"start with the Greeks"

That's the reason I didn't read Homer yet, translation of poems always is cringe worthy. The beauty of poetry always tie into the musical flow of the language. Reading philosophical works like Plato and Aristotle is slightly bearable because they're just essays which more concern about the meaning, that's somewhat translatable.

Wasn't it Heidegger who said that German is a worthy substitute to Greek or something like that? That's my defense t. Herman

Thanks, if you ever get up the energy to do any learning, classical languages like Greek and Latin really have a lot of value for reading other texts too, in the sense that you develop a lot of knowledge of English too through learning etymologies of words etc.
I haven't heard that quote, but I can't think that that's really true; my main frame of reference for this is my reading of the Aeneid; I have read from it in Latin and its language is so much more powerful and lucid in the original than any translation. So I imagine Homer is the same in that its poeticism is fully inarticulable in any language other than the original
With stuff like prose I think that's much more articulable in translation than poetic sentiments like that of Homer. Definitely though something is lost no matter what in translation.

You are aware that Homer never wrote anything and the Iliad and Odyssey are free transcriptions (aka intralinguistic translations) done by other people right? You're never going to read the original Homer, and that's the point.

Well yeah I know there's little historical basis for Homer as a person. When I say Homer I mean the texts we do have of the Iliad and Odyssey.

OP you're coming across as a bit of a LARPer here desu. Would you or anyone be any closer to understanding the Russian soul of the classics if all you did was learn Russian on duolingo? The guy with cultural awareness and understanding reading translations is infinitely better off than the guy with high proficiency in the language who is clueless and uneducated about the mentality and culture of the people. And since we have virtually no means of cultural immersion in Ancient Greece except larping scenes from Homer and Herodotus which amounts to nothing, learning the language won't get anyone any closer to any real appreciation beyond placebo effect by pretending to be Greek, i.e. larp. But then again maybe the meme really is just a meme. And maybe you find beauty in the language itself which is great but if that was all there was to it you wouldn't have started this thread.

What do you mean here by larp? Surely there's no better way to understand something like Homer than by trying to recreate the mindset of its intended audience?

Italianfag here, highly proficient in Latin and thinking about learning ancient Greek. What are the main differences from Latin? Is it harder?

Similar in the way grammar works (declinations), different but easy to learn alphabet. I say go for it. I studied some ancient Greek in HS and what we did when beginning was translating Aesop's fables. Get a good dictionary. I wouldn't say it's harder but obviously you will find Latin more similar to Italian.

You don't start with the greeks to learn about their culture, to do that you major in Ancient Greek Studies. You start with the greek literature because of its influence on the world, and to understand the motives. But most writers which read the greeks, did not speak greek. And for fucks sake, there is nothing wrong with translations from ancient languages which do not even have any practical use.