Notes · Classical GreekUK · A-Levels

Unseen prose translation (Xenophon)

Section A of Component 01 is fifty marks for the translation into English of an unseen passage of Classical Greek prose, and the specification names the source: for examination from 2027 to 2032 the unseen prose passage will be taken from Xenophon. That is the largest single block of marks in the qualification after its twin in Section B, and it is won or lost by method rather than by luck. This topic sets out what Xenophon's Greek is actually like, the order of operations that makes a long period tractable, the constructions that carry most of the marks, and how a Greek sentence becomes an English one that an examiner can credit.

5 sections~39 min reading time3 competenciesLevel Standard 2 · Advanced 3

T·0333 / 10

Exam profile

AO1 · Accurately translate unseen material into EnglishAO1 · Recognise and analyse the accidence and syntax listed in Appendix 5d as it occurs in continuous unadapted proseAO1 · Present relevant information in a clear, concise and logical manner using appropriate terminology in English

Operators:translateidentifyanalyseexplainrenderjustify

basic level

At AS Level the prose unseen stays within the Defined Vocabulary List and the passages are chosen for accessibility, with shorter sentences and fewer layers of subordination. The AS priority is secure endings, secure participles, and the habit of finding the main verb first.

higher level

The A-Level passage is unadapted Xenophon, so expect long periods held together by participles, genitive absolutes stacked two deep, extended reported speech in which several subordinate verbs stand in the optative, technical military and geographical vocabulary that no list will contain, and the occasional Ionic or poetic colouring that Xenophon allows himself. Expect also that the examiner has chosen the passage because something in it is worth testing.

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Contents · 5 sections

Unseen prose translation (Xenophon)

Xenophon and the register of Attic narrative prose#

StandardOCR H444 Component 01 — for examination from 2027 to 2032 the unseen prose passage will be taken from XenophonOCR H444 Component 01 — translate a passage of unseen narrative prose into English

Xenophon, an Athenian who lived from about 430 to about 354 BC, is the author the specification names for the prose unseen, and knowing what kind of writer he is changes how a passage reads. He was a companion of Socrates in his youth, joined the Greek mercenary force that marched into Persia with Cyrus the Younger in 401 BC, and after the Persian prince's death at Cunaxa helped lead the survivors back to the Black Sea — the events he tells in the Anabasis. Exiled from Athens, he settled for many years at Scillus near Olympia. His surviving works include the Anabasis, the Hellenica, which continues Thucydides' unfinished history down to 362 BC, the Cyropaedia, a semi-fictional education of the elder Cyrus, and the Socratic works Memorabilia, Oeconomicus, Symposium and Apology, alongside technical treatises on horsemanship, cavalry command and the revenues of Athens.

His Greek is the plainest sustained Attic prose that survives, and that is precisely why an examiner chooses it. Where Thucydides compresses and Demosthenes builds towering periods, Xenophon writes mostly in clauses of manageable length, joined by ordinary connectives, in a vocabulary that is concrete and largely non-technical. He rarely uses a word for effect. He is fond of the participle, of the genitive absolute, and of the imperfect for a continuing state of affairs against an aorist for the event that interrupts it. There is some Ionic and poetic colouring in his diction, and a small number of words that later grammarians thought un-Attic, but nothing that would stop a competent reader.

Narrative prose has a characteristic shape and recognising it saves time. A Xenophontic sentence typically opens with a connective particle in second position, then sets the scene with a genitive absolute or a temporal clause, then gives the subject and its participial baggage, and only then arrives at the main verb, which is very often near the end. The Anabasis in particular uses a recurring stage-formula for each leg of the march — from there he marches so many stages, so many parasangs — and once the pattern is recognised, whole sentences of it can be read at speed. His opening sentence is a fair specimen of the manner: Δαρείου καὶ Παρυσάτιδος γίγνονται παῖδες δύο, πρεσβύτερος μὲν Ἀρταξέρξης, νεώτερος δὲ Κῦρος — two genitives of the parents, a present tense used of past events, a numeral, and a balanced μέν and δέ pair naming the sons in order of age.

