when to read the iliad and the odyssey

[iona]

I posted this on the k-8 board and thought I'd get input here as well.

When did your dc read the iliad and the odyssey. Were they prepared for it? When is the earliest you think it would be appropriate and worth reading?

Thank you!

[Jeanine in TX]

I tried to space these books out, so we could take our time reading them. DD read the Iliad in 6th grade and the Odyssey in 7th grade. Next year she is going to read the Aeneid and various Greek tragedies. Hopefully, this will give us time to read other ancient literature in 9th grade without feeling rushed.

 

I felt comforable letting my daughter read the original Iliad and Odyssey in middle school because she knew the stories. She had previously read children's versions.

 

Per suggestions on this board, we read the Iliad and Odyssey together. In general, discussions were more thorough when a topic came up while reading. We did not talk as much when she read a chapter on her own. I also read the books in advance and listened to Teaching Company lectures. TC has great essay questions by the way.

 

DD like Odyssey better than Iliad. There were too many battle scenes in the latter. I have a feeling that DS will prefer Iliad when he reads it next year. :glare:

[iona]

thanks for responding! will you start your son with the iliad in 6th as well?

[iona]

oh and which easier versions did you go through before tackling the full versions?

[Jane in NC]

Black Ships Before Troy (Sutcliff) is an ideal introduction to the Iliad. This was a read out loud for us when my son was in early elementary school. He loved it and Greek mythology. When he was maybe ten or so, he found a recording of the Iliad at a bookstore and asked me to buy it for him. He listened to it (Fitzgerald translation) repeatedly. I eventually bought a copy of this translation which he then read. (Note: other translations are usually recommended. I went with Fitzgerald because it was in my son's comfort zone after listening to it a hundred and one times.) Subsequently, he read the Odyssey (maybe 7th grade or so) but was never as captivated by it as the Iliad.

[Pam in MA]

We've done the same thing; they were very familiar with the stories before we got to them (5th and 8th grade.) Also, we listened to them on audiobook which I think helps. We would read certain passages. There's a great version of Ian McKellan reading "The Odyssey."

[Mad Jenny Flint]

9th grade, in the sequence recommended by WTM.

 

He was prepared by the Sutcliff books. It was great. He read Iliad independently and listened to the Vandiver lectures- then we read the Odyssey together and listened to those lectures (this was preferable). We used the Fagle's translations, even though I do think Fitzgerald's translation is more beautiful.

 

My son has been eating up the readings in mythology this year- these two, plus Metamorphoses and others. He knows so much about Greek and Roman mythology from having read so many children's editions of them in the younger grades. It's funny to watch him find inconsistencies in some of the stories and get a little irritated by them.

[Liza Q]

My daughters were in 11th/9th grade the year we read these. When they were in 7th/5th, the older one read the Sutcliff versions and the younger one read the Coolidge version. When they were in 3rd/1st, I read aloud the Church versions and the oldest read the Green version.

 

My oldest could have read the originals in the 7th grade but I wanted to save them till my next daughter could read them as well. They were both more than ready in High School. hth!

[Ester Maria]

I prefer excerpts from "the real thing" as opposed to a retelling, so we never actually went through child-friendly versions. Sure that they encountered them (library, friends, etc.), but I didn't study those with them.

 

That being said, I started introducing the excerpts pretty much from when we started homeschooling, they knew the basic story from K/1st, and from time to time we'd read something from it. By the time they were 9-10, they knew the full story and have read most of the text.

In Greek, we applied metrics from Latin last year, they memorized the beginnings, and with my older one I went through some additional passages.

 

As my older one is in 8th next year, she took Odyssey as her year project, and the plan is to read Iliad (despite having seen most of the text, in a linear fashion this time) and then move onto Odyssey in original and work on it all year. I'm not sure how that's going to turn out, honestly, it seems like an overly ambitious project to me (*I* have never read either of the two works fully in Greek, and I know a bunch of classicists who haven't either), but if nothing else, at least she'll go through large portions of text that way and speed up her language.

 

The younger sister will pick one in 8th and read, in Italian translation supplemented with very few excerpts in the original, I doubt I'll insist on both works with her in their entirety, especially since she did read most of the text by now anyway.

 

That's a general plan.

About "being prepared", I made a conscious effort to NEVER introduce materials aimed at children in the first place, in any work, and I always preferred originals even if not the full text, so my daughters have never had to make the "shift" to the real thing. They both can handle both the language and the story.

