Reddit reviews Introduction to Greek (Ancient Greek Edition)

My Greek professor strongly recommends against using Athenaze, and I'm not a fan of the "Reading ____" series myself. (I'm currently using the "Reading Latin" books.) I would recommend Introduction to Greek by Cynthia Shelmerdine.

Edit: Here it is if you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Greek-Cynthia-W-Shelmerdine/dp/1585101842

There is also this book: http://www.amazon.com/Greek-Intensive-Course-Hardy-Hansen/dp/0823216632. I haven't personally used this one, but a couple professors have recommended it.

For learning Ancient Greek (as an autodidact), start by signing up for The Great Courses Plus and take the Ancient Greek course, taught by Hans-Friedrich Meuller:

Greek 101: Learning an Ancient Language | The Great Courses Plus

You can sign up for a free trial on The Great Courses, for just long enough to complete the Greek course. But I think it’s totally worth paying for ALL of the content.

I recommend downloading the guidebook and doing ALL of the homework. Copy and paste the exercises into a Word doc and type out the answers/translations. Take the course as many times as you can for mastery.

I’ve created a couple of free courses on Memrise for Ancient Greek verbs that (I hope) people may find helpful. I use (my best attempt at) Modern Greek pronunciation. Audio can be disabled by anyone who has a problem with that. My Memrise account (Diachronix) has some other Modern Greek courses.

Paradigms of Ancient Greek Verbs

Principal Parts of Ancient Greek verbs

Professor Al Duncan produced an excellent series of Ancient Greek videos (on Youtube: Learn Attic Greek with Al Duncan - YouTube), which follows along the exercises in chapters 1–10 and 30–34 of Cynthia Shelmerdine’s Introduction to Greek.

That textbook is a bit error-prone, but it’s still pretty good for beginners. I recommend using it to follow along in Professor Duncan’s videos, at least until they cut off at chapter 10. But you’re on your own between chapters 11 and 29. Again, I recommend typing out ALL of the exercises.

The Athenaze Book 1 and Athenaze Book 2 are good self-study resources for intermediate learners, with a lot of excellent reading material. I also have a Memrise course for the vocabulary in these texbooks.

Athenaze: Book 1

Athenaze: Book 2

Leonard Muellner (Professor Emeritus of Classical Studies at Brandeis University) has a Youtube series on Ancient Greek: Learn Ancient Greek, with Prof. Leonard Muellner - YouTube

Unfortunately the audio throughout most of this series is terrible. But if you manage to listen closely (and not fall asleep), it’s quite edifying. Meullner is a genius. The course follows along the Greek: An Intensive Course textbook by Hansen & Quinn. You could try getting that textbook and following along, but I would recommend this last. I just can’t imagine most people having the patience for it. And I’ve heard mixed reviews on Hansen & Quinn, which professor Meullner criticizes ad nauseam throughout his videos.

Another resource I really like is the online version of ΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΙΚΗ ΤΗΣ ΑΡΧΑΙΑΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗΣ by ΟΙΚΟΝΟΜΟΥ. You can turn the audio in the bottom right and a robot reads it out-loud. It’s helpful to learn the grammatical terminology in Greek and, if you can manage reading demotic Greek, you can experience the way the Greeks approach Ancient Greek (and observe the notable differences). They have interesting grammatical category distinctions that we don’t have in the West, many of which are quite handy. But this textbook doesn’t have any engaging reading material, aside from bland descriptions of the language. So it’s not for everyone.

Most other learning material I could recommend is mentioned in the various links above. But here are some key items for building a collection of self-study material:

*Geoffrey Horrocks’ “Greek - A History of the Language and Its Speakers” (MUST READ)

Plato: A Transitional Reader

Kaegi’s Greek Grammar

Smyth’s Greek Grammar

Plato Apology

Homeric Greek - A Book for Beginners

Rouse’s Greek Boy - A Reader

Basics of Biblical Greek

A Graded Reader of Biblical Greek

Geoffrey Steadman’s Ancient Greek reader SERIES

Attic Greek is the dialect used in Athens. It's got by far the largest amount of surviving literature and is almost always the dialect students learn. Once you have have Attic down, Homeric, Ionic, Koiné, etc., are relatively easy to pick up.

Be aware that the ability to read "the great works of Ancient Greece" is a broad goal. After you have the basic grammar and vocab down, there are a few authors students usually start with, including Lysias (he wrote speeches for defendants/plaintiffs to use in court cases) and Plato. If you like military history, Xenophon's Greek is quite clear and his Anabasis is an interesting work in its own right.

Once you're a bit acquainted with real Greek from these authors, you can try moving on to Homer (Homeric dialect) or Herodotus (Ionic). Prose is generally much easier than poetry, and some playwrights (Aristophanes' comedies, Sophocles' tragedies) can be quite difficult. Aristotle reads much more like a philosophy text, while Plato uses storytelling to accomplish the same end, but isn't as dry.

Grammatically, Greek works quite differently from any of the languages you mentioned that you've studied, so be prepared for a lot of work to get through even simple sentences in the wild. You'll find (as is always the case) that the more you read, the more comfortable you get, but be prepared for the learning curve to rise again when you change genres/authors.

For resources, I'm partial to Shelmerdine. Athenaze didn't work for me, despite a very knowledgeable professor.

I used a textbook called An Introduction to Ancient Greek by Shelmerdine. In one of my independent studies (I majored in classics) I used A Little Greek Reader. It has passages of varying lengths, vocab and notes. It's easy to carry around and I really found it helpful! It doesn't just have Attic Greek. There's some Doric and Ionic as well. It also isn't just prose, but includes poetry, drama, etc. I highly recommend it. It also isn't crazy expensive and I'm sure a used copy on Amazon is pretty cheap!

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Greek-Cynthia-W-Shelmerdine/dp/1585101842/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1510699295&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=An+Introduction+to+Ancient+Greek+Shelmardine

https://www.amazon.com/Little-Greek-Reader-James-Morwood/dp/0199311722