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I am a Sixth Form student in the UK. I have just completed my Latin AS and am teaching myself ancient Greek.

After using the first few CLC books as a start to Latin GCSE, we used John Taylor's Essential GCSE Latin. The CLC books are, in my opinion, probably a better starting point for self-teaching Latin than that John Taylor book, but after a few of the CLC books, you should be in a great position to start learning from the John Taylor book, which provides lots of information with clear examples and detailed explanations, but which relies upon a reasonable amount of base knowledge. There's then his Latin Beyond GCSE after that. I would certainly recommend them and have found them to be good and useful.

For Greek, however, John Taylor has a series of books designed for students to teach themselves Greek from no knowledge of it, and your knowledge of Latin means that you'll be comfortable with most or all of the linguistic concepts in the early stages, so you shouldn't be delayed by that. I am currently working through these, and have found them excellent. They will build up your knowledge of Greek on a step-by-step basis, from understanding the alphabet to genitive absolutes and the subjunctive mood and whatnot, with longer and more complex passages to translate as the books develop, and plenty of vocabulary introduced across the books. I have completed Greek to GCSE Part 1, am working through Greek to GCSE Part 2, and have Greek Beyond GCSE lined up.

In terms of what works best... Well, it seems as though it used to be that Latin and Greek were taught with a strong grammatical focus. This is certainly important, but I would personally suggest doing that as a supplement to the induction approach which the CLC and John Taylor's Greek books take. I personally have found that approach more interesting and more enjoyable, and all of the grammar and endings will probably sink in quickly enough and probably more quickly when you're seeing them in the context of proper passages, rather than just tables of stuff.

I realise that this is rather generic. Please feel free to ask more about any of these things if they're unclear or you want to find out more! Best of luck with your studies!

Edit: links

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

The short answer is yes, it's possible.

But the problem you'll run up against is the lack of adequate resources. First, you'll want Eleanor Dickey's Ancient Greek Scholarship, with its dictionary of grammatical terms and summary of the ancient grammarians. (Start with Dionysius Thrax if you want to try the original.) This is the work referenced by Annis on the document you found at scholiastae.org. You could also try to get a copy of Emiliano Caruso's Vocabolario monolingue di greco antico (but see the discussion at Textkit). Caruso is a decent start, but we have nothing as high quality as, e.g., LSJ in ancient Greek (nothing like Forcellini for Latin).

Probably the easiest way to try to keep Greek in Greek is to purchase materials such as Christophe Rico's Polis textbook, written entirely in Koine Greek. Rico's book will gradually introduce you to Greek grammatical terms. Also have a look at Randall Buth's Living Koine materials (though I don't know if he presents grammar explicitly).

Ultimately, the best thing to do is, if you can, to attend an immersion course taught by a competent speaker of ancient Greek. The Polis Institute offers such courses year-round (in Jerusalem) and during the summer (in Jerusalem, Rome, Boston, and elsewhere); the Paideia Institute offers one in August in Greece. Once you have a couple years of Greek down, you could attend something like the Σύνοδος ἑλληνική offered this year for the first time in Kentucky.

If none of those is possible, the Paideia Institute also has some online classes taught in ancient Greek.

In sum: it is entirely possible to study ancient Greek mostly in Greek. It will be slower in some ways than if you used mostly or exclusively English (vel sim.) as your medium, but it will offer the benefits you've already experienced. And the better you get at Greek, the easier it will become. You'll be able to start using resources like Gaza's Attic prose paraphrase of the Iliad and the ancient Greek scholia to many Greek texts, and so on.

Not sure what facility you’re referring to, but 34 is NOT too old! Consistency is your best friend; you don’t need to practice a lot everyday, but you DO need to practice everyday. I’ve been using Learn to Read Greek, but I’ve also heard good things about Athenaze. Good luck to you!

Ok, your biggest upcoming danger is the summer, unless you plan to take Greek classes then. Assuming two semesters at your school are sufficient to get you at least exposed to all the morphology and much of the syntax, I would strongly recommend you pick something to read over the summer, to keep your Greek in shape and to solidify what you've learned so far.

