ΜάθησιςΣτοιχείων
Learn to read Ancient Greek, and meet the world that wrote it.
- 373
- authors
- 1,837
- works
- 689
- with an English translation
Start with the letters
Twenty-four letters, seven of them vowels. Many will look familiar from maths and science; a few will surprise you.
- Meet the alphabetShapes, names and sounds, and the order each letter is written in.
- Accents and breathingsWhat the small marks above the letters do, and how much they matter to a beginner.
- Your first real sentenceA genuine line of Homer by the end of lesson one, linked to the library.
Hover or tap a letter. Sounds follow the reconstructed pronunciation of Classical Athens; you'll be able to switch to Erasmian or Modern Greek.
Passage of the day
A different famous passage each day, read live from the original files. Every word can be looked up.
Unrolling today's passage…
Find something to read
Search by title, author or Greek name. Where a work has an English translation, it sits beside the Greek.
Suggested starting points
- ἸλιάςIliadHomer
- ὈδύσσειαOdysseyHomer
- Ἀπολογία ΣωκράτουςApologyPlato
- ΣυμπόσιονSymposiumPlato
- ἈντιγόνηAntigoneSophocles
- ΜήδειαMedeaEuripides
- ἹστορίαιHistoriesHerodotus
- ἈνάβασιςAnabasisXenophon
- ἘγχειρίδιονThe HandbookEpictetus
- ἸωάννηνJohnNew Testament
- Ἔργα καὶ ἩμέραιWorks and DaysHesiod
- Ἀληθῶν ΔιηγημάτωνVerae historiaeLucian of Samosata
Where to read next
Six short paths through the library, each in a sensible order. Every step opens the Greek with its English beside it.
First steps in Greek prose
Plain, clear prose first, then longer and richer narrative: the usual order of reading after a textbook.
- Lysias, On the Murder of EratosthenesA short speech for a murder trial: a vivid story in everyday Attic.
- Plato, ApologySocrates' defence speech: simple sentences, much repetition of key words.
- Plato, CritoA short conversation in prison, on why Socrates will not escape.
- Xenophon, AnabasisAn army's march home from Persia, told in straightforward narrative.
- Herodotus, HistoriesThe first history, in the Ionic dialect: longer sentences and many stories.
Epic from the beginning
The hexameter tradition: Homer, then Hesiod, then a hymn to a goddess in the same verse.
- Homer, IliadThe wrath of Achilles in the tenth year of the Trojan War.
- Homer, OdysseyOdysseus' return home, in the same language and metre.
- Hesiod, TheogonyThe birth of the gods and the rise of Zeus.
- Hesiod, Works and DaysFarming, justice and hard work, in a poet's own voice.
- Homeric Hymns, Hymn 2 to DemeterThe Homeric Hymn to Demeter: the goddess searches for her daughter Persephone.
The Athenian stage
One play from each of the great dramatists of fifth-century Athens, tragedy first, then comedy.
- Aeschylus, AgamemnonThe king's homecoming and murder.
- Sophocles, AntigoneA sister buries her brother against the king's order.
- Sophocles, Oedipus TyrannusA king searches for the killer of his predecessor.
- Euripides, MedeaMedea's revenge on Jason.
- Aristophanes, CloudsA comedy about Socrates and the new learning.
Philosophy in sequence
From Socrates to the Stoics: the questions Socrates raised, and how later thinkers took them up.
- Plato, ApologySocrates on trial, in Plato's telling.
- Plato, RepublicPlato on justice, the soul and the ideal city.
- Aristotle, Nicomachean EthicsAristotle on happiness, virtue and friendship.
- Epictetus, The HandbookEpictetus' short handbook of Stoic practice.
- Epictetus, DiscoursesThe longer classroom talks that the Handbook was drawn from.
Koine Greek
The shared Greek of the Hellenistic and Roman world, from the Septuagint to the New Testament.
- New Testament, JohnThe Gospel of John: short sentences and a small vocabulary.
- Old Testament, GenesisGenesis in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.
- New Testament, ActsNarrative, speeches and voyages: the early church spreads through the Roman world.
- New Testament, RomansPaul's letter to the Romans: argument rather than story.
- Philo Judaeus, De Opificio MundiPhilo of Alexandria reads the creation story as philosophy.
History in Greek
Five historians over five centuries, each writing in the shadow of the one before.
- Herodotus, HistoriesThe Persian Wars and the peoples around them.
- Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian WarThe war between Athens and Sparta.
- Xenophon, HellenicaXenophon continues the story where Thucydides stops.
- Polybius, HistoriesHow Rome came to rule the Mediterranean.
- Plutarch, PericlesPlutarch's life of Pericles, written in the Roman empire.
From the Painted Stoa
History, daily life, the strange and the brutal, told from the sources. Every entry says how sure we can be.
The Melian Dialogue
In the summer of 416 BC an Athenian fleet of thirty-eight ships anchored off Melos, a small island that wanted no part in the war between Athens and Sparta.
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DemocracyOstracism
Once a year the citizens of Athens could decide to hold a strange election. No one was charged and no one was tried.
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ArchaeologyThe Kerameikos
Just outside the city wall of Athens, where the Sacred Way left for Eleusis and the road ran out to Plato's Academy, lay the Kerameikos: the quarter of the potters, and for more than a thousand years the city's great cemetery.
Read the entry →What people are asking
Questions from beginners, help with a passage, and a debate each week. Reading is open to everyone; a free account lets you join in.
Read without a connection
Download the original text collections once and keep reading on a train, a plane or a remote island. Your notes and saved words stay on this computer.
More choices (single authors, a folder instead of the browser) in The Scroll Case. Or get the full repositories as ZIPs: canonical-greekLit, First1KGreek.