The Iliad XXIV

The first 61 lines of book 24 of the Iliad read in ancient Greek (or as close an approximation as I can manage.) I have attempted to retain correct pronounciation and pitch accent. I have, however, undoubtedly made some mistakes.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Iliad
• Greek
• Ancient
• Classics
• Antiquity

[notgodsemigod]

Your X sounds identicak to K which is wrong. It was KH with a tedency to sounds like H.

A word like kAlupte you pronounce it kalUpte. In pronounciation the first and most common error of foreigners is to not respect the little sign of tone that is above the vowel which is a most basic. It is not decorative, hehe! To imitate you can even pronounce a B like a V (anyway this process had already started prior to Alexander the Great in Ionia) but you can't change the tone of the word it is unatural.

[dkrispin]

@notgodsemigod Keep in mind that I posted this several years ago. I was attempting to do too many things at once (ie. pronounciation, pitches, as well as syllable length) and I realize that this attempt has many shortcomings.

Regarding the kh, as far as I know it is a k with an aspiration, far distinct from an h, and rather more like a k with an h thereafter. In this I am following the pronunciation given in Smythe's grammar, which is standard for Classical pronunciation.

[dkrispin]

@dkrispin As for the signs above the vowels, I was very much aware of them, though you must keep in mind at this time they were not stresses but rather pitches. For a native English speaker like me it is horridly difficult to separate stress from pitch, but I attempted this, ie. grave being a neutral pitch, acute being a rising pitch, and a circumflex a rising and falling.

[dkrispin]

@notgodsemigod As for the b, to my knowledge it wasn't pronounced anything near to a v at this time. Though it might indeed have begun to change even before Alexander's time, what I was trying for was a pronuncation some four hundred years earlier than Alexander. I realize that our reconstruction of pronunciation is partial at best (and mostly limited to Classical and later), but I nonetheless tried.

[notgodsemigod]

This is supposed to be an Attic or Ionian, a Spartan or a Macedonian reading it? Because accents could vary considerably. When for a simple word like mother Ionians said meeter and Dorians maatar, you can only imagine.

I know it is difficult but to imitate properly the accent you have to make it flow. You pronounce too much the beggining and ending giving less importance to the emphasis tone of the word iteself. I know it is not easy. Even me as a Greek I find it quite a task.

[dkrispin]

@notgodsemigod I was attempting to emulate as best I could the old Ionic of Homer. I realize I did not do a particularly good job of it, but that was my intent. I think, should I attempt this again, I would do it quite differently and (hopefully) better.

[USERCRETE]

You have made a good attempt but there are some letters in greek than to not exist in english.

the way they are pronunced is not familiar to you and as a result you make some mistakes of that kind.

keep trying i wish you the best!

greetings from Greece

[vivascargill]

this is quite beautiful --I take toi men as "the rest on the one hand" but that is a guess

thought of supper and sweet sleep to enjoy but Achilles was weeping (why the imperfect) thinking (why perfect part?) about his dear comrade...

[vivascargill]

I don't want to get involved in the question of pronunciation--however should we hear the dactyls? And as some have argued should every line be endstopped?

[vivascargill]

Coleridge said of Bk 24 --It is "simple sublime untranslatable" the height of Homer's genius.

[notgodsemigod]

@notgodsemigod

However, the likes of Platon make references about the changing accents of their times. Remember, such writers tended to write quite archaic. Xenophon wound even write "SYN" as "KSYN"! which in his times was completely void. Commoners' accents tended to be much more fluid.

Betas and Gammas were found mostly among Dorians, especially Macedonians and Epirots who maintained more archaic dialects of the Greek language.

[notgodsemigod]

@notgodsemigod However these changes were not so much the influence of eastern languages (Semitic, Iranian etc.) during hellenistic times as some suggested in the past - for the simple reason that ALL Middle Easterners never ever softened their Betas and Gammas - Semitics like Arabs and Syrians cannot even pronounce properly Veeta.

The process was more an inner process of Ionian Greeks and it had started before the times of Alexander though that would be not so visible in texts of philosophers.

[notgodsemigod]

@dkrispin @dkrispin The Beta changing to Veeta, the Gamma changing to Wamma and the I, H, EI, OI streamlining to the "ee" sound all were changes accomplished in the early Roman Imperial times. A last major change was the U streamlined to "ee" (apart when following an A or an E where it is streamlined to an "f" or a "v") which occured in late Byzantine times.

Greek accent was largely formed out of the Ionian accent of western Minor Asia.