This blog post has a list of readers: Greek Readers, but you could also probably start with a good school edition of one of the simpler authors (Xenophon, a bit dull but a standard; some of Plato's dialogs aren't too bad). I would avoid the historians for now. Thucydides is tough, and though Herodotus is fairly easy he uses a different dialect, and for now it may be best to focus on the Attic you've been learning in class. This edition of Lucian's True History is pretty good, though I will warn you the first few paragraphs of the text are excruciating. Once you get past that, it's much easier going. Geoffrey Steadman's annotated texts can be had as both books and PDFs. The old Parsons' Tablet of Cebes is also very easy (beware of reprints - some are barely legible). Steadman also has a version of this, though not yet in print.

Keller and Russel have textbooks that can give you a good foundation. I think they are usually used in a classroom context but the texts give enough information to understand the material thoroughly and the workbook that comes with it is nearly exhaustive in terms of ensuring you know the material that is covered in the texts.

The vocabulary they teach is pretty limited. but you can find good decks of flash cards or vocab lists to compliment the books quite easily.

Learn to Read Greek: Part 1, Textbook and Workbook Set https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300167717/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_.mUDDb4D4BZR2

Here's a quick refresher for you!

>ποϊετε


Even if the diaeresis were a circumflex, it would still fall in the wrong place. Remember that:

1. a circumflex can never fall on the antepenult
   
   
   
2. in the present system, a contract verb like ποιέω must add the thematic ending -ετε onto a stem ending with a vowel, which then contracts (in attic Greek anyway), so our 'formula' for the conjugation must take the accent of that uncontracted vowel into account, and ποιέ+ετε becomes ποιεῖτε ( έὲ ➡️ εῖ , where the circumflex retains the natural rise and fall of the two uncontracted vowels)
   
   
   If you'd like to brush up on accents, Philomen Probert has an awesome book with all the rules of accents, and exercises to reinforce them: https://www.amazon.com/Short-Accentuation-Ancient-Advanced-Language/dp/1853995991
   
   (This can easily be found on certain Russian pirate book websites too, though I don't think I can link one here)
   
   
   Another book that may help is Hansen and Quinn's Greek: An Intensive Course, which, as the name suggests, is designed to be used for intense language acquisition. (This can also be found by dedicated pirates)

I'm an autodidact. I bought three volumes of the JACT Cambridge Reading Greek:

Grammary, Vocabulary and Exercises

Text

An indipendent guide

You can buy them on Amazon.

If you don't mind older texts, you could get free ebooks from here https://www.textkit.com/greek_grammar.php

E.g, https://www.textkit.com/learn/ID/159/author_id/75/

or https://www.textkit.com/learn/ID/136/author_id/39/

Make sure you get the key to the exercises. Work methodically through the books without cutting corners. Feel free to ask for help here.

​

EDIT

Added Amazon links.

This is an excellent beginning commentary for the Apology. It has a detailed running grammatical commentary on every page and vocab in the back. It is perfect as a first introduction to Greek prose for third semester students who have just worked through grammar for a full year.

Here's the edition of the Crito I've also used for beginning prose.

The Republic tends to be a bit more involved. I've not seen it used, but here is the Bryn Mawr for book I. I'd recommend the Apology first, though.

If you're looking for basic scholarship on Plato, I'm not really the person to ask, so I'll leave that to others. I'd recommend asking in /r/classics and /r/askphilosophy as well.

Chase and Phillips is pretty decent (though definitely reflects the period when it was written):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0674616006/ref=mw_dp_olp?ie=UTF8&condition=all

Hansen and Quinn is also good:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0823216632/ref=mw_dp_olp?ie=UTF8&condition=all

I’ve taught with H&Q and used C&P as a supplement when I started to learn Greek.

If you're looking for a starting point, there's a decent transitional reader by Bolchazy that walks you through progressively more difficult passages from the Republic. After that, the Apology and other short dialogues are good, the Geoffrey Steadman readers are enormously useful for helping you figure things out, and he has readers for Republic 1, Crito, and other dialogues. I would pick one of those, and there are free pdfs on his personal website if you aren't sure which one to choose: geoffreysteadman.com

Transitional Reader:
https://www.amazon.com/Plato-Transitional-Reader-Ancient-English/dp/0865167214/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520535060&sr=8-1&keywords=transitional+reader+plato

I went through this textbook with a student, and found it fantastic: Attica: Intermediate Greek.

