Hey, everybody, Pastor Steven Anderson here with Brother Anselm.
We're at Faithful Word Baptist Church, and we're going through this book on Homeric Greek
by Clyde Farr.
This is actually in the public domain.
There's a PDF you can download in the description for this video, or you can buy the nice new
updated copy off Amazon if you want to have a physical copy, and the newer one is a little
bit nicer, the way it's laid out, it's a little more modern, et cetera.
But anyway, we are today covering lessons 12 and 13.
So let's go ahead and cover lesson 12.
Okay, I just did, because lesson 12 is just review, so there's nothing to cover.
Lesson 12 is just like a vocabulary list.
You go back over everything, make sure you learn everything.
Okay, so lesson 13 is actually a really exciting lesson, because finally we're actually going
to start reading the Iliad now.
So the cool thing about this book is that it takes you through the entirety of book
one of the Iliad.
In these 77 lessons, you go through all 611 lines of book one of the Iliad, and so today
we're going to tackle the first five lines.
But before we do that, just a little bit of preliminary here, we're learning about third
declension nouns.
So so far we've seen the first declension nouns, which were like the ones that were
feminine usually, ending in alpha, like the theia, thalassa, bullae, stuff like that.
And then we did the second declension, which was the stuff that ended in oos in the nominative,
and on in the accusative, and we've been doing all that.
So these are probably the trickiest nouns in Greek, the third declension nouns.
And the thing that's sometimes tricky about these is just that sometimes the first person
singular nominative form can be, you know, a little bit different than the stem going
forward.
See how this, this X sound of the C turns into like this K and T thing, kapatav.
So anyway, it's not really that hard, though.
So let's go ahead and go through this.
We've got you want to read these out.
We're using, of course, modern Greek pronunciation.
You want to read these off the singular?
What's our nominative?
Right, okay.
So this word means something like Lord, King, Master, something like that.
It's a very ancient word.
And so you'll notice that these endings don't really seem too crazy.
They kind of have similarities with other things we've seen.
This is probably the part that is the trickiest, you know, just seeing that alpha in the singular
accusative.
These shouldn't be too surprising.
So just really pay attention to that right there.
Okay.
And then over here in the plurals, right.
So anyway, you can tell that, of course, the anakt is the stem.
And then these are our endings.
And again, these endings are not very surprising.
Except, you know, this one is the one that's kind of surprising.
You agree?
Any questions about that?
Looks good, right?
Okay.
And then here's another common pattern is this ending right here, which is that F's
ending, okay.
And that's going to be a lot of times when somebody has a job that they do.
There are other, you know, occupational words that are going to take this same form like
Vercephs is another is one that just popped into my mind.
But basically, Vasilephs means King.
And one way that I remember this vocabulary word, I always think of basil, the herb basil,
because basil is called basil because it's the king of herbs.
That's really why it's that's literally why it's called that.
So Vasilephs means King.
So you want to go ahead and read these off?
Vasilephs, Vasilios, Vasilii, Vasilii, Vasileph, Vasilius, Vasilion, Vasilius, Vasilius, Vasilius.
Yep, exactly.
So again, we're going to see a lot of the same pattern here with the Os, the E, the
Ah, which is a little tricky, right?
This one has a different vocative, it just drops the sigma.
Whereas here, you know, this is both nominative and vocative.
And then down here again, same exact endings again, nothing too crazy, nothing too surprising.
So the big thing about these third declension nouns is really just the stem change where
here you have Vasilephs, and then all of a sudden, boom, you pick up this Eda.
But then that stem stays the same throughout most of these forms.
And then here, this turns into that.
Once you get past that, it's not a huge deal.
Alright, so now before we get into the Iliad itself, we're going to do our Greek to English
exercises and then the vice versa.
Alright, so here we are with the Greek to English exercises.
So the first sentence here is this big, long doozy of a sentence.
So I'll go ahead and read it off.
Minis piliadeo achilios in ullomeni, eti gegarmiri algeticin achaicin, proiapsida polaspichas
iphthymus, iroon aivi, etephe daftous eloria kedeta kinesi eonisite etelisadevulin dios.
Okay, so let's go.
It's kind of daunting at first because a big sentence but just take it one piece at a time.
So Minis piliadeo achilios.
The wraith of Pelios, the son of, no, no, of Achilles, the son of Pelios.
Right, exactly.
So this is his patronymics that is like, it's sort of like his last name.
Like my last name is actually a patronymic because my last name is Anders' son.
And I actually have an ancestor called Anders.
I actually found him in my genealogy.
So the point is that, you know, a lot of people have a patronymic in ancient times, and it
kind of functions as their last name.
So he's like Achilles' Peliason or whatever, you know, he's the, he's the son of Pelios.
Pelios is an important guy in Greek mythology.
So the wraith or the rage, it's like our word mania, maniac comes from this, right?
So the rage of Achilles, the son of Pelios was destructive for it costs countless sufferings
for the Achaeans.
And he sent, it sent many souls, many souls again, like mighty valiant souls of the heroes
to hell.
Yep, exactly.
And obviously, you know, their Hades is not the same as the Christian view of hell, which
is obviously the right view, the real view of hell, where you burn in hell forever after
you die.
You don't believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, but yeah, so usually you translate when you're
doing Greek mythology, you translate it as Hades, right?
So you'd say like, he sent many valiant souls of heroes to Hades.
And the cool thing about this word is it's where we get our word hero, because look at
the rough breathing.
So heroon, obviously in modern Greek pronunciation, which is what we use, we don't, we don't pronounce
the breathing marks, but they're still there.
So is this like proper name?
Yes, it is.
It is.
That's why it's capitalized.
So what it is, is that actually, originally, this is not the name of a place, but originally
it's the name of a person, okay?
So Hades is the God of the Greek underworld.
So there's the three brothers, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, and they kind of divide things
up three ways.
And so what it is though, his realm is actually Tartarus, okay?
But over time, because it's called the house of Hades, of Hades, because the guy's name
is actually just like Alpha Yoda Sigma in the nominative, but this is derived from his
name.
It's like the house of Hades.
And so then basically...
So it becomes the name of the place, but it's originally the name of a person, but
it's definitely a proper name of a place for sure, yeah.
So another thing I want to point out here is that notice how you've got the breathing
mark and the accent mark on the first letter, okay?
Because when we have Alpha Yoda next to each other, they usually make a diphthong.
Like here, this is a diphthong, and we pronounce this eh, like an epsilon, okay, in modern
Greek pronunciation.
So look at this right here.
We've got the diphthong.
Notice that the accent's always on the second letter of a diphthong.
So whenever there's a diphthong, the breathing mark goes on the second letter.
See like here, even though this is the first letter of the word, the breathing marks on
the second letter, because when you have a diphthong, the accent and the breathing is
always on the second letter.
Now when you see something like this, where the accent and the breathing are on the first
letter, it means it's not a diphthong.
So this is pronounced I-V. So the ah gets its own syllable, I-V, and that's indicated
by that situation.
Now in other situations, what you'll see are these two dots to indicate not a diphthong.
So the omicron and the yoda here are not a diphthong.
Now here, because the accent was going to be on the second one anyway, you could think
it were a diphthong if you didn't have these two dots.
But you're not always going to have the dot.
The dots are helpful.
But in a situation like this, you don't get the dots, you get it on the first, and then
that tells you.
Does that all make sense?
Yes.
Okay.
So anyway, let's pick up where we left off.
And it caused them or made them, Eloria, spoil or pray, and a feast to the dogs and
the birds.
And he fulfilled the will of Zeus.
Yeah.
This is like, if you think about the word telos, which is like the end, and finished.
So it makes sense.
He fulfilled, right?
He fulfilled the will of Zeus.
