Take the StoryLearning 10-DAY CHALLENGE; for a modest price, you can try out any of the StoryLearning courses here: storylearning.com/10DC ⬅ How do you pronounce the names of the great Heroes and Heroines of Greek and Roman Mythology? Is his name Hercules or Heracles? Who is Ulisses and why is he mascarding as Odysseus? Learn the original pronunciation of these names in this video. My colleagues at Weston Classical School in Paris, Tennessee run a K-12 program taught entirely in Latin: westonclassical.org 🦂 Support my work on Patreon: www.patreon.com/LukeRanieri 📚 Luke Ranieri Audiobooks: luke-ranieri.myshopify.com 🤠 Take my course LATIN UNCOVERED on StoryLearning, including my original Latin adventure novella "Vir Petasātus" learn.storylearning.com/lu-promo?affiliate_id=3932873 🦂 Sign up for my Latin Pronunciation & Conversation series on Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/54058196 ☕ Support my work with PayPal: paypal.me/lukeranieri And if you like, do consider joining this channel: ruclips.net/channel/UCLbiwlm3poGNh5XSVlXBkGAjoin 🏛 Latin by the Ranieri-Dowling Method: luke-ranieri.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/latin-by-the-ranieri-dowling-method-latin-summary-of-forms-of-nouns-verbs-adjectives-pronouns-audio-grammar-tables 🏺Ancient Greek by the Ranieri-Dowling Method: luke-ranieri.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/ancient-greek-by-the-ranieri-dowling-method-latin-summary-of-forms-of-nouns-verbs-adjectives-pronouns-audio-grammar-tables 🏛 Ancient Greek in Action · Free Greek Lessons: ruclips.net/p/PLU1WuLg45SixsonRdfNNv-CPNq8xUwgam 👨🏫 My Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata playlist · Free Latin Lessons: ruclips.net/video/j7hd799IznU/видео.html 🦂 ScorpioMartianus (my channel for content in Latin, Ancient Greek, & Ancient Egyptian) ruclips.net/user/ScorpioMartianus 🎙 Hundreds of hours of Latin & Greek audio: lukeranieri.com/audio 🌍 polýMATHY website: lukeranieri.com/polymathy/ 🌅 polýMATHY on Instagram: instagram.com/lukeranieri/ 🦁 Legio XIII Latin Language Podcast: ruclips.net/user/LegioXIII 👕 Merch: teespring.com/stores/scorpiomartianus 🦂 www.ScorpioMartianus.com 🦅 www.LukeRanieri.com 📖 My book Ranieri Reverse Recall on Amazon: amzn.to/2nVUfqd Intro and outro music: Overture of Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) by Mozart #hercules #latin #greek 00:00 Intro 01:09 Herclus vs Heracles 06:42 Achilles 07:46 Menelaus 08:52 Agamemnon 09:37 Helen 10:30 Paris 11:53 Hector 13:31 Odysseus 16:20 Aeneas 17:25 Atalanta 18:40 Bellerophon 19:15 Perseus 19:46 Ajax 20:52 Theseus 21:43 Hecate 23:51 Bird of All Sizes
I discovered this channel 5 years ago when I was studying Latin in school. The videos have given me a new perspective because they rather focus on speaking Latin while my Latin class in school was all about translating and reading Ovid and Cicero. I finished school years ago but sometimes I come back here :)
Hi, greek here... dude i have to say I love your videos, even your accent ist on point (most of the times) I even get to learn some things I didn't know 😂 only thing you could improve a little is your pronunciation, but it's already so good that you would need a native speaker to help you so you can still improve on that... so it's kind of unnessecary, you're already really good!
Ἡρακλῆς, από το όνομα Ἥρα και το επίθημα -κλῆς του ουσιαστικού κλέος = δόξα). Η is read as two Greek E in ancient pronunciation. That's why Ἥρα is translated English Hera. The accent character ' not used in modern Greek gives a h sound before the Η. This means that the English pronunciation of Hercules is in fact close to the ancient Greek pronunciation, in my opinion
In Polish, we pronounce these names almost exactly like in classical Latin: Herkules, Hera, Achilles, Alkmena, Helena... Some of them have specifically Polish endings: Odyseusz or Tezeusz :)
Dariusz (although not originally Greek), or a more modern nickname. I used to work with a cool dude from Poland and he had taught me some Polish, but I have forgotten everything by now, since I stopped practising the language.
Oh, I definitely share thoughts about Luwian. As someone very interested in Proto-Indo-European, there are some interesting things going that could make or break some of our reconstructions if only we had more data. Funnily enough, it was also the first time that I heard the word "Luwian" being pronounced out loud. The English spelling pronunciation of "uwi" could really go any way.
Great video. Surprised you didn't mention the etymology of Heracles, considering it's probably the best established of these, and kind of snarky even. As a sidenote, have you ever heard of the movie "Illyricvm" from 2022? It's a Croatian production that's completely in Latin, as well as bits of reconstructed (or rather, pretty much wholly constructed) Illyrian. Something that'd fit in your "how good is their Latin" series.
5:08 Love this point. It's why when people ask me how Farya is pronounced, I tell them to say it however they want, because defining a "correct" pronunciation seems exceedingly arbritrary to me. The name is Portuguese, but the root of it is (allegedly) φάρος. So is the correct pronunciation Portuguese? Greek? Persian because it's the lingua franca of my birth country? Mazandarani because it's my mother language? French because it's my main language of use? It's a pandora's box
I rewatched "Tombstone" a couple of days ago, and I just had a thought that maybe you could make a video on the scene where Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo very briefly speak a few sentences in Latin.
The Victorian era poet Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote "Atalanta in Calydon" which I believe was part of a project to produce a Greek tragedy in English.
One of my favorite "Greek" names belonged to my great grandmother (who was *not* Greek). Her name was Parthena, and she seems to have been called "Thena" for short. I've always thought that Parthena was such a pretty name.
@@DemetriosKongas I believe you meant to say virgin, pure. Virginia (Βιργινία) is a different name that derives from the Latin word virgo, the not-yet-married lady, and it's also used in Greek.
@stixoimatizontas we often use both the Greek and the Latin equivalent: Φωτεινή/Lucia/Λουκία, Δάφνη/Laura/Λαυρα, Ευστάθιος/Constantinos/Κωνσταντίνος, Ευμορφια/Pulcheria/Πουλχερία κλπ Παρθένα as a name is the equivalent of Virginia. Of course, we use both as in the other names I mentioned. The English virgin comes from Latin virgo
In Russian the Greek mythology names which end in -us -os -es almost always don't have these endings. Ахилл - akhill Геракл - gerakl Дионис - dionis Гефест - gefest Кадм - kadm Эдип - edip
@polyMATHY_Luke regarding Atalanta, I think a better way to describe the meaning of the name, is if you think that "τάλαντον" as a unit of weight is placed on a pair of scales which oscillates / sways (trying to balance the scales of course). The verb "ταλαντώνω, -εύομαι" means "to oscillate" or sway. Hence, "A" in A-talanta, deprives this property and means the exact opposite, i.e. means the one who is not oscillating, is not swaying, but instead is stable and balanced.
Have you ever considered doing a video on the variation of English pronunciation of Latin/Greek words? For example, is "Xenophon" pronounced /ˈzɛnəfən,/ /ˈziːnəfən/ /ˈzɛnəfɒn/ or /ˈziːnəfɒn/? Should words with æ (Like Judæa for example) be pronounced as /iː/ or as /eɪ/ in English? There also seems to be some disagreement of whether the letters i or y should be pronounced as /ɪ/ or /aɪ/ (Pythagoras' name I've heard both ways). Also some variation with /æ/ vs /eɪ/ and /ɒ/ vs /əʊ/ (For example, "Samos," is it /ˈseɪmɒs/? /ˈsæməʊs/? Accents with the lot/cloth split could also use /ɔː/ in this word as well).
Love your videos, they feel like time travel! Forse una bella idea per un altro video sarebbe about names from Latin origin, names we hear nowadays like Antonio
Its interesting to find out where the name Atalanta comes from. I just knew it as being the name of an Italian football (soccer) club. Also, I doubt that most people in the UK would have heard of the parable of the talents so you might want to make a video on it for folks across the pond.
Herakles! 😅 Frankly, I'm confused by the way English sometimes turns the Hellenic 'Κ' into a 'C' even in transliteration, because it isn't really a 'C.' Equally confusing is the varying transliterations of 'Υ/υ' (ypsilon) into 'U' or 'Y', and 'Φ' into either 'Ph' or a 'F', though that latter mentioned is a convention that changes with the target language and the choice depends on its own orthography, but the others, seem inconsistent at best. At least I already found about the rough breathing. 😅 I think I'm climbing backwards into the tree, so to speak, learning through transliterating... had to find out a few terms used in certain contexts, for the purposes of writing a piece of fiction, and ended up reading short sequences of Herodotos in Ancient Greek to find those terms because all the texts I coukd find only referred to those terms in their Englush equivalents - and first, I needed to learn the alphabet at last. Maybe reading a basic textbook at some point would be smart, but getting one around here turned out to be less simple. (And I can't order overseas due to the insane cost of taxes and duties when importing anything over the value of a burger meal... they double or triple the price.) Oh, the things you do for the sake of a little authenticity and flavor, even if it wouldn't be exactly correct to leave source language words into dialogue that otherwise happens in the main language of the work. I've chosen to use original words for the concepts that don't entirely translate into modern ones, such as the hetaîrai. It's a piece of fiction, and stretching the convention a bit is allowable. In a scientific text, terms appear in their original language, sometimes even their original script with, or without a transliteration, all the time...
Wait-a, so you're telling me that Italians already started inserting-a random-a vowels into words thousands of years ago, just-a because-a they couldn't be bothered to pronounce-a consonant-a clusters? Nothing has changed. Mehercule!
Luke forgot to mention that the Latin name for Paris (the city) comes from Proto-Celtic or Gaulish and meant something like People of the Cauldron (The Welsh word for Cauldron is Pair)
18:10 do you use "mete out" regularly? I (native English speaker) recognized it as a cognate to German „messen“ and of course its many other Indo-European cousins from *med- but have never heard that in English.
Yes, I use it often enough; it's not a very common word, but we use it in a number of expressions, both productive and fixed. To "mete out justice" is a common collocation.
I just discovered the videos with Irene. Please do more, and you try to speak Italian. Do it! :) I would love to hear your Italian. (I am Romanian, also "with Latin roots", we study one year of Latin in school). :)
Amazing work as always Luke... Now, an interesting interpretation of the word λαός (people) that I have heard, but not really been able to verify, is that it is derived from the word λας which means stone. This refers to the Greek version of the cataclysmic myth, where the surviving couple were Deucalion (Δευκαλίων) and Pyrrha (Πύρρα). After the flood, Zeus instructed them to walk and throw stones behind their back. Any stone thrown by Deucalion was turned into a man and by Pyrrha into a woman... Therefore the "people" that emerged from this were walled "stones" (?) i.e. λαός. It would be great if someone like you could fact-check this...
I looked the terms up in Beekes’ etymological dictionary of Ancient Greek and it seems there’s no connection. Now, neither the etymology of λᾶας nor the one of λαός is certain, but since λαός presupposes a stem with digamma λαϝός and Cypric la-o-se for λᾶας shows that it didn’t have a digamma, they are probably not related (though Beekes assumes that they are both of Pre-Greek origin).
Maybe I am wrong but the way the attic pronunciation sounds in the Ajax name example , is like the first alpha gets the tone of voice but the tone symbol is on iota ί , but shouldn’t it above α like this Ά ?
Γεια, Γιάννη! In diphthongs in Ancient Greek orthography (note that this is very different from the rules-with-phonology of Modern Greek) the accent was placed over *both* vowels. Our modern typefaces don’t do this, so it’s hard to represent in this medium. Just imagine the acute accent starting over the α and continuing over the ι. This continues to be the predominant convention even into the Mediaeval period, as you can see from this manuscript: sarahjbiggs.typepad.com/.a/6a013488b5399e970c01bb07958268970d-pi Note how in the first line τοῦ αὐτοῦ places the diacritics over *both* vowels in the digraphs. Also here: sarahjbiggs.typepad.com/.a/6a013488b5399e970c01b8d07a4a81970c-pi The word αὐτῆς is written with the smooth breathing over the α: ἀυτῆς. Eventually, when typefaces came to be standardized after the Middle Ages, the convention was standardized where diacritics over go over the second element in a digraph.
Oh dear... the atrocity that is the anglicized pronunciation of Classical languages and those mangled names of historical persons... The first time I ran into it, I was horrified. Then again, the ruler names tend to be historically translated into local languages, in quite a few cultures, and can become unrecognizable for the rest of the world. (And this doesn't even take into account the transliteration of foreign names into syllabic writing systems like Chinese, or into abjads like Arabic.) The Finnish convention used to be to change every Louis and Ludovicus into the Germanic "Ludwig", except that spelled with an ordinary V. In the context of 18th-century France, that makes absolutely no sense, but the historical convention remains in these old names. Even the recent regnal names were changed: Elizabeth (II) turns into Elisabet, and Carl XVI Gustaf becomes Kaarle XVI Kustaa, because all of his predecessors were called Kaarle or Kustaa, as well. The same convention of turning everyone into Kaarle extended to Charles and Carolus, and the numerous Slavic renditions of Károl. I don't want to get started with the names of the Russian Tsars... Fortunately, the current recommendation is that the names of the modern rulers are retained as they were, so we finally may write "Charles III" instead of "Kaarle III" of the United Kingdom. Which still tends to get called Englanti, instead of the proper name, even in semi-official sources.
As a Greek fellow, I find it quite embarrassing, when Greeks get upset because of how others say the names in their language. As if we don't butcher English, German, or French names and words using our modern Greek pronunciation. My favourite example is the "Nike" argument, where you will find people from the US, the UK and Greece being right and wrong at the same time 🤣
“I didn’t say her name (Atalanta) in English because I have actually only heard it in Latin and Greek.” Not a soccer fan, are you? Your anglicization here is how the Italian club’s name is pronounced in English.
4:05 Most of the times it should be nicer to adopted the Hellenic form of the name because in the Hellenic form it has a meaning! When other languages adopted a name and they are changed it to fit their language rules it loses its meaning. Hercules means nothing… While Heracles as you explained derives from the terms Ήρα + κλέως Hera and glory, ironically meaning glory to Hera while Hera hated him and tried to kill him several times…😒 8:00 Μένος + λαός Wrath of the people! Amazing name, my uncle has this name! 10:17 Eleni derives from Helios, bright as the Sun. The same root with our nation’s name: Hellas and not Greece… Not Graecia, Γραικοί were a small Hellenic tribe. 13:16 Andromache, she who fights with men, the brave woman! I love this name! My nan is named Ανδρομάχη! 15:25 When I hear Ulixes my mind goes to the Ηλύσια Πεδία = Elysian Fields The “paradise” resting place of the ancient Hellenic religion. Odysseus probably derives from the verb οδύσσομαι which means not just hated by hunted. Odysseus was hunted/persecuted by the Gods. 16:31 Aeneas was a Thracian🇬🇷 taking part to the Trojan War. Some sources want him to be Trojan other Thracian. In all cases he was the son of Aphrodite. After the Trojans war he died in his homeland, Thrace. Virgil took him and created another story for him because he wanted to built an backstory for Rome! We have a huge amount of myths claiming that Thracians were sons of Ares, Achaeans sons of Zeus, Thessalian sons of Poseidon… etc Rome didn’t had that background and Virgil took the opportunity to give a great Historical background for Rome. The Aeneid is the try of Virgil to make Rome more important! 20:46 The first musician, another Thracian🇬🇷 I really enjoy when I see those barbarians 🇧🇬 from the steppes of Central Asia to claim that they are native aThracians😂😂😂 I had a conversation with a Bulgar the other day, their propaganda says that they are natives here😂😂😂😂 native Thracians and we (🇬🇷) are from Ethiopia who stole their lands! As you didn’t know Orfeovksi and Evridikova were Bulgars🇧🇬 and not Thracians🇬🇷…🤡 22:07 To be more precise, Hecate was not a Goddess. In the Hellenic religion there was a distinction between the deities worshipped by the people! There were three “groups”: *1. Primordial deities* Things like Chaos, Herebus, Hemera, Uranos, Gaia… etc *2. Titans* Krònos, Rea, Hecate, *3. The Olympian Gods* In ancient Hellenic religion people mainly worshiped the Gods, not the titans! After the Titanomachy the Titans were punished! Only some were left free because they helped Zeus and his siblings. Hecate was older that Zeus, she was a Titanid (female Titan). She was the deity of magic, sorcery, crossroads, the night, medicine, necromancy… etc She could also guide the souls of the mortals through the Underworld and that’s why we have some burial prayers referring to her and asking for her guidance. As I am from Thrace🇬🇷, we Thracians loved some Gods and deities above all others. Thracians mostly loved and worshiped the “Great Mother” as we called Gaia! We also worshiped Hecate and from the Olympians: Dionysus, Ares and Artemis.
A few points: 1. The connection of Ὀδυσσεύς with ὀδύσσομαι is clearly folk etymological. Some variants of the name recorded are: Ὀλυσεύς, Ὀλλυσεύς, Ὀλυττεύς, Ὀλισεύς, while Ὀδυσσεύς is surprisingly only attested in epic literature. This shows that it is clearly a Pre-Greek name adopted into Greek: note that the word ὀδύσσομαι does not show any of those variants with λ. 2. It is unhistorical to think of the Greeks as a "nation". In Homer, the Ἕλληνες are a tribe among many others, the term came to mean all Greeks only at a later time. The name itself, too, is probably of Pre-Greek origin and has nothing to do with the sun (the double λ is indicative here). Ancient Greeks had no concept of "nation" in our modern sense: Many of the Greek-speaking cities of Asia minor actually felt more connected to the Persian Empire than to mainland Greeks. So, the same way that Ἕλληνες was originally a tribe that came to mean all Greeks, so did the Graeci/Γραικοί, the first tribe that the Romans came into contact with. 3. Hecate was a goddess. The line between gods and Titans is not sharply drawn in the living religion of the Greeks; Hesiod calls Hecate a θεά in the theogony.
