The method and the course
It is our common opinion, based on our studies and experience, that the much augmented Italian edition of Athènaze, by M. Balme, G. Lawall, L. Miraglia and T. F. Bórri, is the most effective of all Greek courses.
It is divided into two volumes, Athènaze I (for the basic level) and Athènaze II (for the advanced level).
It follows the inductive-contextual method (or nature method), which is based on the text and the context, from which students draw forms and constructions, and the meaning of words and phrases. Morphology and syntax are first inductively assimilated, by the identification of recurrent structures and the necessary reflection, and then organized in a systematic manner.
Learners are constantly exposed to the language: initially, in Athènaze I, a very simple – yet true and authentic – Greek, and then, gradually, a more complex and elaborated language: Athènaze II, the second volume, also contains some original texts of classical authors, with their refined language and style.
Students are thus gradually and effectively introduced to the reading and understanding of classics. Students are strongly involved, with their active abilities too: they are invited to read and understand, to do exercises of comprehension, and also to use the language themselves, both speaking and writing.
They are always required to understand the Greek text; if they are asked to translate it, translation will have to follow understanding, not the other way round, as it sometimes happens at school!
Finally, the book’s continuous story line, besides being in itself a mnemonic help to learn words and constructions, clearly illustrates Greek life and civilization.
Athènaze is a true novel in Greek. It tells the story of Dicaeopolis (an Athenian farmer, the main character of Aristophanes’s Acharnians) and his family.
The plot is contrived, but placed within a definite historical context: from the autumn of 432 to the spring of 431 B. C. At the beginning we read about the family’s life in the country.
But the story is interspersed with the narration of Greek myths and of the great battles of the Persian wars.
Students are thus gradually prepared to read the excerpts of Herodotus, Plato and Thucydides that constitute the bulk of the second volume, Athènaze II. At the end, we find the verses of Aristophanes’s Acharnians, where Dicaeopolis plays the peacemaker.