[iona]

Ester Maria, I'm interested to know when you started teaching latin and greek to your daughters. :)

[Ester Maria]

Ester Maria, I'm interested to know when you started teaching latin and greek to your daughters. :)

What do you think? :D I was actually crazy enough to start it all in K/1st.

 

I actually don't suggest you to do that, unless you have too much time in your life and too bored child so you don't know what do to with him/her, or unless it's really of vital importance to you that kids get fully literate in classics (there are people like that, even who don't homeschool; I know in Italy a few families who afterschool their kids that way because they don't think they can get an adequate level in classical schools); that age is a LOT more suitable for the study of modern languages and immersion experiences. :D

 

It was an experiment of the kind, actually (I was relatively young, just stopped teaching at university and changed country, didn't have to work continually and was full of all those lofty ideals of kids literally growing up with Latin, Greek and Hebrew), and it later brought me to conclude that such an early start would be largely unnecessary for most children, that I was actually lucky to have linguistically gifted kids who did flourish on it, but that on the long run, my daughters will still have an advantage of at most 2 years over me who started it 5-7 years later herself, because you just can't "speed up" some things regarding cognitive development of the child and the age of being ready for some concepts. And immersion was no option, I heavily disagree on ideological grounds with teaching Latin by speaking Latin, Latin-in-Latin stuff. So if you study analytically, for most kids you profit the most by waiting a little.

 

Nowadays to most people I recommend 5th grade for Latin, 7th grade for Greek, and, which is CRUCIAL if you want not only grammar but also literacy, NOT dragging it over a decade (finish the entire morphosyntax in at most 3 years, and then deal with the texts). When the kids are small, you HAVE to drag it over a longer period of time, because you can't teach subjunctive of the pluperfect to a 7 y.o., even to the gifted ones. Dragging it when they're small is not "bad", it's just unnecessary unless you have a specific goal that you want your children to literally grow up with the classics (which is a legitimate goal too). I wanted that, and it's not that I "regret" it today, but looking back, and speaking purely linguistically, it really wasn't necessarily if it weren't for that specific goal.

 

The fact that my older daughter can read them that well at an early age is mostly due to her enormous interest and the fact that it's she the one who is willing to spend hours upon hours of her free time on the classics, far less than to my original plan. :) I'm glad that she's found her interest and I'm willing to assist her, but no, under different circumstances, I would NOT have a 13 y.o. attempting to read the whole Odyssey in Greek, because even for the ones who theoretically could do it (like my other daughter, who is 12), the amount of struggle invested just doesn't pay off with attaining the goal that's not so important for them personally. And I'm still afraid that this specific child might be heading towards a bitter burnout, but it's her choice. In any case she has nothing to lose and will profit, linguistically, even with only parts of the text.

 

So while I aim for literacy for both of my kids, I'm completely satisfied with my younger one reading excerpts and a full work or two here and then, and the older one, well, if she wants that kind of adventure of reading full works, spending hundreds of hours of her free time on that - sure, her choice. :) But not something I'd require.

(Sorry it's lengthy, just wanted to make absolutely sure that I'm not forcing her to do any of it.)

Edited May 28, 2010 by Ester Maria

[iona]

I didn't think it was a forced study. You had even stated that she was maybe being too ambitious. I appreciate your lengthy explanations.:001_smile:

 

So starting in 3rd or 4th with latin would still require stretching out of the grammar and wouldn't necessarily end up with the child being more advanced than one who started in 5th. Or is the amount the child may be ahead not worth the extra effort in starting a year or two early. Unless your aim is exposure/immersion in the classic languages from the very beginning?

Did I understand your post correctly? Do you understand mine?:tongue_smilie:

Did you do more of an immersion/exposure to the languages and then start the formal study in grade 5? Could you expand on that?

[Farmgirl70]

My son read them this year (grade 9). The Odyssey was suggested as an optional book in another curriculum he was using. He was very interested and went to the library, talked to the librarian and came home with the translation by Robert Fagles and the CD of the same read by Ian McKellan. He read along with the CD and just loved doing this! He told me that it was suggested to him because these were originally stories that were passed along verbally so it made sense to listen to them. Made sense to me! After completing The Odyssey, he asked for the Iliad for his birthday. Don't you love it when that happens?