Anabasis - Reading for comprehension & sentence parsing at politburo diktat 2.0

Anabasis - Reading for comprehension & sentence parsing

As I work my way through the Anabasis, I find that I constantly change how I use my notebook. Early on, I filled it with full English translations, striving to make them accurate and readable. Periodically, I’d just note vocabulary: a Greek word, in the form that it appeared in the text, with its English meaning. Page after page of those two formats - complete translations of more difficult passages, interspersed with just a minimal ‘key vocabulary’ from easier passages.

Then I got the idea to combine the two, into full translations, with vocabulary words underlined in the the English translation and the Greek word in the margin.

Here and there, I began to write out the Greek sentences, breaking them up into manageable chunks, or marking them with arrows or circles to help describe their role in the sentence. I used this technique more and more, especially with long, complex, possibly parallel structure, sentences.

Increasingly I find this is a better approach, more or less “thinking” in Greek, only translating explicitly into English when I have to. But certainly thinking about each Greek word carefully.

I hope this is some measure of progress! And not merely whimsy. But today, at lunch, I transcribed (in Greek) about two and a half sentences, breaking them up into understandable, somewhat self-contained, chunks, and then only noting where a particular word’s meaning had eluded me.

Thus (from III.1.21-22):

ἐν μέσῳ γὰρ ἤδη κεῖται - In between us lie
ταῦτα τὰ ἀγαθὰ / ἆθλα - these goods … prizes
ὁπότεροι ἂν ἡμῶν ἄνδρες ἀμείνονες ὦσιν, - (that) of either of us, the better warriors can have.

ἀγωνοθέται δ’ οἱ θεοί εἰσιν, - the gods will be judging,
οἳ σὺν ἡμῖν, - they … with us
ὡς τὸ εἰκός, ἔσονται. - most likely will be.

οὗτοι μὲν γὰρ αὐτοὺς ἐπιωρκήκασιν: - For while they swore falsely by them
ἡμεῖς δὲ πολλὰ ὁρῶντες ἀγαθὰ - we, on the other hand, seeing many goods,
στερρῶς αὐτῶν ἀπειχόμεθα - strictly kept our hands off them (the goodies),
διὰ τοὺς τῶν θεῶν ὅρκους: - on account of the oaths (sworn) by the gods.

ὥστε ἐξεῖναί μοι δοκεῖ ἰέναι ἐπὶ τὸν ἀγῶνα - so that, it seems to me, possible to go into the contest
πολὺ σὺν φρονήματι - with great confidence,
μείζονι ἢ τούτοις. - more than them.