Four features of the register recur often enough to be worth expecting. The historic present, as in that opening sentence, tells a past event in the present tense for vividness, and it must be translated as an English past tense. The imperfect is used far more than English would use a past continuous: ἐπορεύοντο means they were marching or simply they marched, and ἐβούλετο often means he wanted rather than he was wanting. Direct speech is introduced with ἔλεγε ὧδε or εἶπε τοιάδε and closed without any punctuation you would recognise, so the transition must be spotted from the grammar. And the connective spine — μέν, δέ, γάρ, οὖν, καὶ γάρ, ἀλλὰ γάρ, ἐπεὶ δέ, ἐνταῦθα δή — carries the logic of the paragraph, so reading it first tells you the shape of what is coming.

One more thing about the register is worth saying plainly. Because Xenophon writes about armies on the march, about supplies, terrain, rivers, negotiations, assemblies and battles, his vocabulary clusters. A passage about a river crossing will use the same twenty words that every passage about a river crossing uses; a passage about a council of war will use the same twenty words as every other. This is why wide reading in one author pays disproportionately at A-Level: it is not that you learn the passage in advance, but that you learn the lexical neighbourhood in which the passage lives.

Worked example

The opening of the Anabasis, worked clause by clause

Translate Xenophon, Anabasis 1.1.1, first sentence: Δαρείου καὶ Παρυσάτιδος γίγνονται παῖδες δύο, πρεσβύτερος μὲν Ἀρταξέρξης, νεώτερος δὲ Κῦρος. Identify every grammatical feature that makes this a specimen of the register, and produce a version an examiner would credit in full.

Find the verb
γίγνονται is third person plural, present indicative middle of γίγνομαι, a deponent, so its middle form has active meaning: they are born, they come into being. It is plural, so the subject will be plural, and it is present although the events are long past — this is the historic present, used from the very first word of the work to bring the narrative into the reader's eye.
Δαρείου καὶ Παρυσάτιδος
Two proper names in the genitive singular, joined by καί. Δαρεῖος is second declension, Παρύσατις third. With a verb of being born the genitive expresses the parents: born of Darius and Parysatis. This is a genitive of origin, one of the standard patterns of case usage in Appendix 5d, and no preposition is used. Note that proper names decline in Greek even when a paper glosses them in the nominative.
παῖδες δύο
παῖδες is the nominative plural of παῖς, παιδός, third declension, and it is the subject. δύο is a cardinal numeral; cardinals above four are indeclinable, and δύο itself has only a vestigial declension, so it simply stands beside its noun. Two children — and Greek word order puts the numeral after the noun, which English will reverse.
The μέν and δέ pair
πρεσβύτερος μέν and νεώτερος δέ are two comparative adjectives, nominative singular masculine, in apposition to παῖδες, each with a proper name attached. The comparatives are being used of two people, where English would more naturally use a superlative: πρεσβύτερος is the elder and νεώτερος the younger. The μέν and δέ do not need separate English words here; a comma and an and will carry the balance.
Decide the English tense
The historic present must become an English past. Two children are born of Darius and Parysatis is intelligible but reads as a stage direction; two children were born to Darius and Parysatis is the natural English, and to rather than of is the idiomatic preposition after born in English. The examiner is marking whether the Greek has been understood, so a natural English idiom that carries the same sense is what is wanted.
The sense units
A fifty-mark translation is marked in sense units, and this sentence contains four: the parents in the genitive, the verb with its number and its historic-present force, the subject with its numeral, and the two appositional phrases with their comparatives. A version that renders three of the four accurately keeps most of the marks even if the fourth is imperfect, which is the practical argument for never leaving a gap.

Result: Two sons were born to Darius and Parysatis: the elder Artaxerxes, and the younger Cyrus. Features of the register: a genitive of origin with no preposition; the historic present γίγνονται translated as an English past; an indeclinable cardinal following its noun; a balanced μέν and δέ pair rendered by English punctuation rather than by words; comparative adjectives used of two persons where English prefers the elder and the younger.

