Ancient Greek - 2nd Edition

by Carl A.P. Ruck

Ruck's innovative approach makes Ancient Greek: A New Approach useful not only in the classroom but for general self-instruction as well.

Genres: Linguistics, Reference, Language

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think Ruck with Quinn and Hansen could be your royal road to mastering greek

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I'd probably think that Ruck by MIT
and Hansen and Quinn by Fordham

might be the best two books for Ancient Greek

and for Latin
Moreland and Fleischer's book on Latin by the University of California

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As i understand it, both textbooks were meant for the needs of the City Univerity of New York for quick, deep and very thorough textbooks to get through the hurdles as cleanly as possible

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I'm going to add their Latin and Greek Readings below, so you can see where you can go beyond Moreland/Fleischer's Latin and Hansen/Quinn's Greek textbooks

My guess is that you burn 200 hours on your Latin or Greek textbook
and you burn another 200 hours on your Latin Advanced Readings

Upper Latin - 6 hrs a day - 15 days of classes and 19 days
so you're burning about 225 hours in 2.5 weeks

Advanced Greek - 7 weeks
and i can't even calculate the amount of work that one would take
I'll guess about 700 hours
at least triple the effort

It's amazing of what 10 weeks non-stop effort could do
if you have enough energy
and it doesn't break you

400 hours of Latin [400-500 hours]
900 hours of Greek [800-1000 hours]

And you could do all four phases in 90 days
if you're bonkers

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[For almost 50 years, the Latin/Greek Institute has been providing the world’s most rigorous and intensive instruction in Latin and Greek.]

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Brooklyn College/City Univerity of New York

The basic programs of the Latin/Greek Institute enable students with no previous training in either language to cover the material normally included in four to six semesters of college-level Latin or Greek in 10 weeks of instruction.

The textbooks for the basic programs—Moreland and Fleischer’s Latin: An Intensive Course and Hansen and Quinn’s Greek: An Intensive Course—were developed specifically for the institute and are now widely used in college classrooms across the country.

Every hour of each of the 50 instructional days has been carefully planned to give students, by the end of the 10th week, both a firm knowledge of the fundamentals of Latin or Greek and substantial experience in the close reading of original texts.

Previous students who have completed the program with a grade of B or better regularly pass graduate departmental translation examinations and have performed successfully in senior-level and graduate-level reading courses.

In the Upper-level Programs, the emphasis is on reading a substantial body of literature at a high level of grammatical precision. These programs are just as demanding as the Basic Programs and require the same level of commitment and focus.

The work of the institute is extremely demanding, with the equivalent of one week’s material in a normal college setting covered each day. Daily attendance is required and nightly assignments are substantial.

Classes begin at 9:30 a.m. and continue until 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, with only a short break for lunch. Daily quizzes and weekly examinations help students continually to assess their progress. Optional review sessions are conducted throughout the week for students who seek extra help.

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Lower Division Readings

Required

Classical Prose: Cicero and Sallust—A close translation and comparative examination of the syntax, style, and rhetoric of Cicero’s complete First Oration Against Catiline and of selections from Sallust’s The Conspiracy of Catiline.

Augustan Epic: Vergil—Book IV of The Aeneid is read in its entirety with a view toward an appreciation of Vergilian style and poetic technique.

Survey of Latin Literature—Lectures and discussions on the development of Latin prose and poetry from Livius Andronicus through the Silver Age and into the medieval period and the Renaissance. Representative passages are translated and analyzed.

Latin Prose Composition—Simple and complex English sentences are translated into Latin with a threefold purpose: 1) to review basic rules of syntax, 2) to expand knowledge of Latin syntax by applying basic rules previously learned to more intricate constructions, and 3) to call attention to matters of word order, style, and prose rhythm in order to create a sensitive response to the art of Latin prose.

Classical Lyric Poetry—Selections from the four books of Horace’s Odes are read and analyzed in terms of themes, language, and metrics.

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Lower Division Readings

Electives

Each student will choose one two-week mini-course (18 class hours).
A minimum of three of the following will be offered.

Augustan Epic—Ovid’s Metamorphoses
Pastoral Poetry—Vergil’s Eclogues
Philosophical Epic—Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura
Religious Autobiography—Augustine’s Confessions
Roman Elegy—Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid
Roman Historiography—Tacitus or Livy
Satirical Prose Fiction—Petronius’ Satyricon

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Upper Division Readings

Caesar—De Bello Gallico
Cicero—Somnium Scipionis
Seneca—Apocolocyntosis, Thyestes
Augustine—Confessions
Suetonius—Da Vita Caesarum
Vergil—Aeneid

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In the first six weeks of the summer, students work through the entirety of Hansen and Quinn’s Greek: An Intensive Course. During this time, students master the forms and syntax of the language while reading relatively simple selections of unadapted prose and poetry.

In the final four weeks of the course, students read longer texts in the morning and, in the afternoon, survey major authors and genres ranging from the Archaic through the Hellenistic periods. They also have two opportunities each day for additional readings at sight.

Core texts in the basic Greek program include Plato’s Ion and Euripides’ Medea. Supplementary lectures (e.g., on textual criticism, the history of the Greek language, meter, rhetoric) provide further enrichment. The program concludes with a two-week elective in which students choose an author to read and analyze in even greater depth.

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Greek
Lower Division Readings

Required of all students.

Attic Prose: Plato—A close translation and examination of the syntax, style, and rhetoric of Plato’s Ion.

Survey of Greek Prose and Poetry—Representative selections of Greek prose and poetry of the Archaic and classical periods will be studied with emphasis on rhetoric, metrics, the development of style and dialectical differences.

Greek Tragedy: Euripides—Extensive selections from Euripides’ Medea are read with a view toward an appreciation of Euripides’ style, rhetoric, meter, and poetic technique.

Greek Prose Composition—Simple and complex English sentences are translated into Greek with a threefold purpose:

1) to review basic rules of syntax

2) to expand knowledge of Greek syntax by applying basic rules previously learned to more intricate constructions

3) to call attention to matters of word order, style, and prose rhythm in order to create a sensitive response to the art of Greek prose

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Lower Division Readings
Greek Institute Electives

Each student will choose one two-week mini-course (18 class hours).
A minimum of three of the following will be offered.

Greek Epic—Homer
Greek Historiography—Thucydides
Greek Philosophy—Aristotle
New Testament Greek—Selections from one of the Gospels

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The Upper-Level programs run for seven weeks: during the first week, students intensively review basic morphology and syntax. For the remaining six weeks, the greatest effort is directed toward translating and analyzing texts. Daily quizzes, special tutorials, and frequent drills are included.

The large amount of reading is enriched by regular prose composition exercises. Throughout, there is emphasis on aspects of criticism that derive from a linguistic analysis of a text and that cannot be appreciated from a translation. We welcome students of all levels: undergraduate and graduate, students from nontraditional backgrounds, and advanced high school students. This is not for the faint of heart!

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Upper-Level Greek

Course readings include rhetorical prose, drama, history, and a Platonic dialogue as well as additional selections to be read at sight.

The curriculum may include:

Xenophon—Apology
Lysias 1—On the Murder of Eratosthenes
Plato—Phaedrus
Sophocles—Ajax
Thucydides—Book 2.1-65