Teaching Attic

Good coffee with useful packaging

When I was asked to teach  Attic Greek to Catholic home-schoolers, my first thought
was to text a recent Classics grad from Edinburgh Uni to see if she would like the job. However, she had not done any Greek; her specialization began and ended with Latin. I cast about in my mind for someone else among my Edinburgh friends and acquaintances, but I could not think of anyone who had studied Ancient Greek within the past 25 years save my unworthy self.

As I passed Ancient Greek 101 and 102 only by the skin of my teeth, my conscience would have cut up rougher had I not sat down eight years later and worked through the bally stuff. That was the year I lived alone in a bachelor flat and spent my evenings reviewing Italian, French, Latin and Attic Greek. Eventually French and Greek fell by the wayside as I concentrated on Italian and Latin. My Italian was in super shape by 2000, and I actually used it at work----but let us return to Attic Greek.

Although I have little "natural talent" for foreign languages, I know a lot about learning them, thanks to a steady reading diet of popular works on language acquisition and years of grappling with Tym Pięknym Językiem.  I also know something about teaching, which I have been doing off-and-on since the year 2000. A three year stint under the Ignatian Pedagogical Method taught me some great teaching tricks, including repetition and getting students to really "ENGAGE" with the material. All that stuff about marking your "consolations" and "desolations" in the margins of photocopies and writing "questions for reflection" turn out to be key to memory work.

"Revel in your chagrin," I yell at my students when they perceive their errors. "Feel the pain of your errors! Or feel the joy of your successes! Joy or pain! Whichever! Feel it!"

I am all about pedagogical method. When my first Attic Greek pupils were sent away to be educated by a proper teaching order on the Continent, I asked them to discern the sisters' pedagogical method. They're still not sure what it is, but I hope it has lots of sneakily useful teaching tricks. Meanwhile, I have been engaged to continue teaching them Ancient Greek by correspondence as the girls their age are already reading Homer, Herodotus and the gang. Fortunately, we have a brilliant textbook.

My first and favourite Greek teaching trick is to make pupils cut out, bake and eat the Greek Alphabet. Subsequent testing has led me to believe that this step should never be skipped. Apparently Jews taught their children the Hebrew alphabet with cookies for centuries, and it makes complete sense. Children love cookies, so their love for cookies becomes linked to the alphabet being consumed. If the children are made to cut out the stencils and then the dough themselves, this engages their eyes, ears and hands. In fact, since they eventually bake and eat the alphabet cookies, all their senses work together.

My most recent Greek teaching trick was to make up Leitner boxes for my senior students. A Leitner Box is a classic Spaced Repetition System. In short, one has vocabulary cards which one reviews according to a fixed schedule, moving them closer to the back of the box as one's memory for them strengthens. As per the instructions in Fluent Forever, I left the backs of the cards blank so that my students could draw pictures or symbols denoting the Greek word (or word pair) on the front. English is not allowed.

The amusing thing about my Leitner Boxes is that the actual boxes are made from cardboard Union Coffee coffee bag supports, and as my favourite brew has this vigorous name, my students are returning to their consecrated preceptress from their Jesuit-trained, Easter-holidays tutor with boxes marked Liberacion. No pun was intended, and I rather wish I preferred "Bobolink", whose name is surely more in keeping with Traditional Catholicism, homeschooling and convent schools. But there it is.

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Athens vs Sparta: Distaff Side

When I had a look at the requirements for England's Ancient Greek GCSE (O-level), I was astonished that students have to know about the role of women in Athenian society. Of all the reasons Greek civilization is perennially worth studying, the Women of Attica are not one. In a nutshell, Athenians thought women were for bearing inheritors, weaving, housework, fieldwork and, if of a Certain Class, entertainment. The Spartans thought Spartan women were for bearing Spartan soldiers, full stop. Everything else could be left to slaves.

As Athenian women's feminine genius was for weaving beautiful cloth--which does not last through the ages, alas--they have left us very little of their work. We have some poetic scraps of Sappho (not a Woman of Attica but of Lesbos) and, thanks to Catullus and other Roman fans, her undying literary reputation, but that's just about it. We have statues (and Roman copies of statues) and paintings (on pottery), so we know roughly what Women of Attica looked like and definitely what they wore. We also know what (a few) men thought of them, and we know this was greatly at odds with Athenian respect for female deities. Why so important for the GCSEs?

Are the GCSEs being used to enforce contemporary feminist ideology?

I ask this question because when I told my students that the Woman of Attica (who was so unpolitical, she was not even called an Athenian) spent most of her time indoors weaving, one piped up that that sounded wonderful. And while I respected that refreshingly pro-weaving point of view, I wondered what grade she would get if she wrote this during her GCSE exams.

Another problem with teaching Catholic girls about Women of Attica is that these represented only a certain percentage of the female population of Athens. From a feminist point of view, and possibly even an empiricist point of view, students ought to know about Athens' female slaves and the teeming throngs of prostitutes: the concubines (mistresses---or live-in girlfriends, for men who didn't want a proper wife), the heteirai (the witty, musical, high-class and expensive entertainment) and the pornai (sex workers).

The big danger here, I always think, is the idea that it might be better to be a heteira than a proper wife of an Athenian, as the heteirai were educated in philosophy and the fine arts, could go to men's parties and the theatre, and could earn and save money. Associating women's education with sexual licentiousness is just awful, but because we have so little evidence of educated wives and daughters of Athenians, that's what we're left with.

Fortunately, the wives and daughters had religious duties and only their children had inheritance rights, so it is not too difficult to communicate to young minds that it was best, should you have been born in Classical Attica, to have been a plain ol' respectable female who married shortly after puberty and spent as much time as possible weaving. (This rather depended on how many slaves your husband had and if he needed you to assist him in his trade or in the fields.)

Sparta is less embarrassing as abstinence was part of the Spartan way of life, and Spartan men had to sneak out of their military barracks to visit their wives. (My pupils thought this must have been great fun.) Spartan women had to spend all their time in athletics because the Spartans thought strong mothers = strong babies. They also had to be emotionally tough, informing their sons that they had to come back from battle with their shields "or on them" and pretending to rejoice when these sons were slain.

Amusingly, Spartan women were also expected to sing songs of praise to Spartan men who behaved well and mock the ones who did poorly, which shows that the Spartans certainly knew all about male psychology.

Unfortunately, while looking up a primary source in my undergrad-era "Women in Classical Antiquity" book, I got stuck reading aaloud about Spartan weddings, which involved kidnapping, the bride having her hair chopped off and being dressed in men's clothes, and then being left on a pallet.

"Well, that's enough now, girls."

Happily, the GCSEs are not so interested in ephebophilia, so I will never have to mention it. Nor will I ever mention the heiteirai & pornai again, except just before the exam, in case it demands a frank discussion of Women's Lot.

The GCSE wants students to know how the lives of the Women of Attica differed from those of Spartan women, and possibly we are supposed to intimate to our students that the lives of Spartan women were better. I'm not convinced. At least in Athens, there was a peacetime and there was no perpetual sense of dread that the slaves might revolt. (Ninety percent of the population of Sparta were slaves, which is why the Spartans trained for war whenever not actually at war.) If you were lucky, you would derive great artistic enjoyment from your ornate and intricate weaving. But on the other hand, it might be more fun to exercise and compete than to weave all day and then at night hear the men downstairs laughing at the witty remarks of the heiterai. Personally I would love to praise men who do well and mock the ones who do badly. I can do the first, but the second is harder to get away with these days--unless you're in Scotland and can call it "banter."

'O Didaskalos

Here am I in bed with a cold again. Whatever bug is going around the UK, it is a real doozy. I am not sure whether I have had a relapse of the same cold or, in my weakened state, have caught a different one.

