Teaching Greek: from school to university via fifteenth century Florence

Abstract

The scene is Florence, Italy in 1493. The scholar and teacher Guarino of Favera is holding a series of classes for beginners in the Greek language. Few people know Greek since materials for learning it are few. We have an account of his method by Girolamo Amaseo, one of his pupils. Amaseo is one of 16 students whose ages range from youths to a 50-year old poet, and Guarino is teaching them some Iliad, Odyssey and Aristophanes each day.

Primo sententiam lectionis paucis et dilucide eleganterque colligit; post interpretationem primam, verborum et nominum inflexionem, si duriuscula est, reperit; etimologiam non tacet et figuras reliquas. Secundo eam ipsam lectionem percurrit et, ne quae prius dixerat obliviscamur confirmat, examinatque nos omnes et, post ipsam statim lectionem, aliquis e numero nostro eam exponit. Cogimur declinare, nec displicet: omnia enim studia suam habet infanciam.

First, he elegantly and lucidly expresses the meaning of the text in a few words. After the first translation, if the case of the verbs and nouns is a little difficult, he clarifies it. He does not neglect etymology or the other figures of speech. Second, he goes on through the same text and, so that we do not forget what he has just said, he reinforces it, examines us all and immediately after the reading of the text, one of us expounds it. We are required to decline the nouns, and this is not a chore: every study has its infancy. (Botley, 2010)