Languages
lingua Latina
About the language itself, not about us. All of it you can check in any grammar.
Latin
Latin is the language of Rome, and then of everything written in it for centuries after Rome stopped running anything: inscriptions cut in stone, letters, law, poetry, scholarship. The endings on the words carry most of the sense, which is why a Latin sentence can put its words in an order that would be nonsense in English and still mean exactly one thing.
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- Q
- R
- S
- T
- V
- X
- Y
- Z
Marks on the stone
Two of these four are Roman and two are modern editors being helpful. Knowing which is which is most of the difference between reading an inscription and reading a textbook.
Interpunct interpunctum, a point cut at mid height between the words of an inscription. The space we leave between words instead came much later.
Apex apex, a stroke cut over a vowel to show it is long. It is not an accent — written Latin marks no stress at all.
Macron macron, the bar modern editors print over a long vowel. The Romans never used it; it is there so you can hear the quantity.
I longa I longa, long i was often cut taller than the letters either side of it rather than marked above them.
Ἑλληνικὴ γλῶσσα
Also about the language, not about us. The breathings and accents are part of the spelling, not decoration on it.
Greek
Ancient Greek is not one language but a family of them: Homer's, the Attic of classical Athens, and the common Greek people wrote all over the later Mediterranean. Its alphabet was the first to give vowels letters of their own, and its verbs make distinctions about how an action unfolds that Latin simply does not have.
- Α
- Β
- Γ
- Δ
- Ε
- Ζ
- Η
- Θ
- Ι
- Κ
- Λ
- Μ
- Ν
- Ξ
- Ο
- Π
- Ρ
- Σ
- Τ
- Υ
- Φ
- Χ
- Ψ
- Ω
The polytonic marks
Every Greek word that starts with a vowel carries a breathing, and nearly every word carries an accent. One vowel can take both at once, and you have to see the pair as a single thing before the word will come apart.
Smooth breathing ψιλή, the vowel is spoken with no h in front of it.
Rough breathing δασεῖα, the vowel takes an h in front of it. Every initial rho takes one.
Acute ὀξεῖα, marks the pitch accent. It can stand on any one of the last three syllables of a word.
Grave βαρεῖα, replaces an acute on a final syllable when another word follows it in the sentence.
Circumflex περισπωμένη, falls only on a long vowel or a diphthong, and only on one of the last two syllables.
Iota subscript ὑπογεγραμμένη, a long vowel that has stopped pronouncing its iota still writes it, tucked underneath.
Diaeresis διαλυτικά, two vowels you would normally read as one diphthong are to be read apart.
The cycles
Almost every ancient text is written for somebody who already knows the stories. A speech turns on one line about Oedipus. A poem names a ship and expects you to know who sailed on it.
The six below are the standing repertoire — the set a classical audience could be assumed to have. Learning them is less like reading a book of myths and more like building the index the texts keep pointing at.
The succession
Ἡ Θεογονία
How the world got its rulers: Ouranos, then Kronos, then Zeus, each overthrown by his own son.
The labours
Οἱ ἆθλοι
The twelve tasks set to Heracles, and the monsters, rivers and cattle attached to each of them.
The voyage
Ἡ Ἀργοναυτική
Jason, the ship Argo and the crew sent east after the golden fleece, and what Medea did about it.
Thebes
Ὁ Θηβαϊκὸς κύκλος
The house of Laius: Oedipus, his sons and daughters, and the two wars fought over the city.
Troy
Ὁ Τρωικὸς κύκλος
The war at Troy, and the long, badly managed journeys home of the men who lived through it.
Rome
fabulae Romanae
The founding stories Rome told about itself: Aeneas out of burning Troy, and Romulus on the hill.