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Logos. Lingua graeca per se illustrata. ΛΟΓΟΣ. Ἑλληνική γλῶσσα
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384 pages, Paperback
Published March 15, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 29, 2023
This book probably deserves 5 stars, but it loses one for not having a compelling storyline.
I'm a strong proponent of the Comprehensible Input hypothesis, and I think it's great that we've gotten another very good book full of comprehensible Ancient Greek. What is lacking, however, is a compelling narrative that draws you in and makes you forget you're reading in another language. In the interesting story department Athenaze, Seumas Macdonald's LGPSI and a couple other books win the cake. This book does have some narrative portions but they're interspersed with boring non-narrative lessons about certain themes.
I'm a strong proponent of the Comprehensible Input hypothesis, and I think it's great that we've gotten another very good book full of comprehensible Ancient Greek. What is lacking, however, is a compelling narrative that draws you in and makes you forget you're reading in another language. In the interesting story department Athenaze, Seumas Macdonald's LGPSI and a couple other books win the cake. This book does have some narrative portions but they're interspersed with boring non-narrative lessons about certain themes.
March 1, 2026
I learned to hate this book within the first few chapters. There is something nice about its simplicity early on, which allows new learners, especially autodidacts, to read complete sentences for the first time. However, Logos fails to provide anything remotely engaging to hold onto.
tldr, just work through Thrasymachus Catabasis, Athenaze, and a good grammar like Mastronarde.
Many chapters are simply vocabulary lists wearing a trench coat while pretending to be more. The books lacks a substantial of narrative; many chapters discuss a theme with vocabulary shoved in with inconsistently useful glosses. The "narrative" chapters are rarely anything more than insipid so far, and provide little reprieve as they are only marginally more interesting than the thematic chapters.
The vocabulary introduced can be baffling at times. For example, early on you learn that spiders and bees are bloodless, a word that I had difficulty finding in online dictionaries. I'm always a little frustrated when I look up a word (from any student text) on Logeion, only to see that it appears fewer than 50 times in the corpus of Greek literature.
The book also introduces a fantastic quantity of proper nouns. I find this to provide little to no value. I don't care to learn the names of a fictional family who don't do anything of interest, and I especially don't care for chapters that list the small rivers of Italy or Anatolia.
The illustrator made the baffling decision to depict the slaves featured in the book as ugly and deformed. I believe the word they used was κακός: evil, worthless, ugly. While the slave owners are universally καλός, drawn handsomely, and are all friendly with each other.
My final gripe is that the progression of difficulty is strange. Many chapters offer little increase in difficulty, giving little to no new grammar while piling on proper nouns, while in other places it jumps suddenly in complexity.
We have limited options as it stands and I did find this useful early on, however I would caution against anyone using this as their primary source of comprehensible input.
tldr, just work through Thrasymachus Catabasis, Athenaze, and a good grammar like Mastronarde.
Many chapters are simply vocabulary lists wearing a trench coat while pretending to be more. The books lacks a substantial of narrative; many chapters discuss a theme with vocabulary shoved in with inconsistently useful glosses. The "narrative" chapters are rarely anything more than insipid so far, and provide little reprieve as they are only marginally more interesting than the thematic chapters.
The vocabulary introduced can be baffling at times. For example, early on you learn that spiders and bees are bloodless, a word that I had difficulty finding in online dictionaries. I'm always a little frustrated when I look up a word (from any student text) on Logeion, only to see that it appears fewer than 50 times in the corpus of Greek literature.
The book also introduces a fantastic quantity of proper nouns. I find this to provide little to no value. I don't care to learn the names of a fictional family who don't do anything of interest, and I especially don't care for chapters that list the small rivers of Italy or Anatolia.
The illustrator made the baffling decision to depict the slaves featured in the book as ugly and deformed. I believe the word they used was κακός: evil, worthless, ugly. While the slave owners are universally καλός, drawn handsomely, and are all friendly with each other.
My final gripe is that the progression of difficulty is strange. Many chapters offer little increase in difficulty, giving little to no new grammar while piling on proper nouns, while in other places it jumps suddenly in complexity.
We have limited options as it stands and I did find this useful early on, however I would caution against anyone using this as their primary source of comprehensible input.
December 31, 2024
Okay, first, big disclaimer: I haven't actually finished reading the whole book, but I *DID* teach out of it this semester, so I feel like that nonetheless qualifies me.
The reason I didn't finish the whole thing is the reason it's only three stars: a lot of the narrative simply isn't that interesting; I skimmed the whole book but was not at all compelled to sit down and read it. It's *definitely* in the mode of Classics textbooks perpetuating some of the worst examples of ancient beliefs/stereotypes (i.e. representation is bad to non-existent). The illustrations of the enslaved people in particular are kind of horrifying.
HOWEVER. In terms of pedagogy, it was by far the best of the current options. And it's not like the other books do much of a better job representing people (as people), so, y'know, I picked this book.
And I do think it was the right choice, particularly for my level of student (one semester introductory high school course, no particular goal to get very far, but wanted students to have a good, fun experience where they felt like they accomplished things). The first six chapters (as far as we got) definitely did that. The supplementary materials available (PowerPoints for grammar, vocab, oral exercises; videos!!; games; add'l exercises) were fantastic (only Athenaze comes close, and these were better). The chapter on animals was AWESOME and absolutely what I was looking for; kids loved it.
So, I would recommend this book - but only because of the lack of other options. Or, you know, they could NOT with the biases?
The reason I didn't finish the whole thing is the reason it's only three stars: a lot of the narrative simply isn't that interesting; I skimmed the whole book but was not at all compelled to sit down and read it. It's *definitely* in the mode of Classics textbooks perpetuating some of the worst examples of ancient beliefs/stereotypes (i.e. representation is bad to non-existent). The illustrations of the enslaved people in particular are kind of horrifying.
HOWEVER. In terms of pedagogy, it was by far the best of the current options. And it's not like the other books do much of a better job representing people (as people), so, y'know, I picked this book.
And I do think it was the right choice, particularly for my level of student (one semester introductory high school course, no particular goal to get very far, but wanted students to have a good, fun experience where they felt like they accomplished things). The first six chapters (as far as we got) definitely did that. The supplementary materials available (PowerPoints for grammar, vocab, oral exercises; videos!!; games; add'l exercises) were fantastic (only Athenaze comes close, and these were better). The chapter on animals was AWESOME and absolutely what I was looking for; kids loved it.
So, I would recommend this book - but only because of the lack of other options. Or, you know, they could NOT with the biases?
November 22, 2025
I got this book as a second attempt at revising my Ancient Greek from college in hopes of getting it back to a level where I can enjoyably read a couple student editions of the Argonautica. The book functions a lot like the Latin textbook Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata in that it is a simple narrative with the only help given in the form of images or monolingual glosses. The narrative either draws from the natural world or things that typically would be well known to someone who has enough interest in the classical world to learn Ancient Greek. There are bits about the gods and the myth of Prometheus as well as some quotes from Greek philosophers but also the battle of marathon and the governance of Athens. There are some exercises after each chapter which probably would have helped me be more prepared for the final few chapters which hit me like a brick wall. Overall you can tell that this book was a labor of love and an absolute gem. I am going to do "To Hellenikon Paidion" next.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews