11 March 2002

Dear Laurie and Dina,

I've done as much as I can, which unfortunately doesn't include grading your exams—but when I looked them over, it seemed as though you had both done beautifully (as usual)!

         For the Thucydides section of the course, the assignments for 25 March and 27 March are complete; the others are not. If I have to be out longer than that week, just continue reading and forget about the rest. (In other words, if links on the syllabus don't work or don't take you to the designated material, then ignore them.) I'll update when I can.

         Some instructions for this section of the course:

         1. It's very important that you access and read the online commentary for each section. It will help you with translation and also contains valuable explanatory, historical, and other kinds of information.

         2. For this section of the course: no writing down of translations allowed!! Do not annotate the text—enter all notes and help material you need on the page with the notes (e.g., for the first assignment—bring into class a clean page 48; write everything you need on page 49). The most important thing to learn about reading Thucydides (and by extension Greek in general) is how to parse the phrases: most of the sentences, unlike in tragedy, are very long. Figuring out how to distinguish the subordinate clauses from the main ones is the most important skill you can learn. This will be seriously hampered by working with, from, or around a translation—your own or any other.

         Remember: the object of the course is to learn how to read Greek, not to learn how to memorize a translation! You've already both become very good at that. Now you're going to become really good!

         I hope I can be there on April 1. If not, I'll miss you, since I very much enjoy this course, as I hope you do—frustrations and all! All best,

Marilyn