If I am sick from simply going out of doors, it was worth it, for yesterday I taught my first class in Ancient Greek and remembered how much I love teaching. Besides that, it's wonderful to be getting to grips with Ancient Greek, which is not as much a passport to the minds of the ancients--for their greatest works have been translated into English--as it is to the experience of those young men of the European ruling/educated classes who studied Ancient Greek as a matter of course.

Sadly, I told my pupils a whopper about Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor and the German general he kidnapped  in Greece during the Second World War becoming firm friends over a shared knowledge of Homer. I have just looked up the story, and it wasn't Homer, it was Horace. From the Telegraph obit:

Gazing up at the snowy peak, Kreipe recited the first line of Horace's ode Ad Thaliarchum – "Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte" (See how Soracte stands white with snow on high). Leigh Fermor immediately continued the poem to its end. The two men realised that they had "drunk at the same fountains" before the war, as Leigh Fermor put it, and things between them were very different from then on.

Now I shall have to tell my pupils I misremembered. Oh, alas. I was also a bit vague on the location of Ancient Phoenicia. I was right that the Phoenician empire included Carthage, but it turns out Phoenicia itself was on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean. Now I shall have to tell them that, too. Oh, for the dusty pull-down maps of the classrooms of my youth.

One splendid aspect of my new job is that my charges very much want to learn Ancient Greek. When I taught English writing skills at a community college, I was fortunate that the majority of my students really wanted to be there and desperately wanted to do well. They were usually mature adults who had struggled in high school and were glad to have a second chance. The most difficult students were permanently bored, time-wasting adolescents who wanted to get through their college educations ASAP and get jobs as cameramen for the CBC, or whatever.

How these graduates were going to be effective in media without learning from their mandatory "Communications" class was not a question they seemed to ponder much.  Fortunately this was before the era of the smartphone, and even more fortunately, such students were in the minority and only appeared in the summer courses. They did make me question whether I wanted a life of teaching adolescents, however.

Highly preferable was each term's "class hard-ass", whom I always liked. I respected his or her attitude of "Prove to me you have the chops to teach me anything", and all I had to do to prove this was worst him or her in a bit of banter. The class hard-ass then used his or her natural high spirits to make class fun and he or she wrote his or her compositions with great energy and humour.

The biggest difference between teaching English writing skills and Ancient Greek is that the latter takes an awful lot of prep. However, it is worth it. I am determined that my students will ace their GCSEs and, what's more, get all the intellectual and spiritual advantages of a Classical education.

The Earliest Christian Hymn Outside Scripture

A happy Christmas to those whose Christmas today is. By the traditional Latin calendar it is Epiphany, so happy Epiphany, the Latins. I must find where B.A, has hidden the Three Wise Men and put them in the créche before the sitting-room hearth.

When I took my first Latin course, there was a ritual exchange between Sister W and us her young charges. It went like this:

"Salvete, puellae"

"Sal-VE, so-ror [Wah-DEEE-DAAAA]."

"Oremus." 

(She begins the prayer.)

I was strongly reminded of this yesterday as I listened to the first dialogue of my new Assimil Grec Ancien, for it was basically the same thing: "Hello, child." "Hello, teacher." "Hello, children!"  Not surprisingly, it did not end in the Greek for "Oremus" and a prayer.

However, I think it a good thing to begin classes for Catholics with prayer---thanks entirely to Sister W I have known the Salve Regina for most of my life---and so I went on a hunt for an early Greek hymn. Of course the Hellenic Mediterranean world of the first century was 400-500 years removed from Classical Attic Greek, so naturally anything Christian is going to be in the Koine Greek so beloved of Evangelical theology schools. 

I did a bit of Google searching and found that "Phos Hilaron", i.e. "O Gladsome Light", still used today by the Greek Orthodox Church as a vesper hymn, appeared in the late 3rd or early 4th century AD. 

Here is the music, followed by the Wikipedia lyrics and translation. 

