno's paradoxes but I could be misremembering

This is exactly what I've thought as well, but a large portion of people last thread whined about it. I'm right there with you.

Nothing to contribute except to say Im in, never participated in a Veeky Forums reading group before so im excited, especially since the Greeks are so fundamental! I actually have some pre req material to read to keep occupied until we lauch so some hype material!

One question though, my semester starts on monday, my free time is quite low with a physics undergrad, will i be able to keep up with this reading group with say 5 hrs of free time to read per week or will i need to find more time?

>What translation of Iliad?
>Due to being translated, it will not matter much.
What sort of classics teacher are you OP

1 hour per day to keep with the schedule

Just picked these up 15 min ago, i'm somewhat ready to begin with the greeks

I suppose I am in, was planning on reading Mythology first but maybe I can read both at the same time

so i have to find 2 more hours in my week, ty user

user, the Iliads translations, in all my years, have all been relatively the same

This format is anachronistic. We're on a real-time web forum, not a women's library.

>There is a certain kind of thoroughness which is but the excuse for inactivity. Think of what Goethe understood about antiquity: certainly not as much as any classicist, and yet quite enough to enable him to engage in fruitful struggle with it. One -should- not, in fact, know more about a thing than one can oneself digest creatively. Moreover the only means of truly understanding something is one's attempt to -do- it. Let us try to live in the manner of the ancients – and we shall instantly come a hundred miles closer to them than with all our learnedness. Our classicists nowhere demonstrate that they somehow strive to vie with antiquity; that is why -their- antiquity is without any effect on the schools.
-Nietzsche

Be a teacher, not a medium, OP: have a purpose, select, excerpt, interpret; focus on the living types. Use links, ebooks, images, video, memes. Asceticism is decadence: making it essential not to be left behind at the start, slogging through lengthy material without a goal (except '_ in itself'), making a dichotomy between context and works. A mishmash of university and leisurely reading.

Why not make the Greeks Veeky Forums's own, if you genuinely want to teach? All I can foresee here is indigestion and deaths.

...

Yo need more ppl in on this

there will be more soon. All the groups are coming done. I would be happy with even 10 people

I'm in. Seems like a great list. I'd like to see at least one more lyric poet though. It might be interesting to have someone to compare Sappho with.

Maybe is he referring to the aeneid? The trojan horse does make a cameo there.

What would sex with Aphrodite be like?

Any recommendations on critical commentary of the Iliad and/or the Odyssey?

OP, don't let them start on Aristophanes until they've read some Plato. And then don't move on from Plato until they've read Xenophon's Socrates to compare.

And how the hell are you going to get all the way to Aristophanes before introducing any history? Thucydides is boring as hell to most non-classicists, but I think everyone can enjoy Herodotus, plus the Solon/Croesus bits get referenced throughout Western literature.

>sorry if these points were already made; I am about to close Veeky Forums and didn't have time to read the thread

Keep it up there boys

Are we okay with starting next Friday? Does this give everyone time to get the book/download it and make room in schedules?

I'm good for next Friday, gives the weekend to get a good start. Are we doing 2 books a day or less this time?

Divine.

I was aiming for the two a day, but we need to discuss this. Also, we'll make up a schedule

I would prefer 1 a day but if everyone else is okay with 2 I'm cool with it

they're easy reads, they shouldn't be too hard to plow through and each is only 30-50 pages

Yeah that's fine man, sometimes just get a bunch of uni work and end up a day behind

Would like to read the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid soon. Which translations would you all suggest and why? I don't want to buy Fagles just because it's the one in the chart.

I've never read any epic poetry before. Is the style easy to get used to?

Yeah. You'll be fine. There's less focus on pure form than in most other forms of poetry, so even if you dislike poetry in general you should still be able to get something from epic poetry, which, at least in its classical form, is as narrative as most novels

OP, you still there?

Any recommendations for commentary on the Iliad and Odyssey?

In the back of Fagles' Iliad is a list of suggested reading. However I'm not sure which of them is best.

I have tons my man. I'll post en soon

I found a few as ebooks. How are the recs coming?

I thought the Edith Hamilton's book was going to be shit and I'm glad I was wrong.

It's a treat.

Their texts don't exist anymore, if they ever did. This is like saying "I want to read Socrates." If you want to read about the seven sages, Dioegenes Laertius is probably your best bet, and there are some scraps in Diodorus Siculus.

The Homeric Hymns are fine if you want more mythology and want to read more """Homer"""

Pindar is good but repetitive

Aesop is good but not significantly "Greek"

The mathematicians are insignificant to read

Agree with you on the poetry, Oxford's "Greek lyric poetry" has a solid collection; Sappho would be worth reading more fully.

"The world of Odysseus"
"War and the Iliad"
Cambridge companion to Homer

t. Greek/Roman fanboy, might reread Homer with you guys but otherwise will just be peeking in and giving advice/recs if desired.

