met with in reading. Then the various rules are to be put together systematically. Important rules (the use of Subjunctive and Optative, the position of the article, and the like) should be learned with the practice of the forms. The various conditional clauses, the meaning of tenses (especially of the Aorist), and the use of the participles must be well explained. These points are the whole Greek Syntax in mice.[1] The study of vocables should be a direct preparation for the future reading of authors. Many vocables, found in exercise-books in vogue during the last century, are altogether useless to this end. This evil arose from the system of confining Greek reading for two years to translating unconnected sentences. According to the spirit of the Ratio, the reading of connected pieces, easy narratives and easy authors, should be begun as soon as possible.
The best author to begin with is Xenophon. For the sweetness and graceful simplicity of his language he was styled the "Attic Bee." In former times his Cyropaedia was the favorite book, also in Jesuit colleges. But this work is not as easy, nor as interesting as the Anabasis. The Anabasis, or The Retreat of the Ten Thousand, is a book most fit for youth,[2] and a good preparation for Herodotus. The speeches which are interwoven with the narrative prepare for the reading of Demosthenes. The geographical and ethnographical details about Asia Minor will prove use-
- ↑ "Also the epic dialect should not be studied systematically before reading Homer, but incidentally, and afterwards systematized." (Prussian School Order.)
- ↑ "Ein rechtes Jugendbuch." Dr. Dettweiler. See this author on Xenophon, Didaktik des Griechischen, p. 29; also Willmann's Didaktik, vol. II, p. 519.