Φῶς ἱλαρὸν ἁγίας δόξης ἀθανάτου Πατρός,

οὐρανίου, ἁγίου, μάκαρος, Ἰησοῦ Χριστέ,

ἐλθόντες ἐπὶ τὴν ἡλίου δύσιν, ἰδόντες φῶς ἑσπερινόν,

ὑμνοῦμεν Πατέρα, Υἱόν, καὶ ἅγιον Πνεῦμα, Θεόν.

Ἄξιόν σε ἐν πᾶσι καιροῖς ὑμνεῖσθαι φωναῖς αἰσίαις,

Υἱὲ Θεοῦ, ζωὴν ὁ διδούς· διὸ ὁ κόσμος σὲ δοξάζει.

A classical pronunciation of above:

Phôs hilaròn hagías dóxēs, athanátou Patrós,

ouraníou, hagíou, mákaros, Iēsoû Christé,

elthóntes epì tḕn hēlíou dýsin, idóntes phôs hesperinón,

hymnoûmen Patéra, Hyión, kaì Hágion Pneûma, Theón.

Áxión se en pâsi kairoîs hymneîsthai phōnaîs aisíais,

Hyiè Theoû, zoḕn ho didoús, diò ho kósmos sè doxázei.

Literal translation:

O Light gladsome of the holy glory of the Immortal Father,

the Heavenly, the Holy, the Blessed, O Jesus Christ,

having come upon the setting of the sun, having seen the light of the evening,

we praise the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: God.

Worthy it is at all times to praise Thee in joyful voices,

O Son of God, Giver of Life, for which the world glorifies Thee.

Is that not lovely? You can find much slower version on Youtube, but they are more suitable for church than for class. 

Many biblical scholars think that there are traces of hymns in the New Testament itself, but I want to give my pupils something entirely new to them. It would interesting to find Septuagint psalms to sing, of course.

ASSIMILate & "The Frogs" (No Pun Intended)

My kind papa has sent me the Assimil Ancient Greek (or, rather, grec ancien) program via Amazon.fr, so I shall be listening to that as I prepare my charges for their Greek GCSEs (i.e. exams called the O-Levels before 1988).

It joins my growing collection of Greek textbooks, which includes my twenty-year-plus-old old Reading Greek textbooks. The important thing about Assimil is that it provides four CDs. Ancient Greek is not spoken anywhere except among Classics professors and hobbyists, but I am convinced by the arguments of the "Restructured"school that pronunciation is more important than the GCSE handbook would have me believe.

Indeed, when I search my memory for the remnants of my Classics courses, what comes to my tongue most readily is part of The Frogs. I studied Classics at the University of Toronto at the same time as the celebrated (and polyglot) Greg Robic, and eventually he turned the department's annual play for "Visiting High School Students Day" into off-Broadway musicals.

I cannot remember if I have Greg to thank for this, but I have at least a verse of "Βρεκεκεκὲξ κοὰξ κοάξ" (Brek-kek-kek-kek koax koax) jammed into my brain. This was not thanks to my Greek classes but to a performance of The Frogs.  I played the unhelpful corpse but sang along with the frogs. I suspect Greg was already at least a co-author as well as an actor, for the insult lobbed at my character was "frigid b*tch"-- a very Robician joke.

Looking at the text of The Frogs now (for the first time in over 20 years, if we were even given the proper text then, as we learned it by rote), I see that these are the sections I still remember:

βρεκεκεκὲξ κοὰξ κοάξ.
210βρεκεκεκὲξ κοὰξ κοάξ. 
λιμναῖα κρηνῶν τέκνα, 
ξύναυλον ὕμνων βοὰν 
φθεγξώμεθ᾽, εὔγηρυν ἐμὰν ἀοιδάν, 
κοὰξ κοάξ...

εἰκότως γ᾽ ὦ πολλὰ πράττων. 
ἐμὲ γὰρ ἔστερξαν εὔλυροί τε Μοῦσαι 230καὶ κεροβάτας Πὰν...  
 
235βρεκεκεκὲξ κοάξ κοάξ.

I conclude that I owe it to my students to drill them in their lessons until they know them so well they will be able to repeat them well into middle age and beyond.