Typical mistakes

Translating an imperfect mechanically as was doing when the sense is simply a past tense, producing stilted English throughout the passage.
Beginning to write the English before the main verb has been found, then discovering that the subject was somewhere else entirely.
Treating a stage-formula of distances as difficult because the numerals are unfamiliar, rather than recognising the formula and moving on.

Active revision

Take a chapter of the Anabasis in the original. Before translating anything, mark every connective particle, every main verb and every genitive absolute. Then write a one-line summary of each sentence's structure — for example, genitive absolute, subject with two participles, main verb, result clause — and only then translate. Compare the time this takes with translating the same chapter left to right, and record which method produced fewer corrections.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR A Level in Classical Greek (H444) specification, section 2c and Appendix 5d (Cambridge OCR) · OCR A Level Classical Greek — specification at a glance (Cambridge OCR)

Reading a Greek period: the order of operations#

AdvancedOCR H444 Component 01 — accurately translate unseen material into EnglishOCR H444 Appendix 5d Syntax — uses of the participle (including genitive absolute); subordinate clauses of every named type

The order of operations on a Greek period

Fig. 1Each step narrows what the next one has to consider, which is why the order matters more than the speed. Steps one and two fix the frame; step three converts one long sentence into several short ones; step four is where a Xenophontic period actually lives; and only at step five does any word acquire a meaning that depends on another word.

The single most valuable habit in an unseen is to stop translating in the order the Greek is printed. A Greek period is not a sequence of English clauses in disguise; it is a frame with slots, and the frame is set by one main verb. Read to the end of the sentence first, without writing anything. Then find the main verb, which is the finite verb not governed by a conjunction or a relative and not part of a genitive absolute. Everything else in the sentence hangs from it. Candidates who write as they read produce a first half that is often accurate and a second half that contradicts it, because the main verb, when it finally arrived, was not what they had assumed.

With the main verb identified, find its subject, which may be a nominative noun anywhere in the sentence, or a nominative participle phrase, or nothing at all if the verb's own ending carries it. Then mark the joins: every conjunction, every relative pronoun, every ὥστε, ἐπεί, ὅτι, ἵνα, ὡς, μή. Each of these opens a subordinate clause, and drawing a line at each of them converts one long sentence into four or five short ones that can be handled individually. This is not an artistic operation; it is bracketing, and it can be done with a pencil on the question paper in under a minute.

Next unpack the participles, because in Xenophon they carry more of the sentence than any other feature. For each participle ask three questions in order: what case is it, what does it agree with, and what job is it doing. A participle inside an article-noun bracket is attributive and becomes an English relative clause. A participle in the genitive with a genitive noun that belongs to nothing else is a genitive absolute and becomes an English subordinate clause with its own subject. A participle agreeing with the subject or object of a governing verb of knowing, perceiving, showing, beginning or ceasing is supplementary and becomes an English that-clause or gerund. Everything else is circumstantial, and for a circumstantial participle you must choose: when, because, although, if, or by doing. Choosing is not optional — the mark is for making the relationship explicit.

Only now resolve the cases, and resolve them against the verbs that govern them rather than in isolation. A genitive next to a comparative is the thing compared. A genitive after ἀκούω, μέμνημαι, ἐπιθυμέω, ἄρχω or καταφρονέω is that verb's object. A dative after πείθομαι, ἕπομαι, βοηθέω, χράομαι or δοκεῖ is that verb's object. A dative beside a perfect passive is the agent. An accusative beside a passive verb is an accusative of respect. A bare accusative of duration is time how long. The rule is always the same: identify the governing word first, then let it tell you what the case means.

Finally, write English clauses, one at a time, in the order English needs, and read the whole back for sense. If a sentence you have produced is not English, it is wrong, however carefully each word was translated — the examiner is testing whether you understood the Greek, and incomprehensible English is evidence that you did not. Two checks catch most residual errors: does every English verb have a subject that the Greek actually supplied, and does the resulting sentence follow logically from the one before it. Narrative is continuous, and a translation that suddenly stops making narrative sense has an error in it a sentence or two earlier.

Worked example

Taking a long period apart in six moves

Constructed teaching Greek in the manner of fourth-century narrative, not a quotation: ἐπεὶ δὲ οἱ στρατιῶται, τῶν πολεμίων ἤδη προσιόντων, τὰ ὅπλα λαβόντες εἰς τάξιν κατέστησαν, ὁ στρατηγός, βουλόμενος δηλῶσαι ὅτι οὐ φοβοῖτο, πρὸ τῆς τάξεως προελθὼν εἶπεν ὅτι, ἐὰν μείνωσιν, ῥᾳδίως νικήσουσιν. Apply the six steps in order and produce the English.

1 Find the main verb
Scan for a finite verb not governed by a conjunction. κατέστησαν is governed by ἐπεί, so it belongs to a subordinate clause; νικήσουσιν is governed by ἐάν inside a report; μείνωσιν likewise. The only finite verb standing free is εἶπεν, third person singular aorist indicative active of λέγω, he said. That is the spine of the sentence, and everything else attaches to it.
2 Find its subject
ὁ στρατηγός is the only nominative that is not inside the ἐπεί clause: the general. Notice that οἱ στρατιῶται is also nominative, but it stands inside the ἐπεί clause and is the subject of κατέστησαν, not of εἶπεν. This is exactly the trap the second step exists to avoid.
3 Mark the clause joins
There are four: ἐπεὶ δέ opens a temporal clause; the first ὅτι opens an indirect statement dependent on δηλῶσαι; the second ὅτι opens the indirect statement dependent on εἶπεν; and ἐάν opens a conditional protasis inside that second report. Bracketing them turns one sentence into five short ones. Note that the second ὅτι clause contains its own subordinate clause, which is precisely the extended reported speech the specification names.
4 Unpack the participles
τῶν πολεμίων προσιόντων is two genitives agreeing with each other and attaching to nothing else: a genitive absolute, present in aspect, so ongoing — while the enemy were already approaching. λαβόντες is an aorist participle, nominative plural masculine, agreeing with οἱ στρατιῶται: circumstantial and temporal, having taken up their weapons. βουλόμενος is a present participle agreeing with ὁ στρατηγός: circumstantial and causal, because he wanted. προελθών is an aorist participle also agreeing with ὁ στρατηγός: circumstantial and temporal, having come forward. Four participles, four different jobs.
5 Resolve the cases
τὰ ὅπλα is accusative plural neuter, the object of λαβόντες. εἰς τάξιν is εἰς with the accusative, motion towards, and here idiomatic: into formation. πρὸ τῆς τάξεως is πρό with the genitive, its only case, in front of the line. δηλῶσαι is the aorist infinitive complementing βουλόμενος. And φοβοῖτο is a present optative — the mood of a subordinate verb inside a report after a past main verb, historic sequence, not a wish.
6 Write the English clauses
Take the temporal clause first with its genitive absolute nested inside it, then the main clause with its two circumstantial participles, then the report with its condition. The second ὅτι clause contains a future-more-vivid condition, ἐάν with the aorist subjunctive μείνωσιν and the future indicative νικήσουσιν, which after a past main verb English renders with would rather than will: he said that if they stood their ground they would easily win.

Result: When the soldiers, with the enemy already approaching, had taken up their weapons and formed up in line, the general, wanting to show that he was not afraid, came out in front of the line and said that if they stood their ground they would easily win. Frame: main verb εἶπεν, subject ὁ στρατηγός; one temporal clause containing a genitive absolute and an aorist circumstantial participle; two circumstantial participles on the subject; one indirect statement containing a further indirect statement with a future-more-vivid condition inside it.

Typical mistakes

Writing the English translation as you read the Greek, and discovering at the main verb that the whole frame was wrong.
Taking the first nominative in the sentence as the subject of the main verb when it is in fact the subject of a participle phrase.
Resolving a case before identifying the word that governs it, so that a genitive of comparison becomes a possessive and a dative of agent becomes an indirect object.

