Greek and War-Making in Six Easy Lessons

I remember reading once in the preface to a book that the author, when in school, had been drilled so thoroughly in Latin grammar that he could have held an intelligent conversation with an ancient Roman. Recently I have been dipping into books on classical Greek; I'm not very far past the stage of being able to identify the letters but already I can tell that any conversation that is to be had can only be with Alexander, Leonidas or Agamemnon.

Normally, when learning a new language, you start by learning how to state your name and profession. Then you learn some nouns ("apple", "water", "sky" and "book", for instance), some verbs ("to talk", "to have", "to eat" or "to go") and some adjectives (like "red", "nice" and "big"). Finally you learn the rules of grammar and are able to say, "I want to eat a red apple."

The broad structure of the Greek lessons is the same, but the words are different; I cannot go to a cafe and ask for hot rolls with butter and honey, but I can - with the aid of the conjugation and declension tables - say, "I am leading the Greek army to the city."

When I had got through several pages and learnt little other than the verbs "to lead", "to plunder", "to plan" and "to send", the nouns "army", "garrison", "gate" and "city" and the adjectives "frightful" and "Greek", I couldn't resist flipping to the back. Where, in a book of Telugu, for instance, there might have been illustrations of children flying kites or elephants at a fair, there was a diagram involving many small boxes and a picture of a chariot, and bearing the label, "The Battle Formation of the Army of Cyrus".

This can only mean one of two things: either - as is more likely - the writers of these books are aware that most people learn classical Greek with a view to being able to read the Iliad or Anabasis and are unlikely ever to have to enquire after the price of a drachma of apples in Thebes, or the ancient Greeks really did teach children to lead armies and plan the defences of cities with the same enthusiasm with which we instruct kindergarten students that A is for Apple and B is for Ball.

If the second is the case, then perhaps it will eventually be possible to conduct an intelligent conversation with the average Johnny of ancient Greece - or at least to make comments like, "Brilliant use of the light cavalry," and, "I would have deployed the Thracian infantry instead," when he describes the glorious outcome of a hard-fought battle.