Thanks. Apparently an essay called "The Iliad or the Poem of Force" is also really good.

Yeah that's one of the essays contained in "war and the iliad."

im new to this
how will you teach us?

tfw know ancient greek but at a tree sloth's reading speed

Anyway this sounds cool I'm in. I never actually read much in the language or in translation.

I want in! Though I will be doing my reading in my mother tongue, sorry.

Get an easier translation then dumbass

Ok, I'm in. Sounds great.

>tfw I can't read these books in my Native language and have to read them in English instead.

And yes, they are translated to my native language

What do you mean Aesop isn't "significantly Greek?"

Bump!

So what book do we start with? And what history book or companion book we should we read along with?

Mythology is very easily digested, reading both at the same time wouldn't be difficult at all.

>I don't want to buy Fagles
Fagles is really good though

Hello Veeky Forums
Why does will not contract into won't instead of win't

Any idea on start date? Excited for this btw

Nobody resolved this

The Iliad.

I'll post a mega that Veeky Forums has that has TONS of background for those who care

I'm hoping this upcoming friday. Gives people enough time to get their books and such, and also waits for the other large groups to fade away to this one

Iliad is kickass. You guys are gonna love it. Can we discuss scheduling? What's it going to look like?

go away you meme

His fables are great (definitely not suggesting otherwise), but there is little in them to give insight into specifically Greek culture. They tend to be much more general stories with stronger links to folk tales across the world than to other Greek works.

I'm currently on book 4 of the Iliad and book 3 of Gilgamesh (Michell's translation).

Iliad is so much better, and I'm not even reading that great of a translation (Lombardo, because I like Hackett)

The first time I read the Gilgamesh epic I found it rather boring and uninspired. Then I read it another time years later, Mitchell's English version, and it came alive to me. And reading his introduction helped me a lot to gain even deeper understanding of it.

It might take more than one read to appreciate, and perhaps some time in between.

Know that you are holding and reading one of the first stories ever written down in this universe. A story from a civilization that is vastly different from our own, but filled with people who too sought meaning in life and death, and through mythology, through this epic, came to try to understand their role on Earth.

I just finished the Iliad, do I go directly to the homeric hymns or The Odyssey?

Also I'm thinking about getting some secondary literature, but I'm not really sure how "necessary" it would be for Homer since Fagles gave a really good introduction.

Usually I'll get a companion reader if it's something really hard to digest.

Fuck me. I hate choice.

I would like to start with the Greeks but I wish there was one globally accepted reading order including secondary texts. All the different opinions in this thread make my head hurt.

Secondary literature must come from what the reader is interested in about a text, it can't be proscribed from above.

Secondary reading is unnecessary if you have a brain and know how to use google.

Agreed. The works of Simone Weil and M.I. Finley are of no consequence to anyone with a brain.

Secondary reading LISTS are unnecessary, but a good book will always be more informative then what you can find on a google search

Read the Odyssey next. Homer almost certainly didn't write the "Homeric" Hymns; even not considering authorship, they're on a very different stylistic level than Iliad/Odyssey, and are best read as secondary to the main epics. With that said, if you like Homer, definitely read the Hymns. They're of varying quality, but are a quick read and some (Hymn to Hermes especially IMO) are very funny.

Fagles' introduction is great. If you want to read secondary stuff in depth, consider what I mentioned above , but IMO your intro is totally sufficient for a first reading of Homer; maybe read more when you revisit him eventually.

A big point of "starting with the Greeks" is developing the skills to gather, sift through, and judge between many different sources. The Greeks are relatively simple in that regard, since there isn't TOO much primary content, and wading through it will give you the experience you need to better tackle later historical periods/major literary sources/new genres. You CAN brute force the Greeks and just read effectively everything; you can't do that with modern historical sources, with modern literature, etc. There's just too much to look at. You need to develop the skills to be judicious, to be able to say "This might be a bit interesting but isn't worth the time it would take; I'll look for a more directly relevant source."

Case in point, the comment I just made to the user considering secondary sources on Homer. Is it worth reading 15+ essays in a 400 page Cambridge Companion if you just snapped shut the Iliad? Probably not. Probably you'd get more out of digesting Homer and rereading him (maybe in a different translation). Probably you'd get more out of reading some intro histories of Greece, reading some Hesiod to peek into the "little brother" great epic poet, or even some other genres of Greek writing to get a better handle on the culture, ideals, way of life, etc.

The point of the Greeks is not (only) to know "the Greeks." It's to be able to abstract from them, to grasp universal historical themes from their histories, universal literary themes from their poetry, and universal facets of human nature and the human condition from their way of life.

Very good post, thanks senpai

That user is completely fucking retarded so don't listen to him.

Argue against my points then m8

I welcome the discussion

Were Achilles and petroclus gay for each other???

Were Achilles and Patroclus gay for each other???

why would you delete a shitpost m8

No they just loved each other and had sex with each other.

i'm in

What edition or translation of the anabasis should I read?