So this can be tricky sometimes because it doesn't start with a Z because you'd expect
the genitive of Zeus to start with a Z because Zeus starts with a Z Zephth.
But the again, it changes to this, which is easy to remember because it's like Spanish
theos.
Right?
Because God in Spanish is theos.
But remember, God in Greek is not theos.
It's theos, right?
So we've got theos, meaning God in general, theos is specifically Zeus.
Got it?
All right.
So number two, I'll read it for you first.
Thea ai vi menin ulomenin achilios i ethiken miri alge achaicin.
So the goddess sings probably about, sings the rage, the wrath, the destructive wrath
of Achilles, which costs counter sufferings to the Achaean.
Yep, exactly.
And so you did well with the relative pronoun here, right?
Referring back to the ulomenin meaning, which, right?
So very good.
And of course, this right here, this is nominative, even though this is accusative because the
relative pronoun gets declined according to its function in its clause.
Remember that?
Okay.
Number three.
Thei o lekusi tonsraton ke proyaptu si polasp si chas i roon ai vi.
The gods killed the...
Not past tense though, that's present.
The gods are killing the host.
And are sending many souls of the heroes to hell.
Yep, exactly.
So the gods kill the army or host or whatever, and they send many souls of heroes to Hades.
All right.
And then number four tefksomen mirius acheius eloria kinesin ke vetatissin eunissin uneka
itimassan chrisin.
We will make countless Achaeans pray to dogs and feast to the birds because they...
To those birds or something.
Because they dishonored crisis.
You got it.
And then last but not least, Kallin Ivoulidios.
The will of Zeus was good.
Okay.
So now we're gonna do, I believe we're on to what?
The English.
Okay.
So this is the tricky part, the English into Greek.
So let me get on the right page here.
Okay.
So here's the English.
So I'm gonna have you quiz me on this and let's see how well I can do on the fly.
I wrote these out earlier, looking at vocabulary and stuff.
So let me just...
And I knew the vocabulary I was looking at for like spellings and stuff because I'm not
very good at spelling sometimes.
All right.
Let's see how I can do here on the fly with my back to it.
Viewers at home can see here how I'm doing.
All right.
Hit me.
The valiant Achaeans are singing of the...
Okay.
So the valiant Achaeans.
So Achaeans are singing of the accursed wrath of Achilles.
So Achilios.
Okay.
What's next?
The wrath of Achilles.
Okay.
So this will be with a sigma on the end, nominative menis Achilios.
But many woes for the Achaeans and sent many valiant souls of the heroes, or of heroes,
to the god Hades.
Aevi.
Okay.
We will make the army of the Achaeans a booty for the dogs and a banquet for the birds.
Okay.
Is that it?
Yeah.
Okay.
We are accomplishing the will of the goddess.
Tillio men vulin theos.
Okay.
So there's something interesting that I wanted to talk about here.
Oh yeah.
This is a tricky part right here because the polispsichas, obviously that's feminine, but
notice this right here, iphthimos.
So this one doesn't have a feminine looking form.
It's just irregular.
It's irregular.
So it looks masculine, but it's actually feminine.
You know, like some people around here these days, right?
So anyway, I think that's it, right?
Okay.
Now we get to get into the fun stuff here.
Congratulations Anzalem.
Have you ever read any of the Iliad before?
This is your first exposure to the actual Iliad itself.
These are the first five lines.
Now you're going to understand a lot of what we've been practicing.
Some of the grammar here we haven't learned yet.
So I'm going to have to kind of go over it with you, but most of it you've already learned.
So this is exciting.
We're actually reading the poem itself.
Okay.
So I'm just going to break this down to you real quick and put the book away.
I'll just kind of break down to you this first part.
And then in the next lesson, lesson 14, we're going to go over the rhythm and the meter
of the poem.
That's what the whole next lesson is about.
So right now I'm not going to worry anything about the rhythm or anything.
I'm just, we're just going to go over the meaning of it right now.
Okay.
So meaning Aide, now this right here is an imperative.