I think it would be ideal for a self-teacher. It is very user-friendly.

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.

Smyth is the go-to grammar that a lot of people use. I use the Liddell and Scott lexicon.

http://www.amazon.com/Greek-Grammar-Herbert-Weir-Smyth/dp/0674362500/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1464150052&sr=1-1&keywords=smyth




http://www.amazon.com/Liddell-Scotts-Greek-English-Lexicon-English/dp/1843560267



Smyth is pretty comprehensive and it takes a while, at least it did for me, to get used to navigating through it and finding sufficient answers to your grammatical questions. But if you have a question, the answer will be there.

This series is awesome.

The Liddell and Scott is the standard one, and this one seems to be the best reviewed on Amazon. If you have a Kindle Fire, you can also buy this app.

These 118 lectures are free, and if you want to also have a book, the lectures follow the structure of this one.

Although it's easy to find the first edition, be aware that Smyth has a second edition of his book that is still in copyright.

Thank you so much for the response and encouragement!

I have this: https://www.amazon.com/Lucians-True-Story-Intermediate-Vocabulary/dp/0983222800/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468784832&sr=8-1&keywords=true+story+lucian

and this:

https://www.amazon.com/Plato-Apology-Greek/dp/0865163480/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1468784855&sr=8-4&keywords=apology+greek

but find them both a little bit too difficult for me right now. Do you think Crito and Lysias are easier than the Apology, or that Steadman is more user-friendly than Helm?

> And just reading that with no dictionary or pen is something to be damn proud of:) Ancient Greek is wonderful.

:) I know, and I am. It's just killing me that I'm practically fluent with parts of the NT (and I'm not religious, so it's not like I've just memorized this stuff) but taking 3.5 minutes for a sentence or two of Attic. I know it's more difficult, but it is a little confidence-shocking. I'll keep working at it, though!

Yes:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Independent-Study-Guide-Reading-Greek/dp/0521698502/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1518644086&sr=1-1-fkmr1&keywords=jact+reading+greek+independent+study+guide

There’s also Keller and Russell’s Learn to Read Greek, which in my view is slightly better paced for self-study than Hansen and Quinn.

You might like to try Cynthia Claxton's Attica: Intermediate Classical Greek.

This book is the definitive book on Greek pronunciation. (There's also a Latin version if you're interested.)

Pffff... you're stepping into the most heated debate of Greek scholarship. Before reading the specialised bibliography I recommend these three articles:

1. McNeal, Richard A. (1975). Hellenist and Erasmian. Glotta, 53(1/2), 81-101.
   
2. Dillon, Matthew. (2001). The Erasmian Pronunciation of Ancient Greek: A New Perspective. The Classical World, 94(4), 323-334. doi:10.2307/4352587
   
3. Vernon Kooy. Thomas Jefferson’s Argument Concerning the Pronunciation of Ancient Greek.
   
   Having read that the four books you MUST consult are:
   
   
4. Anastassios-Fivos Christidis' A History of Ancient Greek
   
5. Geoffrey Horrocks' Greek: A History of the Language and its Speakers
   
6. Devine & Stephen's The Prosody of Greek Speech
   
7. Allen's Vox Graeca

Smyth smites all others

https://www.amazon.com/Greek-Grammar-Herbert-Weir-Smyth/dp/1781394210

My university teaches the Andrew Keller Series of textbooks in three semesters. It used to be two ,but they felt that was too fast. So, I went through the program of those books ,and it covers the basics. Then you can pick up Smythe and learn all of the exceptions. So, I got to that level in about a year given a semester is 4 months. Fourth semester Greek is simple reading as you describe.

http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Read-Greek-Textbook-Part/dp/030011589X

http://www.amazon.com/Greek-Grammar-Herbert-Weir-Smyth/dp/1781394210