Meta Description: Join Dr. Jeff Winkle and Dr. David Noe in Ad Navseam Episode 187 as they explore the best ancient Greek textbooks, the WWII liberation of Athens, and the myth of learning styles. Discover the rigorous depths of Mastronarde, the approachable narrative of Athenaze, and the straightforward Moss Method. Plus, the Latin language, the Ratio Coffee dog, and ice cream for breakfast.
Introduction: Calendar Chaos and the Latin Colloquium
Welcome back, classical gourmands, to Episode 187 of the Ad Navseam Podcast! Broadcasting from the newly christened “Vomitorium Central” (also referred to as the Omphalos) on a warm, sunny July afternoon, your hosts Dr. Jeff Winkle and Dr. David Noe are ready to dive back into the grammatical trenches of antiquity.
The warm weather prompts a brief, cranky digression from Dave regarding the calendar. He complains about the historical hijacking of the calendar by Julius Caesar and Augustus, who intercalated the months of July and August and named them after themselves. This famously ruined the nice ordinal names of the remaining months, leaving September (which translates to the seventh month) forever stuck in the ninth position. Jeff jokes that if he were emperor, he would simply insert months named after his father, “Bernardi,” and his co-host, “Jeffy”—leading to the horrifying prospect of scheduling appointments on the “13th of Jeffy”.
Meanwhile, Dave is preparing to host the Colloquium Aestivum Latinum, a summer gathering where enthusiasts from as far away as Amsterdam and Switzerland descend upon Michigan to study the Latin language. The curriculum, unapologetically curated entirely to Dave’s specific interests, includes Vergil’s Aeneid Book VI, St. Augustine, Anselm’s Proslogion, Erasmus’s Adages, and the Renaissance Frenchman Isaac Casaubon. The event promises intense study, outdoor grilling, “rusticating,” and potentially even some Latin feats of strength.
Before getting to the main topic, Dave issues a quick “auto-corrigendum” regarding a previous error about the book Kudrun. He previously assumed it was related to the Indian subcontinent or the Bhagavad Gita, but he discovered it is actually an anonymous Middle High German heroic epic composed in Austria or Bavaria around 1250.
The Tuesday Curse and the German Retreat
Dave shares a fascinating historical detour from his massive summer read: Resistance: The Underground War Against Hitler, 1939-1945 by Polish author Halik Kochanski. Approaching page 743, Dave recounts the chapter detailing the German retreat from the Balkans.
In October 1944, the retreating German units surprisingly did not employ their usual scorched-earth policy in Athens. They left the ancient antiquities unharmed, preserved the Marathon Dam (which supplied the city’s fresh water), and left the Piraeus harbor completely undamaged without any booby traps or graffiti.
However, the incoming Greek government in exile and the British ambassador, Rex Leeper, delayed their official return to the city on Tuesday, October 17th. Why? Because Constantinople had fallen to the final Turkish assault on a Tuesday in 1453. It had become a deeply held, widely respected Greek tradition that absolutely nothing of importance should ever be initiated on a Tuesday. Thus, the British fleet simply dallied in the Piraeus harbor for an extra day doing nothing. This prompts a highly entertaining debate about the “feel” of certain days, with Jeff dropping a clever Seinfeld reference about Kramer and Newman arguing that Thursdays “don’t have a feel”.
Jeff compares the exhaustive historical detail of Kochanski’s book to Tom Clancy’s overly technical descriptions of tank interiors, Patrick O’Brian’s 17th-century ship riggings, and Victor Hugo’s 70-page history of the Paris sewer in Les Misérables.
The Greek Textbook Showdown: Mastronarde
The core of Episode 187 is Part 3 of their ongoing series: “What is the Best Textbook for Learning Ancient Greek?”
First up is Donald Mastronarde’s Introduction to Attic Greek (Second Edition, University of California Press, 2013). Looking at the Table of Contents, Jeff immediately balks at the 42 dense units, noting it poses a massive scheduling nightmare for a standard 14-to-16-week college semester.
Dave critiques Mastronarde’s advice on memorization. The textbook’s introduction caters to “visual” and “auditory” learners, but Dave points to the popular YouTube science channel Veritasium, which thoroughly debunked the myth of distinct learning styles, showing that everyone generally acquires language the same way. Dave argues that vocabulary is best acquired through reading in narrative context, not through the brute-force memorization of abstract paradigms.
Looking at Unit 10, the hosts note that the grammar explanations are exhaustively thorough, covering the present tense of the verb eimi (to be), including the highly rare “dual” forms, and detailed uses of the genitive and dative cases. However, the translation exercises occasionally result in bizarre, vocabulary-limited sentences, such as: “What the unholy individuals do? They take tiny stones from the river by which they use to throw against the shrine”.
