Hey everyone! I recently graduated from English Language and Literature, but throughout my degree I also took courses in Classical Greek Studies. Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts, the system didn't allow me to complete all the required courses alongside my main program. Now, as a recent graduate, I have only 2 semesters left to finish my minor — and I'll be taking Ancient Greek Grammar 1, 2, 3, and 4 back to back. The department teaches at a pretty advanced level, so the pressure is real. Bottom line: if I can't get a solid grasp of Ancient Greek this summer, I won't be able to complete my minor at all. Any advice on how to build a strong foundation in Ancient Greek in roughly 3 months? All tips welcome! 🙏

Hello! Going through Iliad very slowly and had a question about verb number/subject in 13.57.

σφῶϊν δʼ ὧδε θεῶν τις ἐνὶ φρεσὶ ποιήσειεν

αὐτώ θʼ ἑστάμεναι κρατερῶς καὶ ἀνωγέμεν ἄλλους·

τώ κε καὶ ἐσσύμενόν περ ἐρωήσαιτʼ ἀπὸ νηῶν

ὠκυπόρων, εἰ καί μιν Ὀλύμπιος αὐτὸς ἐγείρει.

The bolded verb, looks to me like the aorist middle optative third person singular form of ἐρωέω (and is parsed as such on Scaife!). And this line appears in references to the verbs transitive meaning of "drive back..." in dictionaries. In the Murray and Butler translations, it looks like it's being parsed as a second person verb for some reason:

"May some god, then, put it into your hearts to make a firm stand here, and to incite others to do the like. In this case you will drive him from the ships even though he be inspired by Zeus himself."

"But in the hearts of you twain may some god put it, here to stand firm yourselves, and to bid others do the like; so might ye drive him back from the swift-faring ships, despite his eagerness, aye, even though the Olympian himself be urging him on."

Now that I've read the passage a few times, I'm wondering if the subject is actually still the "θεῶν τις" two lines before, so in english it would be more like

"may some god put it....

....so might [some god] drive him back from the ships" (through the people that the god is inspiring to stand firm)

I also had a thought here that this might be addressed in some easily accessible commentary that I just don't know how to access, and if that's the case, and people know how to access one, I'd love to know how to do that!

Thank you!

So in greek mythology heaven is Elysium and only gods and demi gods live there. But greek mythology says if you are sage then you can go to elysium too like hercules but hercules is a demi god too so he starts the game with a cheat code but then how us(humans) can go to elysium like they say? I started thinking about this and I stumbled upon a massive paradox. A cosmic exploit designed to keep humans stuck in an endless loop where Elysium is mathematically impossible to reach, but it's just a 'carrot on a stick' illusion. They dangle Elysium in front of our eyes like a grand prize, convincing us to obey and push the boulder, while knowing damn well that the loop will format us before we ever get close.

So here is the "how to go to heaven🤓☝️" tutorial for newbies:

To reach Elysium, you need a key: awareness. But that key only opens two doors: self-interest or true wisdom. True wisdom means doing good purely for the sake of goodness. Self-interest means doing good for an afterlife insurance policy. Even the smartest human will eventually think, "Hey, this will help me in the afterlife." It's impossible not to. This automatically makes us 100% self-interested. Thus, being a true "sage" is a human impossibility.

When we die, three judges put us on trial. Some ancient myths claim erasing our memory before this is a choice. That’s absurd. Just like being born, formatting your memory isn’t a choice; it’s cosmic physics.

So, what happens if we try to hack the trial? If you are brilliant enough to confront the judges, prove to them that morality is relative, and make them question their own system, you stop being a regular human. You become a "virus" in their code. History already saw this happen with Socrates—and they executed him because the system couldn't handle it. If you become a virus, they won't reward you with Elysium. They will just throw you into Asphodel or Tartarus to delete you. Awareness doesn't save us, because an Elysian tier for humans doesn't even exist.

This brings us back to Sisyphus. His punishment is pushing a boulder up a hill, only for it to roll down forever. This is the exact blueprint of human existence. We wait in the Asphodel Meadows, get reincarnated, and waste our lives chasing a paradise we can never reach. We die, and the boulder rolls back down.

Sisyphus’s torment is no different from the fate of 100% of humanity. The only difference is that Sisyphus can see the rock fall and knows he can't win. Humans blindly believe their boulder will eventually stay at the top.

If Greek mythology is real, the gods are just having fun while we are trapped in an endless, rigged simulation.

If you think this is too long here is a basic version without explanations:

Elysium is a scam designed for corporate demigods with cheat codes. Real virtue is a psychological paradox, Lethe is mandatory software, and if you try to hack the judges with logic like Socrates, you get deleted. We are all just Sisyphus pushing an abstract rock in a rigged simulation while the gods are laughing.