@@taudir2459nonsense! The Greeks had a strong sense of belonging to the same nation. Herodotus, in his introduction, he says he writes the history of the Greeks and the barbarians Thucydides also writes the history of the Greeks. The ancient Greeks demarcated themselves clearly from foreigners whom they called barbarians. The Ionian Greeks hated the Persians who were barbarians and despotic and they rebelled against their rule on several occasions.
@@taudir2459 1. It’s not folk if you examine the rest of the name in the poems of Homer! Odysseus was a man that offended the Gods and they persecuted him so a simple travel back to his birth place ended up half life being lost… His name reflects that. His wife’s name was *Πηνελόπη* / Pinelòpi > Penelope in English. Do you know what Penelope means? Πηνή + λέπω Piní + lèpo Pini menas the threads in the loom and lepo is a verb meaning weaving. So, Penelope means she who weaves incredibly. The amazing weaver! *Τηλέμαχος* Tilèmaxos > Telemachus Τηλέ + μάχη Tile + máxi Away + battle Tele as in other words like telephones television, telescopes… means from away. And màhi < Titanomachy. Telemachus fought for his father from away, he gave his battle for Ithaca from a distance. Being away from home and trying to find people to help him reclaim Ithaca and drive away all the suitors of Penelope! 2. The idea of the nation wasn’t the same back then but people belonged to nations and they have the sense of that common origin! You are very wrong about that! Hellenes were one nation with common origin. They were separated in many “Pòlis” City-States that each acted like a “country” of its own but they were all Hellenes! They spoke the same language, they had the same religion, they worshiped the same Gods, they had the same customs and ethics… etc When major threats appears they fought against them united! Against Persia for example… We had the idea of a nation and in the question what is that the Hellenes believed: *…το ομόδοξον, το ομόαιμον, το ομότροπον, το ομόγλωσσον…* Omòdokson: the same religion omòemon: the same blood/origin omòtropon: the same customs omóglosson: the same language The Hellenic nation consisted of many Hellenic tribes that all of them had the same Hellenic ancestry, spoke the same language (with regional dialects of course), worshiped the same Gods and they acted the same way. Trey had the same ethic codes and traditions! We are not “greeks” Graeci were a small Hellenic tribe. Calling all of us greeks it’s like calling British people Londoners… London is part of Britain, not all British people are Londoners! Not all Germans are Bavarians Not all Spanish people are Catalan … etc The Romans made this mistake, we never used that term for our whole nation! 3. I’m exhaling that even if we call them all Θεοί/Gods they are not all “Gods” There’s a difference in their lineage. The first generation were the primordial deities, the second generation were the Titans and the third and last generation were the Olympians/Gods. In Hellenic there are two terms: θεός / theós and θεότητα / theótita. Theos means God Theotita means divine being/deity Some times they are used interchangeably in poems and sources like this. Titans were divine beings so they could be called theótites/divine deities/Gods but they were not Gods. They were a generation older than Gods. The ancient Hellenic religion revolved around the Gods. As I’ve said the Titans were punished. We never found a temple dedicated to Kronos for example. Exceptions were Titans like Hecate which was very loved by the people, and primordial deities like Gaia, the Earth herself which was loved equally to Gods by tribes like the Thracians!
Leonidas gets me, is it Leo Nyedas or do you rhyme it with adidas, not to say the Americans pronounce Adidas wrong but that is another story veering off into legend.
Do modern Greeks really pronounce the ending of epsilon-upsilon-sigma in ancient Greek names with the modern e-f-s pronunciation. To me, that seems quite rude! I.e. someone’s name is their name and you should pronounce it as, as best you can, as they do, or did. Maybe this is also partly influenced by my being English and therefore used to spelling being no great guide to pronunciation. But I feel if in modern English “eus” was normally pronounced “efs”, we would still keep loads of old pronunciations and just have to learn that in some words it is pronounced this way, and in others that (see eg “ough” in the surnames Gough and Troughton).
We pronounce this combination as efs, that's right. Actually, in many ancient Greek inscriptions eus is written evs. Compare with Latin v that was pronounced w in classical Latin and v in later Latin.
Take the StoryLearning 10-DAY CHALLENGE; for a modest price, you can try out any of the StoryLearning courses here:
storylearning.com/10DC ⬅
How do you pronounce the names of the great Heroes and Heroines of Greek and Roman Mythology? Is his name Hercules or Heracles? Who is Ulisses and why is he mascarding as Odysseus? Learn the original pronunciation of these names in this video.
My colleagues at Weston Classical School in Paris, Tennessee run a K-12 program taught entirely in Latin: westonclassical.org
🦂 Support my work on Patreon:
www.patreon.com/LukeRanieri
📚 Luke Ranieri Audiobooks:
luke-ranieri.myshopify.com
🤠 Take my course LATIN UNCOVERED on StoryLearning, including my original Latin adventure novella "Vir Petasātus"
learn.storylearning.com/lu-promo?affiliate_id=3932873
🦂 Sign up for my Latin Pronunciation & Conversation series on Patreon:
www.patreon.com/posts/54058196
☕ Support my work with PayPal:
paypal.me/lukeranieri
And if you like, do consider joining this channel:
ruclips.net/channel/UCLbiwlm3poGNh5XSVlXBkGAjoin
🏛 Latin by the Ranieri-Dowling Method: luke-ranieri.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/latin-by-the-ranieri-dowling-method-latin-summary-of-forms-of-nouns-verbs-adjectives-pronouns-audio-grammar-tables
🏺Ancient Greek by the Ranieri-Dowling Method: luke-ranieri.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/ancient-greek-by-the-ranieri-dowling-method-latin-summary-of-forms-of-nouns-verbs-adjectives-pronouns-audio-grammar-tables
🏛 Ancient Greek in Action · Free Greek Lessons:
ruclips.net/p/PLU1WuLg45SixsonRdfNNv-CPNq8xUwgam
👨🏫 My Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata playlist · Free Latin Lessons:
ruclips.net/video/j7hd799IznU/видео.html
🦂 ScorpioMartianus (my channel for content in Latin, Ancient Greek, & Ancient Egyptian)
ruclips.net/user/ScorpioMartianus
🎙 Hundreds of hours of Latin & Greek audio:
lukeranieri.com/audio
🌍 polýMATHY website:
lukeranieri.com/polymathy/
🌅 polýMATHY on Instagram:
instagram.com/lukeranieri/
🦁 Legio XIII Latin Language Podcast:
ruclips.net/user/LegioXIII
👕 Merch:
teespring.com/stores/scorpiomartianus
🦂 www.ScorpioMartianus.com
🦅 www.LukeRanieri.com
📖 My book Ranieri Reverse Recall on Amazon:
amzn.to/2nVUfqd
Intro and outro music: Overture of Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) by Mozart
#hercules #latin #greek
00:00 Intro
01:09 Herclus vs Heracles
06:42 Achilles
07:46 Menelaus
08:52 Agamemnon
09:37 Helen
10:30 Paris
11:53 Hector
13:31 Odysseus
16:20 Aeneas
17:25 Atalanta
18:40 Bellerophon
19:15 Perseus
19:46 Ajax
20:52 Theseus
21:43 Hecate
23:51 Bird of All Sizes
A video on the pronunciation of the roman emperors' names would be cool as well.
Great suggestion
Would be wonderful!!
I discovered this channel 5 years ago when I was studying Latin in school. The videos have given me a new perspective because they rather focus on speaking Latin while my Latin class in school was all about translating and reading Ovid and Cicero.
I finished school years ago but sometimes I come back here :)
Very pleased my videos have been of use!
Hi, greek here... dude i have to say I love your videos, even your accent ist on point (most of the times) I even get to learn some things I didn't know 😂 only thing you could improve a little is your pronunciation, but it's already so good that you would need a native speaker to help you so you can still improve on that... so it's kind of unnessecary, you're already really good!
Hercle!
Ἡρακλῆς, από το όνομα Ἥρα και το επίθημα -κλῆς του ουσιαστικού κλέος = δόξα). Η is read as two Greek E in ancient pronunciation. That's why Ἥρα is translated English Hera. The accent character ' not used in modern Greek gives a h sound before the Η. This means that the English pronunciation of Hercules is in fact close to the ancient Greek pronunciation, in my opinion
In Polish, we pronounce these names almost exactly like in classical Latin: Herkules, Hera, Achilles, Alkmena, Helena... Some of them have specifically Polish endings: Odyseusz or Tezeusz :)
Dariusz (although not originally Greek), or a more modern nickname. I used to work with a cool dude from Poland and he had taught me some Polish, but I have forgotten everything by now, since I stopped practising the language.
Oh, I definitely share thoughts about Luwian. As someone very interested in Proto-Indo-European, there are some interesting things going that could make or break some of our reconstructions if only we had more data.
Funnily enough, it was also the first time that I heard the word "Luwian" being pronounced out loud. The English spelling pronunciation of "uwi" could really go any way.
Great video. Surprised you didn't mention the etymology of Heracles, considering it's probably the best established of these, and kind of snarky even.
As a sidenote, have you ever heard of the movie "Illyricvm" from 2022? It's a Croatian production that's completely in Latin, as well as bits of reconstructed (or rather, pretty much wholly constructed) Illyrian. Something that'd fit in your "how good is their Latin" series.
Mentioned at 3:04
I would love to watch more of these videos. I'm looking forward to what comes next.
I think a video on the traditional English pronunciation of Latin would be fun!
5:08 Love this point. It's why when people ask me how Farya is pronounced, I tell them to say it however they want, because defining a "correct" pronunciation seems exceedingly arbritrary to me. The name is Portuguese, but the root of it is (allegedly) φάρος. So is the correct pronunciation Portuguese? Greek? Persian because it's the lingua franca of my birth country? Mazandarani because it's my mother language? French because it's my main language of use? It's a pandora's box
I rewatched "Tombstone" a couple of days ago, and I just had a thought that maybe you could make a video on the scene where Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo very briefly speak a few sentences in Latin.
The Victorian era poet Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote "Atalanta in Calydon" which I believe was part of a project to produce a Greek tragedy in English.
One of my favorite "Greek" names belonged to my great grandmother (who was *not* Greek).
Her name was Parthena, and she seems to have been called "Thena" for short.
I've always thought that Parthena was such a pretty name.
Meaning Virginia in Greek.
@@DemetriosKongas I believe you meant to say virgin, pure. Virginia (Βιργινία) is a different name that derives from the Latin word virgo, the not-yet-married lady, and it's also used in Greek.
@stixoimatizontas we often use both the Greek and the Latin equivalent: Φωτεινή/Lucia/Λουκία, Δάφνη/Laura/Λαυρα, Ευστάθιος/Constantinos/Κωνσταντίνος, Ευμορφια/Pulcheria/Πουλχερία κλπ
Παρθένα as a name is the equivalent of Virginia. Of course, we use both as in the other names I mentioned. The English virgin comes from Latin virgo
In Russian the Greek mythology names which end in -us -os -es almost always don't have these endings.
Ахилл - akhill
Геракл - gerakl
Дионис - dionis
Гефест - gefest
Кадм - kadm
Эдип - edip
Greek guy here waiting to comment and correct you, but my man you did great
@polyMATHY_Luke regarding Atalanta, I think a better way to describe the meaning of the name, is if you think that "τάλαντον" as a unit of weight is placed on a pair of scales which oscillates / sways (trying to balance the scales of course). The verb "ταλαντώνω, -εύομαι" means "to oscillate" or sway. Hence, "A" in A-talanta, deprives this property and means the exact opposite, i.e. means the one who is not oscillating, is not swaying, but instead is stable and balanced.
How do you pronounce Diomedes? He's one of the coolest characters in the Iliad
Have you ever considered doing a video on the variation of English pronunciation of Latin/Greek words? For example, is "Xenophon" pronounced /ˈzɛnəfən,/ /ˈziːnəfən/ /ˈzɛnəfɒn/ or /ˈziːnəfɒn/? Should words with æ (Like Judæa for example) be pronounced as /iː/ or as /eɪ/ in English? There also seems to be some disagreement of whether the letters i or y should be pronounced as /ɪ/ or /aɪ/ (Pythagoras' name I've heard both ways). Also some variation with /æ/ vs /eɪ/ and /ɒ/ vs /əʊ/ (For example, "Samos," is it /ˈseɪmɒs/? /ˈsæməʊs/? Accents with the lot/cloth split could also use /ɔː/ in this word as well).
