 This is the last in a series of videos about ancient Greek that I'll be making and in this one I'm going to show you a little bit of the language itself I'll start off with a discussion about the alphabet and then we will jump into the text below and it is taken from Herodotus's histories book 1 chapter 68 Okay over here are the first few of the letters of the Greek alphabet and as you can see they have upper and lower case for each letter just like our alphabet and a lot of these letters are going to look very very familiar to us as The Romans via the Etruscans borrowed and modified the Greek alphabet and made it their own so you're gonna see stuff like This looks like our letter a this looks like our letter b the lower case doesn't quite look it but you know close enough But we will have a few That look rather a bit different and some are going to look very similar like Ada over here But they're going to sound very differently. So in English we would expect that to go Like house, but in Greek. It's a vowel. It's a long e These also may look familiar to you if you've hung around a college campus with fraternities and sororities as these are the Letters that they used to make sororities. So when they were saying delta delta delta can I help you help you help you on Saturday night live? Here's the letter delta Greek also has a fleet of diacritical marks This first pair is breathing. This is rough breathing and it makes a an H sort of sound and this is smooth breathing which makes no sort of sound These are accents and they indicated when they were first written down where the Pitch accent went on a word Except of course by that time there really wasn't much of a pitch accent So they were writing down something that was being lost and trying to preserve it So we're stuck with all of these and they do some strange things that aren't always expected this is the Yoda subscript and It's got a strange development once it was pronounced and the pronunciation became weaker and weaker and they started Writing it underneath and then finally not pronounced at all So that's a tour of the alphabet this is these are not all of the letters there are of course more So let's jump straight to it. Okay to tone on tone and wrong Leakies a new ray in the gay and soon to gay to he a Crescamanos Kai's Sophia And use a scar to tone tone and be mixed he is pros to take a toss Elton is Caliqeon. Caliqeon, yeah. Caliqeon e theieto si derun. Excelau nominon. Kai, en tomati. En oreon to poeominon. Okay. As you can see, Greek, like Latin, is found of very long senses. But originally, there wouldn't have been any punctuation, so you would have had to just feel through by knowing the language pretty well. So, up to this number two, there are two sentences, and they're both pretty long. Okay, so the first part. Tu tonon tonon dron. This is all genitive plural while this isn't. It's a particle that means then, and Greek just abounds with particles. And some of them are easy to translate, like this one. And some aren't so easy to translate. In a way, they're kind of like road map. They're road signs to a bit of text. So, tu tonon tonon dron. This on tells us that tu ton kicks it off. So, tu ton tonon dron, this, then the men. Greek has a word that means the, and they use it in a slightly different way than we use it in English, but not completely foreign. So, for an English speaker, when you see what they call the article, you'll say, oh, I know what that's about. So, tu tonon tonon dron. These, the men. So, of these men, Li Keis. Li Keis was one of the Spartans, and they were looking for something to help defeat the Tegeians. And this is part of that story. Anure, he found. Entegae, entegaea. Kai, sun tu kei, by chance. Kresamenos, having consulted an oracle. Kai, so pie, and by his cleverness. This is Sophia. This is where we get the Sophia in philosophy. And it means cleverness, I would say here. It can mean wisdom, but I kind of like cleverness. Euseis gar, here's another particle in Greek, like I said, just flooded with, and this means something like four, but something like, I'll say. Euseis gar, tu ton ton cronon, epimixieis pros tu tegea, tegeitas. This whole bit up here is something called a genitive absolute phrase, and the genitive absolute, just by itself, is Euseis epimixieis. And those are the two parts of the genitive absolute. The rest are little things modified. So being for tu ton crononon, this, the time, this is accusative of duration of time, so at this time, epimixieis, peaceful relations, pros, towards, tu tegeitas. So elthon, coming, going, this is a participle. And like Latin, Greek is very participle, heavy, compared to English. It's calcheon, and I'm sorry for my pronunciation. Some of these words are long, and I'm a little out of practice. Calcheon into a blacksmithry, into a blacksmith shop. Atheito, he saw cideron, metal, excelonomenon being worked. Kai entomati. In wonder, he was, orion. For those of you who have studied Attic Greek, this is different from what you might expect. This is Ionic Greek, and it's a slightly different dialect. Herodotus wrote in Ionic Greek, and some things are a little bit different. This is different from what you know. This is different from what you know. Orion sin to poioomenon, the things being done, the deeds. He saw what was going on. So of these men, Leakey's found, it doesn't say what, but he found it in Tegea, both by chance, having consulted an oracle, and by cleverness. There being, at this time, peaceful relations towards the Tegeons from the Spartans, who, as we know, were not very peaceful, he went into a blacksmith shop and saw a metal being worked. And he was in wonder as he looked on this being done. Maton demin ho calcheus apothomadzonta epe pausamenos tu ergu. Maton, this means learning, but here it might mean noticing. Noticing, de, and this de is another particle, and it is really tricky to translate, but what it's telling us is that there is a new subject. It's not Leakey's again. So we've got Maton, de, new subject, mean. Noticing him, ho calcheus, this is the blacksmith, and ho, there's the blacksmith, and this is nominative case. Apothomadzonta, this is talking about who he saw, mean. And that's referring to Leakey's. Looking on, epe said pausamenos pausing tu ergu of his work. Again, here's the article. So the blacksmith then noticing, noticing him looking on said stopping his work.