An Introduction to Classical Greek
Sundays 8:00 – 10:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, 2 quarters January through June 2026. (In July, a new beginner ancient Greek will begin).
This language seminar is intended for beginners who have no or almost no background in classical Greek. By the end of the course, you will be able to read passages from the New Testament and from Classical Greek literature, including extracts from Socrates' trial speech, Sophocles' Antigone, and the tragic expedition to Sicily described by Thucydides – and more. This seminar promises to be fun, while giving participants a sense of accomplishment and completion.
The textbook is Jones, Peter, Learn Ancient Greek in the Daily Telegraph QED series, London: First pub. by Gerald Duckworth & Co., Ltd., kept in print by Bristol Classical Press, and currently by Bloomsbury Academic, 1998, paperback, 216 pp, ISBN 978071562758. Publisher site: Learn Ancient Greek: : Peter Jones: Bristol Classical Press - Bloomsbury Supplementary materials will be provided.
As late as 1997 London’s Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph offered a serial column entitled Q. E. D. to help readers learn Greek and Latin. The columnist, Peter Jones, compiled them into a book in 1997 and offered a Greek primer the following year in response to reader demand. Both books are UK bestsellers. Each of the 22 chapters includes sections on Greek history and culture, and on the influence of the ancient language on our own, enabling you to see why the ancient Greeks have played such a central part in the culture, language, and history of western civilization. The prose is engaging and humorous, as one might expect. As Jones makes clear in his preface and introduction, this is a gentle start to just dip one's toes, but prepares one for a more rigorous, second beginning.
Peter Vaughan Jones, MBE, DPhil Cantabrian (on Homer), 1942-, retired senior lecturer in Classics in the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, co-founded the charitable NGO Friends of Classics, former spokesman for the UK's national Co-ordinating Committee for Classics, and collaborator in Cambridge University Press' Reading Greek and Reading Latin.
Led by Reynaldo Miranda-Zuniga, alumnus of St. John's College, Annapolis, and lover of language.