Love your videos, they feel like time travel! Forse una bella idea per un altro video sarebbe about names from Latin origin, names we hear nowadays like Antonio
Ottimo suggerimento! Grazie
I named my daughter Atalanta, and we pronounce it the way you said in English.
A person who does not oscillate! Atalanta was a huntress devoted to Artemis (Diana) and a virgin.
That's a lovely name! Wishing her prosperity and happiness!
13:12 Ah, how fitting for the name of one of my MMO characters, who is more or less a Paladin (Guild Wars 2 Guardian)
1:30 putting a U to "decluster" a consonant cluster is something very Japanese
Japanese and Latin have some odd similarities...
Monsters and creatures next!
And Paris, Texis. Great film
Ummm, actually his name was Vajrapani 😂 great video Luke!
Its interesting to find out where the name Atalanta comes from. I just knew it as being the name of an Italian football (soccer) club. Also, I doubt that most people in the UK would have heard of the parable of the talents so you might want to make a video on it for folks across the pond.
It is derived from atalantos=equal in weight. Atalanta was a human huntress! She devoted herself to Artemis and she kept her virginity.
In modern Greek atalantos means without a talent, but in ancient Greek it meant someone who does not oscillate.
Herakles! 😅 Frankly, I'm confused by the way English sometimes turns the Hellenic 'Κ' into a 'C' even in transliteration, because it isn't really a 'C.' Equally confusing is the varying transliterations of 'Υ/υ' (ypsilon) into 'U' or 'Y', and 'Φ' into either 'Ph' or a 'F', though that latter mentioned is a convention that changes with the target language and the choice depends on its own orthography, but the others, seem inconsistent at best. At least I already found about the rough breathing. 😅 I think I'm climbing backwards into the tree, so to speak, learning through transliterating... had to find out a few terms used in certain contexts, for the purposes of writing a piece of fiction, and ended up reading short sequences of Herodotos in Ancient Greek to find those terms because all the texts I coukd find only referred to those terms in their Englush equivalents - and first, I needed to learn the alphabet at last. Maybe reading a basic textbook at some point would be smart, but getting one around here turned out to be less simple. (And I can't order overseas due to the insane cost of taxes and duties when importing anything over the value of a burger meal... they double or triple the price.) Oh, the things you do for the sake of a little authenticity and flavor, even if it wouldn't be exactly correct to leave source language words into dialogue that otherwise happens in the main language of the work. I've chosen to use original words for the concepts that don't entirely translate into modern ones, such as the hetaîrai. It's a piece of fiction, and stretching the convention a bit is allowable. In a scientific text, terms appear in their original language, sometimes even their original script with, or without a transliteration, all the time...
Wait-a, so you're telling me that Italians already started inserting-a random-a vowels into words thousands of years ago, just-a because-a they couldn't be bothered to pronounce-a consonant-a clusters? Nothing has changed. Mehercule!
Italians are the Japanese of Europe.
I'm starting to relate to them. I'm worried.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! IT'S-E ME MARIO!!!
Can you do more vids on Ancient Greek grammar? It’s hard to find information on verb conjugation. 🙁
Meher! You mentioned Paris, but didn't mention that Lisbon may be named after Ulisses? I'm disappointed...
I'm joking. Great video! As always. Thanks!
While I know the parable of the talents well, I would love to watch a video you make on it!
Hercules or Heracles? Honey you mean HUNKules!
Hahaha nice reference to the Disney movie!
Has anyone contacted you to work as a consultant on the reboot of StarGate. You are practically Daniel Jackson come to life as it is.
When I was reading Percy Jackson, I interpreted Hecate as h-KAtie :D
wait it's not?
Luke forgot to mention that the Latin name for Paris (the city) comes from Proto-Celtic or Gaulish and meant something like People of the Cauldron (The Welsh word for Cauldron is Pair)
Yes! Cool, isn’t it?
Hey Luke maybe this is too much to ask for but can you do an in-depth video about the Proto-Greek language?
I can't wait for you to break down what the heck Ed Orgeron is saying.
Do you know something about the sheperd Caranus?
Grātiās agimus plūrimās quod nōs in corde tuō servāstī! Tibi bene volumus et, quandōque velis, grātus eris iterum vīsitāns!
Pervelim revenīre apud vōs!
18:10 do you use "mete out" regularly? I (native English speaker) recognized it as a cognate to German „messen“ and of course its many other Indo-European cousins from *med- but have never heard that in English.
Yes, I use it often enough; it's not a very common word, but we use it in a number of expressions, both productive and fixed. To "mete out justice" is a common collocation.
I just discovered the videos with Irene.
Please do more, and you try to speak Italian. Do it! :)
I would love to hear your Italian.
(I am Romanian, also "with Latin roots", we study one year of Latin in school). :)
If you make a video on the talent parable compare and contrast it to the one in Arabian Nights
`Ηράκλης/`Ηράκλεες στην κλητική πτώση.
The vocative in Ancient Greek is Ἡράκλεις en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ἡρακλῆς
Is the woman Atalanta from where we get the name of the Italian city in Bergamo and/or the city of Atlanta in Georgia?
Amazing work as always Luke... Now, an interesting interpretation of the word λαός (people) that I have heard, but not really been able to verify, is that it is derived from the word λας which means stone. This refers to the Greek version of the cataclysmic myth, where the surviving couple were Deucalion (Δευκαλίων) and Pyrrha (Πύρρα). After the flood, Zeus instructed them to walk and throw stones behind their back. Any stone thrown by Deucalion was turned into a man and by Pyrrha into a woman... Therefore the "people" that emerged from this were walled "stones" (?) i.e. λαός. It would be great if someone like you could fact-check this...
I looked the terms up in Beekes’ etymological dictionary of Ancient Greek and it seems there’s no connection. Now, neither the etymology of λᾶας nor the one of λαός is certain, but since λαός presupposes a stem with digamma λαϝός and Cypric la-o-se for λᾶας shows that it didn’t have a digamma, they are probably not related (though Beekes assumes that they are both of Pre-Greek origin).
