First thoughts

I am taking a course in the history of astronomy, and picked up my first Loeb -- Aristotle, On the Heavens -- a couple of weeks ago.

Since then I have become a little obsessed with these neat small volumes (NB: the whole thing has recently gone digital -- see the link in the introduction). I thought a long-term project of reading all of the damn things might be nice.

So here it is.

WooHoo! I'm in! I have 34 volumes and I'm slowly buying up more of them. Right now I'm working on reading Plautus Volume 1 and Homer's Iliad volume 1.

WOW! :^D

I stumbled on this "group" because every now and then I look to see what the newest groups are here on LT. After reading your posts, I just had to join even though I currently own only two books from the Loeb Classical Library. One is the Boethius volume containing Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy, of which I own several translations and I acquired this one because I wanted to see the Latin text.

The other is The Loeb Classical Library Reader, which contains brief extracts from more than thirty of the Loeb volumes. This is great bedtime reading and was a brilliant marketing move by Loeb.

By way of introduction, I am uniquely unqualified to be here although I am trying to recapture my high school Latin. This is not as easy as I had hoped, but I will continue as time permits. Greek is really not possible. I am too old and am working away at two foreign languages as it is. A foreign alphabet on top of all is too much. But it doesn't prevent me from enjoying the classics. I have been on an ancient Greek binge over the past few months having read both the Iliad and Odyssey and the Landmark Herodotus: The Histories. I am about to embark on Plato having fallen in love with the Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo at a very young age. The Republic is next on my agenda. None of these in Loeb, sorry to say, but your group has planted some new seeds of inspiration in this old girl.

Welcome! Delighted to have you here. :^)

And so the duo becomes a trio.

>4 Poquette: Welcome! It's never, really, too late to start learning Greek, though, especially if you have Latin under your belt...

>6 scaifea: So that does make a difference, eh? Interesting.

>5 tungsten_peerts: >6 scaifea: Thanks much for your welcome!

>6 scaifea: Unfortunately, I cannot yet say that I actually have Latin under my belt! I am still a pretender in that regard. When I get there, I shall certainly reconsider my position regarding Greek. In the meantime, I have decided to learn the Greek alphabet just in case.

>7 tungsten_peerts: Yep; once you learn an inflected language like Latin, or Greek, it becomes much easier to pick up similar languages, because you already know how to go about learning such a language.

>8 Poquette: The alphabet isn't difficult at all, really, so I suspect you'll have no problems at all with it. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to help!

>9 scaifea: Yeah, I already know most of it. But too bad there isn't a nursery rhyme one could sing to help imprint it on the brain! It's the lower case that is the real challenge. Thanks so much!

>9 scaifea: I actually meant to ask:

"Does having some Latin help more with learning Greek than having some Greek helps with learning Latin?"

:^D

>10 Poquette: You're nearly there, then!

>11 tungsten_peerts: Ha! Well, I learned Greek first and then had absolutely no problem picking up Latin. Here's the thing about learning these two: Latin is slightly deceptive at first: it seems pretty simple, with all of its rules that it seems to follow to every T, but then once you've made it through the beginning grammar and such and hit certain authors who bend every rule in some way, you realize that it's not nearly as straightforward as you thought. Greek starts out crazy strange/hard but never gets any worse, really. Ha!

Oh, I got myself a Latin dictionary, by the by -- cuz, you know, books. ;^)

>13 tungsten_peerts: Oh, which one?

Cassell's Latin-English English-Latin ... it sounded like a good medium-sized, convenient-to-use one ... got a cheapo hardback.

I got it on the strength of a conversation I read on the Textkit website. I guess I coulda done asked you!

>15 tungsten_peerts: You did good - that's the best middle-sized Latin dictionary out there!

Would you believe I still have my little Collins Latin Gem Dictionary from my 9th grade first year Latin class. I think that must have been in 1957, the year my dictionary was published!

>17 Poquette: And *that* one is the best small-sized Latin dictionary!

chexmix and scaifea: I finally got my own thread going. Hope you'll mosey on over and have a look. ;-)

I thought I'd share my Loeb collection here... this isn't quite all of the ones I have, but it's all but a few:

Shiny!!!

>21 tungsten_peerts: Ha! Yep, I wrap my own books. BOOK NERD ALERT! Also, it has taken me years to gather this modest collection - through college and then grad school. I've read a few of them cover-to-cover and selections from almost all of them so far.

So new here, I just joined this group. How wonderful that I stumbled across here while searching for Loeb Classical Library. This seems to be a great start.

I can start off by saying that I've got no background in Greek or Latin but I'm really intrigued by the thought of a classical education. I've taught my 7 year-old niece the Greek alphabet and she enjoys hearing and reading Greek mythology which in a way I'm using to teach myself.

I'm reading my first Loeb - De Officiis by Cicero No. 30 that I've borrowed from the library. This little gem seems so irresistible that I'm hooked and want to go out and purchase this one to keep after I've read it.

Are there any newbie advice for an aspiring Loeb collector?

>23 ironjaw:, I started writing a "welcome!" post some days ago, but something intervened. :)

Welcome!

RE: collecting. The only piece of advice I can offer is that you might want to opt for used volumes -- I've heard (but haven't confirmed) that the quality of production has really gone down. So if you find an older copy of a title you're looking for, in nice condition, my advice would be to snap it up.

Me, I'm trying to save space in my little apartment. I might get a couple more Loebs, but unless my living situation changes, I'm unlikely to become a collector. Many of the old Loebs are now in the public domain and one can pretty easily find PDFs online so that's where I'm focused. Of course Harvard is replacing many of these with newer translations.