It’s a bit mind boggling that the semester is already over and that I can now say I’ve read some Herodotus in Ancient Greek. I feel much more ‘academic’ somehow. I have absolutely loved everything that we have read as a class this semester, I have always loved travel narratives and sci-fi is a newer interest. I did prefer Lucian to Herodotus, which was actually quite a surprise to me as I actually really enjoy old history texts and usually prefer them to older comedy (the jokes just don’t land). But Lucian exceeded my expectation and was actually one of the funniest things I read all semester! I know I probably won’t have a chance to read Lucian again in the actual Greek, but I will definitely be purchasing a couple translations of his work and showing all of my family over break how funny he is. My cousin is going to be receiving a copy of True Histories for Christmas this year.
I also finally learned the difference between parody and satire (I was not a stellar English student) because of my apodeixis presentation. I always knew I enjoyed satire, but I also found out I had a deep appreciation of parody as well. I was glad I was able to connect these concepts ,that I have a great deal of respect for, to our Lucian readings. I also had absolutely no knowledge of Ancient Greek metal music, I honestly never would have even thought to mix these two concepts. The music Jie showed us in class was fantastic and got me to do a little bit of digging into bands that write lyrics in Latin as well. Turns out it’s pretty common, and plenty of metal bands have songs that use Latin phrases sometimes whole quotes from different texts.
As I move onto the Homer course next semester, I will definitely be using plenty of what I learned over this semester. I definitely have to go over plenty of vocabulary as it has never been my strong suit, but I think my comprehension of Greek overall has gotten better. I’ll also be using Ancient Greek to apply for the Hanna Holborn Gray fellowship this spring as well, where in my proposal I’ll be focusing on Greek and Latin epitaphs. I am majoring in classical languages so I will be using Ancient Greek to write my thesis next year and I look forward to doing lots more work in both Greek and Latin in my life.