So it's saying, sing the wrath, O goddess of Achilles, the son of Peleus, destructive.
So notice the way the word order is weird.
And the reason why is because we're emphasizing things at the beginning of the line.
So the first word of the poem is rage, right?
Meaning because that's what the whole thing is about.
It's about his anger, the entire Iliad.
That's the theme.
Okay.
So anger is the theme.
And then by putting this on the next line separated, because like the thought isn't
really finished until this line by putting it here again at the beginning.
And it's really part of the previous line, really emphasize like it was a destructive,
you know what I mean?
So because this is poetry, this isn't prose.
So destructive, which to many Achaeans caused or many to the Achaeans pains caused.
So really the many and the pains are connected and then they just have this.
Like the word order is all over the place, right?
Because it's basically which caused many pains to the Achaeans.
Okay.
So it's kind of tricky the way the word order is, right?
That's why you really have to look at the case endings and see like, okay, these two
go together.
Oh, and it really helps that they both have the alphas chopped off.
But does this line make sense?
It does.
So which caused many griefs to the Achaeans and that accent doesn't seem like it's in
the right place.
I wonder if I just probably copied or I can't find a pen though.
I might've just copied it wrong, but that's bothering me.
Because that makes no sense.
It should be like something like that, right?
So and sent forth many mighty souls to Hades, right?
Of heroes.
So isn't it funny how sometimes a word that's important to this thought is on the next line,
but it emphasizes it.
It's like, oh man, you know, sent forth many valiant souls to Hades.
I mean, we're talking heroes here, you know, by putting it in the next line of heroes.
Now, this is an interesting word, oftos, because in modern Greek is a pronoun, right?
It just means he, they, whatever, depending on how it's declined.
But when you go all the way back to Homeric Greek, it is not that pronoun.
It means typically themselves.
It's not just the basic pronoun of them.
It's themselves, or sometimes in the Iliad and the Odyssey, it means their bodies.
Like the self is sometimes referring to the body itself, okay?
So basically, the souls were said to Hades, but they themselves, or you could translate
it as their bodies.
But when you see this oftos, it's tempting to just want to say them, right?
But it's stronger than that in Homeric though, okay?
So because if it were just them, it would just be tous, you know, you wouldn't need
this offtous.
It means like the same, the self same, themselves.
So it's like, well, their souls went to Hades, but they themselves or their bodies, right,
it made or he made, depending on how you want to look at it, Eloria, a prey for the dogs
and for the birds, a feast, okay?
And voulidios and the will of Zeus ateliato, this is actually passive, was fulfilled, which
we haven't learned that form yet, but that's a, you know, Eris passive.
So I mean, you can understand this pretty well, you know, just from what we've learned,
the vocab, the exercises, so you can see how the vocab, the exercise, everything's
been setting us up to be able to understand this poem and we can understand it pretty
well right away.
You know, there's just a couple grammatical things that are new, but we're going to learn
those in the upcoming weeks.
And honestly, you know, from now on, after lesson 14, every lesson we're going to read
like five to 10 lines of the Iliad and get through the entire book one.
So that's pretty cool.
So we've gotten through kind of all the grinding and just rough part.
Now we're going to the fun part, we're actually reading the poem itself.
And you know, you're going to see as we get into line six through 10, and lines 11 through
16, that all the vocabulary we've been learning up to this point is all going to come into
play.
And we're going to be able to understand it very well.
So anyway, do you have any questions about any of the grammar or anything?
Yeah, it doesn't have the awe, like an attic.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're right.
Because it because sometimes an attic, you'll see that, oh, they are but even an attic that's
going to be left out even in coin A, it's going to be left out.
So the Yeah, we would say maybe, oh, goddess in English, but the O is often left out in
Greek.
Yeah.
So but everything else I think is pretty clear from what we've already done in the lesson.
Okay.
And so let's go ahead and call it a day.
And then we're going to come back in lesson 14.
And just talk about the meter of the poem.