The hosts read contrasting Amazon reviews to capture the public sentiment. A blistering two-star review calls the book “unreadable” like a book on trigonometry, filled with abstract jargon geared only toward grammar-obsessed professors. Conversely, a five-star review praises its brutal honesty: there is no easy shortcut to mastering Greek, and Mastronarde provides an unparalleled reference tool for tackling irregular verbs.
The Greek Textbook Showdown: Athenaze
Next is Athenaze (Third Edition). With just 16 units (divided neatly into Alpha and Beta sections), Jeff finds the pacing far more manageable for a syllabus.
Athenaze (which literally translates to “To Athens”) aims to teach Greek quickly and enjoyably within a rich cultural context, utilizing essays and ancient artwork to explain daily life, religion, and philosophy. The text uses a continuous pedagogical narrative following a farmer named Dikaiopolis. While Jeff previously found the ongoing, made-up narrative a bit “cheesy,” Dave compares it highly favorably to Hans Ørberg’s masterful equivalent for the Latin language, Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata.
Athenaze also provides authentic excerpts from classical authors, the Gospels of Luke and John, and the sayings of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. A frustrated one-star review complains that the book frequently uses “unknown” vocabulary words in its translation texts. The hosts immediately dismiss this complaint, pointing out that all words in a foreign language are unknown at first, and encountering new words in context is exactly how a language stretches the reader.
The Moss Method and Reading Real Greek
Finally, Dave eagerly presents his personal favorite pedagogical tool: Charles Melville Moss’s A First Greek Reader (1893). Unlike Mastronarde or Athenaze, Moss is not a grammar textbook; it is a graded reader featuring 163 carefully graduated stories.
Moss gets students reading immediately. The student is instructed to learn only 14 forms (the 8 forms of the first declension noun and the 6 forms of the present active indicative verb) before diving straight into translation. The stories are delightful, bite-sized adaptations of Xenophon, Aesop, Plato, Aristophanes, and Lucian.
Dave loves Moss’s primary piece of advice: “Do not think it necessary to know the meaning of every word before beginning to translate,” encouraging students to rely on their intuition rather than constantly thumbing through a lexicon. To demonstrate, Dave reads Story 50, a comical four-line anecdote about artistic rivalry. A foolish, competitive painter boasts to the legendary artist Apelles, “I painted this picture in one day!” Apelles takes one look at the shoddy work and delivers a brutal zinger: “I am shocked that you did not paint many such images in one day”. The book perfectly proves that you do not need length to achieve complexity or humor in ancient Greek.
The hosts also highlight supplemental tools, like the Dickinson College Vocabulary Generator for drilling the 150 most common Greek verbs, and classicist Anne Mahoney’s statistical revelation that roughly 75% of all Greek verbs encountered are in either the present or aorist tense—proving exactly where students should focus their initial grammatical triage.
Sponsors: Fuel for the Classical Renaissance
Before fleeing Vomitorium Central to avoid an impending (and reportedly pushy) “Rakko tournament” coming into the building, the hosts thank their loyal sponsors and crew:
- Hackett Publishing: Celebrating their 54th (going on 55th) anniversary, Hackett took a chance on the podcast early on and continues to keep the flame of the classics alive. They offer incredible, affordable translations, covering everything from Descartes and Aquinas to the Middle High German epic Kudrun. Go to hackettpublishing.com and use code AN2025 for 20% off your entire order plus free shipping.
- Ratio Coffee: Mark Helweg’s gorgeous coffee machines (the Ratio 8, Ratio 6, and the upcoming Ratio 4) are the ultimate kitchen upgrade. Dave shares an utterly absurd, totally fabricated tale about feeding bad coffee to his imaginary dog, resulting in terrible doggy orthodontics and a severe case of “plackish fang”. The code ANRATIO2025 provides $20 off your machine at ratiocoffee.com/adnauseam.
- Della Chelpka Art: Need a breathtaking oil painting that captures your story? Visit dellachelpka.art and use the code Apelles (the famous ancient painter from the Moss story!) for 10% off your commission.
The Gustatory Parting Shot
To conclude Episode 187, Jeff delivers a deeply relatable Gustatory Parting Shot from writer Stephen McGee:
“Eating a big bowl of ice cream for breakfast is every kid’s dream.”
Jeff completely agrees with the sentiment, proudly admitting that he opts for the Neapolitan blend when he pursues this culinary dream. All the flavors together.
Valete!
