My study of Greek began in August, 1925, after I had taken my A.B. in Political Science at Berkeley. In October I decided upon a classical career and that fall I went through Smith's Latin Lessons by myself (under Roger Jones's supervision) and then began German in January and Hebrew the following August (under William Popper, a great teacher). Later I learned French and Italian without attending classes (before 1925 I had studied only Spanish). In May, 1928, I received the M.A. degree in Greek, just two years and nine months after learning the Greek alphabet.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Tuesday, July 25, 2017
A Quick Study
Joseph Fontenrose (1903-1986), Classics at Berkeley: The First Century 1869-1970 (Berkeley: Department of Classics, History Fund, 1982), p. 59: