ΜΑΘΗΣΙΣ ΣΤΟΙΧΕΙΩΝ · learning the letters
Read the Greeks in their own words
Learn to read Ancient Greek, and meet the world that wrote it.
Where are you starting?Your desk
I know no Greek.
Begin with the letters, sounding out names you already know. In lesson 2 you read your first real line, a saying carved at Delphi.
Start the first lesson →I know a little.
Pick up the lessons where you are, and read real texts with help one tap away.
Open the Academy →I just want to read.
Greek and English side by side. Read the English, glance at the Greek, dig in when you like.
Open the library →Carry on
The first lesson
The letters Open the lesson →Learn by reading · lesson 1 of 13 · 6 words
The wrath of Achilles
Passage of the dayHomer, Iliad 1.1–7
Unrolling today's passage…
The opening of the Iliad: the poet asks the goddess to sing of the wrath of Achilles.
Six famous works
to begin withEpic and history
HomerIliadἸλιάςThe wrath of Achilles in the tenth year of the Trojan War.Greek and English HomerOdysseyὈδύσσειαOdysseus’ return home from Troy to Ithaca.Greek and English ThucydidesHistory of the Peloponnesian WarἹστορίαιThe war between Athens and Sparta, by an Athenian general who lived through it.Greek and EnglishPhilosophy and medicine
PlatoApologyἈπολογία ΣωκράτουςSocrates on trial, in Plato’s telling.Greek and English HippocratesEpidemicsἘπιδημίωνDoctors’ notes on the seasons, the illnesses they brought, and their patients, day by day.Greek and English Diogenes LaertiusLives of Eminent PhilosophersΒίοι καὶ γνῶμαι τῶν ἐν φιλοσοφίᾳ εὐδοκιμησάντωνThe lives and sayings of the Greek philosophers, from Thales to Epicurus.Greek and EnglishColophon. Set in EB Garamond, GFS Didot and Gentium Book Plus.