CLYDE PHARR HOMER AND THE STUDY OF GREEK

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Excerpts from a study contained in Homeric Greek - A Book for Beginners, University of Oklahoma Press 1985. The text contains some words in Greek, download Greek fonts, if you don't have. 

Page 5

      These elements all contribute to a quicker and an easier learning of Greek through Homer, as has been abundantly proved by experi­ments also. Thus students who begin with Homer regularly read more Greek in the time devoted to him than do those who begin with Xenophon and spend this time on the Anabasis.

      It has long been a commonly accepted myth that Homer has such an enormous vocabulary that students would have more than ordinary trouble with it. In fact the vocabulary of the first six books of the Iliad is no larger than that required for reading the Anabasis, and one can read the whole of the Ηomeric poems, including the hymns, without having to learn many more words than to read Xenophon, and without having to learn so many words as are necessary for the reading of Plato.

      There are, it is true, a great number of words in Homer which are used only once (ἅπαξ λεγόμενα).[2] The Iliad has 1097 of these, while the Odyssey has 868, making a total of 1965. However, this is not nearly so large as the number used by Xenophon, who has 3021 ἅπαξ λεγόμενα,[3] of which 433 are in the Anabasis, as compared with 266 (238 if we omit the Catalogue of Ships) in the first six books of the Iliad.

      It is highly important too in gaining a vocabulary to learn words which will be used in other authors read later in the course, and to acquire so far as possible the more fundamental meanings of words from which their later uses are derived. Ahrens, who made a careful study of this problem, gives the palm to Homer here with­out question. According to him, the words in Homer are much nearer their fundamental meanings, and take on different shades of significance in the various later authors. If one wishes to obtain a clear grasp of Greek onomatoloby and semasiology, he should begin with Homer by all means and would thus be prepared to see more readily the later turns in the meanings of words and phrases, which in many cases vary considerably in authors of the same period, and sometimes even in the same author. Thus there are over 400 words in the Anabasis which either do not occur at all in Xenophon's other works, or else with a different signifi­cation. Rutherford (The New Phryn., 160 ff.) says : "It did not escape the notice of later Greeks that Xenophon's diction was very different from that of pure Attic writers, and there are still extant several remarks upon this point. [] A busy man, living almost wholly abroad, devoted to country pursuits and the life of the camp, attached to the Lacedaemonian system of government, and detesting the Athenian, Xenophon must have lost much of the refined Atticism with which he was conversant in his youth. It is not only in the forms of words that he differs from Attic writers, but he also uses many terms - the ὀνόματα γλωσσηματικά of Galen - altogether unknown to Attic prose, and often assigns to Attic words a meaning not actually attached to them in the leading dialect."

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    Cf. The Complete Iliad ||| The Complete Odyssey

    Related:  Andrew Lang, We need Homer and the Study of Greek   Homer Bilingual (Greek English) Anthology  Homer : Greek - English Interlinear Iliad  A Commentary on the Odyssey,  Homer: Achilles' Grief, Returning to Ithaca & The Underworld,  Cavafy, The Horses of Achilles,  Helen Keller, It was the Iliad that made Greece my paradise,  Plato Home Page 

The Greek Word Course : Lessons in Ancient Greek

Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/lessons/pharr.asp?pg=5