ATHENAZE

Athenaze

Since Athenaze is almost identical in concept and production, I would like to make the same unqualified recommendation for it. Unfortunately, I can't. Unlike its Cambridge brethren, OUP does not cater to the self-learner. In fact, it seems this is intentional. But read on.

To pursue Athenaze on your own, you need the following volumes (Athenaze distributes its thirty chapters over two books, so you wouldn't have to get the second books immediately):

• Athenaze: An Introduction to Ancient Greek Book I
• Athenaze: An Introduction to Ancient Greek Book II
• Athenaze: An Introduction to Ancient Greek Workbook I
• Athenaze: An Introduction to Ancient Greek Workbook II
• Athenaze: An Introduction to Ancient Greek Teacher's Handbook I
• Athenaze: An Introduction to Ancient Greek Teacher's Handbook II
• An Audio CD to accompany Athenaze: An Introduction to Ancient Greek

Unfortunately, OUP only makes the teacher's handbooks and audio CD available to teachers and institutions purchasing the set for classroom teaching. They have confirmed this is their policy, for example, in correspondence to me from their Marketing department: "For obvious reasons we do restrict distribution of any text that provides the solutions or answers to the problems in the student books. I understand that this leaves the self-taught student in a difficult position." Actually, the reasons are not obvious to me, especially since it doesn't seem to trouble JACT, but that's OUP's policy.

For the record, I was ultimately able to persuade the publisher to sell me the teacher's handbooks and the audio CD, but it was an ordeal, and you should assume you wouldn't be as lucky. The teacher's handbooks indeed are not just the translations and exercise keys; they are full of suggested teaching techniques and so in fact addressed to teachers and not students. Unfortunately, as a self-learner, I am both the teacher and the student. And the handbooks are the only source with keys to the exercises in the main books. (It's shortsighted to try to learn a language without doing exercises and without checking your answers. I continually amaze myself at how stupid, or careless, I can be.)

The Introduction to Ancient Greek Books I and II contain the stories plus grammar and exercises. As I've said, only the teacher's handbooks have the story translations and exercise keys. The complementary Workbooks I and II provide additional exercises for each chapter, with an answer key included. And no audio guidance. So it's a mixed bag. (The Reading Greek 2-CD set sweeps the Academy Awards for best performance by male and female leading and supporting actors, best sound and dramatic effects, and best documentary explaining the restored pronunciation. But the Athenaze CD serves its purpose; I especially like that it sticks with the pitch accent throughout its readings and does so at a pace you can follow and practice.)

The Italian Athenaze

If you browse around, you'll undoubtedly find references to an Italian edition of Athenaze, by Luigi Miraglia and T. F. Bórri: Athenaze: Introduzione al greco antico. You can get more information from the publishing arm of the Accademia Vivarium Novum. Miraglia took the first edition of the English-language Athenaze and Ørberg-ized it (my vulgar term, his acknowledgment): He and his co-authors added stories (without disrupting the Dikaiopolis plot line) along with Lingua Latina-like marginal notes (all in Greek, of course) and illustrations, with the pedagogical goal of learning vocabulary and grammar more by contextual induction, less by native-language glosses. In a virtuous circle, the second edition of the English Athenaze in turn acknowledges "inspiration" from Miraglia.

The Vivarium Novum web site claims a teacher's guide is in the works (Guida per i docenti), but it seems it's been in the works for over ten years. In lieu of the guide itself, the site provides Miraglia's sketch for a guide. It makes for interesting reading. Despite a classical education many of us would be jealous of, Miraglia gives autobiographical witness to what Dowling warns of: After years of diligent memorization of grammar, after many guided readings, confronted with the simplest sentence, without the aid of translation or glosses, you still have to "sweat seven shirts" and frantically consult the dictionary just to elicit a plausible "deciphering" of the sentence's meaning.

Like the English editions, the Italian Athenaze distributes its chapters over two books,Athènaze A (I) and Athènaze B (II). Each has a companion volume of additional exercises, written by Carmelo Cònsoli, Meletèmata A (I) and Meletèmata B (II). For the sixteen chapters of Athènaze A, Alessandro Barbone has provided yet more supplemental exercises, Quaderno d'esercizi (cap. I-VIII) and Quaderno d'esercizi (cap. IX-XVI). And as supplemental reading to chapters twenty and beyond, Alessandro Barbone and T. F. Bórri have added an edition of The Tablet of Cebes (La Tavola di Cebète), an allegorical work passed down in the tradition as being the work of Cebes of Thebes, a pupil of Socrates.

The Italian Athenaze has no exercise keys. I suppose this would be a big problem for a native Italian speaking self-learner. For my purposes, especially since I am also brushing up on my Italian, I use the Italian edition as a fun and useful supplement, to aid my Italian as well as my Greek. As with Lingua Latina, I find the all-Greek marginal notes and illustrations a big help in learning the Greek vocabulary. 

If you live outside Italy, getting the Italian Athenaze is not necessarily easy. The Vivarium Novum web site is an eye feast and very informative (you can click on each book, enlarge the display, and leaf through its pages). But the shopping cart checkout is broken (as they acknowledged to me) and in any case only takes bank transfers, not credit cards. The only way you can hope to reach them is by phone. A well-meaning young man there tried his best to help me, but they just don't have the logistics to handle overseas orders. You can get the books through other Italian online sellers, once you struggle through trying to create a profile with a U.S. address. I got the books from libreriauniversitaria.it.

(By the way, if you're teaching yourself Italian, I highly recommend La Lingua Italiana per stranieri: Corso Elementare ed Intermedio, by Katerin Katerinov and M. C. Borioso Katerinov. [For the exercise key, La Lingua Italiana per stranieri: Chiave degli esercizi e dei test, and for the corso medio and corso superiore volumes in this series, you'll have to shop around on Italian web sites.] The book is an exemplar of the immersion method: Each chapter starts with a dialog, then grammar, without a single non-Italian word. Caveat: While still available, the publication is from 1985, so the content feels a little dated.)