"nuclear" or "nucular"?
Would you be able to translate song lyrics into Latin in a way that is in accordance with the original melodies?
I have translated and performed many songs, see my other channel: ruclips.net/p/PLU1WuLg45SiyoKYbbV5HS1pRFPimS_A6T&si=Fh2pL6f_6vreO0Rx
❤
Maybe I am wrong but the way the attic pronunciation sounds in the Ajax name example , is like the first alpha gets the tone of voice but the tone symbol is on iota ί , but shouldn’t it above α like this Ά ?
Γεια, Γιάννη! In diphthongs in Ancient Greek orthography (note that this is very different from the rules-with-phonology of Modern Greek) the accent was placed over *both* vowels. Our modern typefaces don’t do this, so it’s hard to represent in this medium. Just imagine the acute accent starting over the α and continuing over the ι. This continues to be the predominant convention even into the Mediaeval period, as you can see from this manuscript:
sarahjbiggs.typepad.com/.a/6a013488b5399e970c01bb07958268970d-pi
Note how in the first line τοῦ αὐτοῦ places the diacritics over *both* vowels in the digraphs. Also here:
sarahjbiggs.typepad.com/.a/6a013488b5399e970c01b8d07a4a81970c-pi
The word αὐτῆς is written with the smooth breathing over the α: ἀυτῆς.
Eventually, when typefaces came to be standardized after the Middle Ages, the convention was standardized where diacritics over go over the second element in a digraph.
Oh dear... the atrocity that is the anglicized pronunciation of Classical languages and those mangled names of historical persons... The first time I ran into it, I was horrified. Then again, the ruler names tend to be historically translated into local languages, in quite a few cultures, and can become unrecognizable for the rest of the world. (And this doesn't even take into account the transliteration of foreign names into syllabic writing systems like Chinese, or into abjads like Arabic.)
The Finnish convention used to be to change every Louis and Ludovicus into the Germanic "Ludwig", except that spelled with an ordinary V. In the context of 18th-century France, that makes absolutely no sense, but the historical convention remains in these old names. Even the recent regnal names were changed: Elizabeth (II) turns into Elisabet, and Carl XVI Gustaf becomes Kaarle XVI Kustaa, because all of his predecessors were called Kaarle or Kustaa, as well. The same convention of turning everyone into Kaarle extended to Charles and Carolus, and the numerous Slavic renditions of Károl. I don't want to get started with the names of the Russian Tsars...
Fortunately, the current recommendation is that the names of the modern rulers are retained as they were, so we finally may write "Charles III" instead of "Kaarle III" of the United Kingdom. Which still tends to get called Englanti, instead of the proper name, even in semi-official sources.
1:42 jumpscare warning
Προφέρω όπως έχω προγραμματιστεί να προφερω. .
As a Greek fellow, I find it quite embarrassing, when Greeks get upset because of how others say the names in their language. As if we don't butcher English, German, or French names and words using our modern Greek pronunciation. My favourite example is the "Nike" argument, where you will find people from the US, the UK and Greece being right and wrong at the same time 🤣
Haha good point! Είναι αλήθεια.
“I didn’t say her name (Atalanta) in English because I have actually only heard it in Latin and Greek.”
Not a soccer fan, are you? Your anglicization here is how the Italian club’s name is pronounced in English.
i pronuntio quid i programma pronuntio.
4:05
Most of the times it should be nicer to adopted the Hellenic form of the name because in the Hellenic form it has a meaning!
When other languages adopted a name and they are changed it to fit their language rules it loses its meaning.
Hercules means nothing…
While Heracles as you explained derives from the terms Ήρα + κλέως
Hera and glory, ironically meaning glory to Hera while Hera hated him and tried to kill him several times…😒
8:00
Μένος + λαός
Wrath of the people! Amazing name, my uncle has this name!
10:17
Eleni derives from Helios, bright as the Sun. The same root with our nation’s name: Hellas and not Greece…
Not Graecia, Γραικοί were a small Hellenic tribe.
13:16
Andromache, she who fights with men, the brave woman!
I love this name! My nan is named Ανδρομάχη!
15:25
When I hear Ulixes my mind goes to the Ηλύσια Πεδία = Elysian Fields
The “paradise” resting place of the ancient Hellenic religion.
Odysseus probably derives from the verb οδύσσομαι which means not just hated by hunted.
Odysseus was hunted/persecuted by the Gods.
16:31
Aeneas was a Thracian🇬🇷 taking part to the Trojan War. Some sources want him to be Trojan other Thracian.
In all cases he was the son of Aphrodite. After the Trojans war he died in his homeland, Thrace.
Virgil took him and created another story for him because he wanted to built an backstory for Rome!
We have a huge amount of myths claiming that Thracians were sons of Ares, Achaeans sons of Zeus, Thessalian sons of Poseidon… etc
Rome didn’t had that background and Virgil took the opportunity to give a great Historical background for Rome.
The Aeneid is the try of Virgil to make Rome more important!
20:46
The first musician, another Thracian🇬🇷
I really enjoy when I see those barbarians 🇧🇬 from the steppes of Central Asia to claim that they are native aThracians😂😂😂
I had a conversation with a Bulgar the other day, their propaganda says that they are natives here😂😂😂😂 native Thracians and we (🇬🇷) are from Ethiopia who stole their lands!
As you didn’t know Orfeovksi and Evridikova were Bulgars🇧🇬 and not Thracians🇬🇷…🤡
22:07
To be more precise, Hecate was not a Goddess.
In the Hellenic religion there was a distinction between the deities worshipped by the people!
There were three “groups”:
*1. Primordial deities*
Things like Chaos, Herebus, Hemera, Uranos, Gaia… etc
*2. Titans*
Krònos, Rea, Hecate,
*3. The Olympian Gods*
In ancient Hellenic religion people mainly worshiped the Gods, not the titans! After the Titanomachy the Titans were punished! Only some were left free because they helped Zeus and his siblings.
Hecate was older that Zeus, she was a Titanid (female Titan).
