Reading the classics to improve fine-tuning
DWILKINS@ucrac1.ucr.edu
Thu, 24 Oct 1996 19:03:21 -0700 (PDT)
Jonathan, let me add a brief comment about the Perseus site. I assign it to
my students for their own work in Greek, and as you indicated, the biggest
problem is convenient access. We seem to get widely varying results. When
I access it from home on my 14k modem (hardly fast by today's standards), I
seldom have to wait more than 5 or 6 seconds to move between links. At the
university, however, the wait is sometimes so long as to be impractical.
More of a surprise, though, is that one of my students who has a much faster
computer than my own, told me that going through Compuserve he frequently has
delays as long as 20 minutes! I think Perseus is the best thing since move-
able type, so I would recommend you use it as much as possible (use the
unabridged version of LSJ lexicon, so you get a good sense of contextual
meanings). If it runs to slow, try out some other internet servers and see if
you can't get an acceptable speed. It would be well worth the money to switch
if that should prove to be the problem. BTW, Aristotle can be rather diffi-
cult but is usually rewarding. Plato is perhaps easier than Aristotle overall
(though sometimes very difficult), and generally more fun to read because of
the dialogue style. Later writers, e.g. the church fathers and Josephus, are
generally easier with some bumpy road here and there.
Don Wilkins
UC Riverside