Ancient Greek Textbook for Archeologists and Historians

Members of the intersession group

• Prof. Mirena Slavova
• N. Sharankov
• E. Dzukeska
• A. Evdokimova

General courses of Ancient Greek are usually based on literary examples either excerpted from Classical Greek authors or created by the author himself. In their practical work, however, archeologists and historians run into very specific texts of inscriptions, coins or historical narratives which highly differ from what they have learned. The aim of the Textbook in question is to provide this group of students with a manual designed for their real needs.

The Textbook is conceived as an introduction to the Greek grammar covering all periods of Ancient Greek – from Homeric language (required for reading metrical epigraphic monuments) up to Classical, Hellenistic, and Mediaeval Greek. It should include texts of various Greek inscriptions found both in our region’s countries and all over the ancient Greek world. We also intend to take advantage of the texts of Greek historiographers as well as of authors relevant to the study of ancient Greek society in general.

The structure of our Textbook is supposed to treat the following subjects:

• Morphology:
  declensions of nouns;
  declension and comparative forms of adjectives;
  declension of pronouns;
  numerals;
  conjugations;
  adverbs, particles.
• Syntax:
  Genitivus absolutus;
  Accusativus cum infinitivo;
  cases of nouns;
  semantic of verbal modes;
  semantic of prepositions;
  compound sentences and conjunctions;
  negatives.
• Vocabulary:
  formation of words;
  political and administrative terms;
  terms of religion and cult;
  terms of relationship;
  translation of Latin administrative and juridical terminology;
  common inscriptional formulae;
  everyday life: words for clothes, utensils, vases;
  architectural terms and types of monuments.
• Greek dialects:
  Ionic;
  Attic;
  Hellenistic koine;
  Doric;
  Aeolic;
  dialects in poetry
• Versification:
  prosody;
  metre;
  verses and verse systems.

Stages and dead-lines:

• Discussion about the structure of the Textbook and preparation of a final version of the group proposal: 15.11. 2005.
• Elaborating of a detailed contents of the Textbook according to the different grammatical categories: 01.01.2006.
• Discussion about the philosophy of the single grammar paragraphs and the criteria of their organization: 01.02.2006.
• Collecting of materials illustrating the grammatical issues: 01.06.2006.
• Elaborating of the part which contains the noun, adjective, and pronoun declensions: 01.09.2006.
• Discussion over the proposed variant of the Textbook and its eventual digitalizing during the second contact session: 01.10.2006.