She was the deity of magic, sorcery, crossroads, the night, medicine, necromancy… etc
She could also guide the souls of the mortals through the Underworld and that’s why we have some burial prayers referring to her and asking for her guidance.
As I am from Thrace🇬🇷, we Thracians loved some Gods and deities above all others.
Thracians mostly loved and worshiped the “Great Mother” as we called Gaia!
We also worshiped Hecate and from the Olympians: Dionysus, Ares and Artemis.
A few points:
1. The connection of Ὀδυσσεύς with ὀδύσσομαι is clearly folk etymological. Some variants of the name recorded are: Ὀλυσεύς, Ὀλλυσεύς, Ὀλυττεύς, Ὀλισεύς, while Ὀδυσσεύς is surprisingly only attested in epic literature. This shows that it is clearly a Pre-Greek name adopted into Greek: note that the word ὀδύσσομαι does not show any of those variants with λ.
2. It is unhistorical to think of the Greeks as a "nation". In Homer, the Ἕλληνες are a tribe among many others, the term came to mean all Greeks only at a later time. The name itself, too, is probably of Pre-Greek origin and has nothing to do with the sun (the double λ is indicative here). Ancient Greeks had no concept of "nation" in our modern sense: Many of the Greek-speaking cities of Asia minor actually felt more connected to the Persian Empire than to mainland Greeks. So, the same way that Ἕλληνες was originally a tribe that came to mean all Greeks, so did the Graeci/Γραικοί, the first tribe that the Romans came into contact with.
3. Hecate was a goddess. The line between gods and Titans is not sharply drawn in the living religion of the Greeks; Hesiod calls Hecate a θεά in the theogony.
@@taudir2459nonsense! The Greeks had a strong sense of belonging to the same nation. Herodotus, in his introduction, he says he writes the history of the Greeks and the barbarians
Thucydides also writes the history of the Greeks.
The ancient Greeks demarcated themselves clearly from foreigners whom they called barbarians.
The Ionian Greeks hated the Persians who were barbarians and despotic and they rebelled against their rule on several occasions.
@@taudir2459
1. It’s not folk if you examine the rest of the name in the poems of Homer!
Odysseus was a man that offended the Gods and they persecuted him so a simple travel back to his birth place ended up half life being lost…
His name reflects that.
His wife’s name was *Πηνελόπη* / Pinelòpi > Penelope in English.
Do you know what Penelope means?
Πηνή + λέπω
Piní + lèpo
Pini menas the threads in the loom and lepo is a verb meaning weaving.
So, Penelope means she who weaves incredibly. The amazing weaver!
*Τηλέμαχος*
Tilèmaxos > Telemachus
Τηλέ + μάχη
Tile + máxi
Away + battle
Tele as in other words like telephones television, telescopes… means from away.
And màhi < Titanomachy.
Telemachus fought for his father from away, he gave his battle for Ithaca from a distance. Being away from home and trying to find people to help him reclaim Ithaca and drive away all the suitors of Penelope!
2.
The idea of the nation wasn’t the same back then but people belonged to nations and they have the sense of that common origin!
You are very wrong about that!
Hellenes were one nation with common origin. They were separated in many “Pòlis” City-States that each acted like a “country” of its own but they were all Hellenes!
They spoke the same language, they had the same religion, they worshiped the same Gods, they had the same customs and ethics… etc
When major threats appears they fought against them united! Against Persia for example…
We had the idea of a nation and in the question what is that the Hellenes believed:
*…το ομόδοξον, το ομόαιμον, το ομότροπον, το ομόγλωσσον…*
Omòdokson: the same religion
omòemon: the same blood/origin
omòtropon: the same customs
omóglosson: the same language
The Hellenic nation consisted of many Hellenic tribes that all of them had the same Hellenic ancestry, spoke the same language (with regional dialects of course), worshiped the same Gods and they acted the same way.
Trey had the same ethic codes and traditions!
We are not “greeks”
Graeci were a small Hellenic tribe.
Calling all of us greeks it’s like calling British people Londoners…
London is part of Britain, not all British people are Londoners!
Not all Germans are Bavarians
Not all Spanish people are Catalan
… etc
The Romans made this mistake, we never used that term for our whole nation!
3.
I’m exhaling that even if we call them all Θεοί/Gods they are not all “Gods”
There’s a difference in their lineage.
The first generation were the primordial deities, the second generation were the Titans and the third and last generation were the Olympians/Gods.
In Hellenic there are two terms: θεός / theós and θεότητα / theótita.
Theos means God
Theotita means divine being/deity
Some times they are used interchangeably in poems and sources like this.
Titans were divine beings so they could be called theótites/divine deities/Gods but they were not Gods. They were a generation older than Gods.
The ancient Hellenic religion revolved around the Gods. As I’ve said the Titans were punished. We never found a temple dedicated to Kronos for example.
Exceptions were Titans like Hecate which was very loved by the people, and primordial deities like Gaia, the Earth herself which was loved equally to Gods by tribes like the Thracians!
Let's call him "Heracules"! Both sides will be happy hahah
Haha
Leonidas gets me, is it Leo Nyedas or do you rhyme it with adidas, not to say the Americans pronounce Adidas wrong but that is another story veering off into legend.
The "i" is always short , as in "sit" and "hit".
Team "Iraklis" here. B)
The Disney movie should've been called Heracles as they portrayed him as Greek. Heracles is hardly known in comparison to Hercules.
Why? Didn’t I satisfy this idea in the video?
@@polyMATHY_Luke Yes. I was meaning that Disney doesn't care.
Do modern Greeks really pronounce the ending of epsilon-upsilon-sigma in ancient Greek names with the modern e-f-s pronunciation. To me, that seems quite rude! I.e. someone’s name is their name and you should pronounce it as, as best you can, as they do, or did.
Maybe this is also partly influenced by my being English and therefore used to spelling being no great guide to pronunciation. But I feel if in modern English “eus” was normally pronounced “efs”, we would still keep loads of old pronunciations and just have to learn that in some words it is pronounced this way, and in others that (see eg “ough” in the surnames Gough and Troughton).
We pronounce this combination as efs, that's right. Actually, in many ancient Greek inscriptions eus is written evs.
Compare with Latin v that was pronounced w in classical Latin and v in later Latin.