Active revision

Take five long sentences from any narrative prose author and, without translating them, annotate each with the six steps: circle the main verb, underline its subject, bracket every subordinate clause, label every participle with its type, mark every governed case with the word that governs it, and only then write the English. Time yourself on the annotation alone; it should fall below ninety seconds per sentence with practice.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR A Level in Classical Greek (H444) specification, section 2c and Appendix 5d (Cambridge OCR) · GCE AS and A level subject content for ancient languages (Department for Education)

The structures that carry the marks: participles, absolutes and reported speech#

AdvancedOCR H444 Appendix 5d Syntax — uses of the participle (including genitive absolute); indirect statement (including extended reported speech); subordinate clauses within indirect speechOCR H444 Component 01 — demonstrate a detailed understanding of the linguistic structures of material written by ancient authors

Count the participles in any page of Xenophon and you will find more of them than of finite verbs. This is not a stylistic quirk but the basic architecture of Greek narrative: what English does with a string of main clauses joined by and, Greek does by subordinating everything except one event to participles that hang off it. A sentence that in English would run he took up his weapons, went out in front of the line, and spoke is in Greek one main verb with two participles attached. The consequence for translation is that participles are where most of the marks sit, and the mark is not for recognising the form but for choosing the relationship it expresses.

The genitive absolute deserves separate practice because it is both common and easy to miss. It consists of a noun or pronoun and a participle, both in the genitive, whose subject is not otherwise a constituent of the sentence: τούτων γενομένων, when these things had happened; τοῦ στρατηγοῦ κελεύοντος, at the general's order; τῶν πολεμίων προσιόντων, as the enemy approached. The test is negative: if a genitive noun and a genitive participle agree with each other and there is no other word in the sentence for them to depend on, you have an absolute. Xenophon will sometimes stack two, or nest one inside a temporal clause, and both patterns should be expected rather than discovered.

Indirect statement in Xenophon uses all three constructions and switches between them freely, so all three must be automatic. After λέγω, ἀγγέλλω and similar verbs of saying, ὅτι or ὡς with a finite verb; in historic sequence that verb frequently shifts into the optative, and the shift is a signal of reportedness with no equivalent in English, so the English simply uses an ordinary past tense. After νομίζω, ἡγέομαι, οἴομαι, φημί and other verbs of thinking and asserting, the accusative and infinitive, in which the tense of the infinitive represents the tense of the speaker's original words. After οἶδα, ὁράω, ἀκούω, αἰσθάνομαι, δηλόω, φαίνομαι and other verbs of knowing, perceiving and showing, the participle. Three constructions, and which one appears is decided by the governing verb, not by the writer's mood.

The A-Level extension over AS is extended reported speech and subordinate clauses within indirect speech, both named in Appendix 5d. In a long report — a speech at a council of war, a message from a satrap — the ὅτι clause may run for several sentences, and every subordinate verb inside it may also stand in the optative. The practical consequence is that a stretch of four or five optatives in a row is not a stretch of wishes and potentials but a paragraph of reported narrative, and it should be translated as ordinary past-tense English throughout. Losing that recognition turns a coherent report into a series of hypotheticals, which is a large and very visible error.

Two smaller structures round out the set. Result clauses with ὥστε distinguish the actual from the natural: ὥστε with the indicative reports a result that in fact occurred, ὥστε with the infinitive states a consequence that follows naturally, whether or not it materialised, and English marks the difference with so that they fled against so as to flee. And the articular infinitive, an infinitive turned into a declinable noun by the article, is common in Xenophon's more reflective passages: τὸ ἀποθνῄσκειν, dying; διὰ τὸ φοβεῖσθαι, because of being afraid; πρὸς τῷ μανθάνειν, in addition to learning. Recognise the article plus infinitive as a single noun and the clause resolves at once.

Worked example

Three indirect statements, one genitive absolute and a result clause

Constructed teaching Greek, not a quotation: τῶν ἀγγέλων ἀφικομένων, ὁ σατράπης ἔλεγεν ὅτι οἱ Ἕλληνες, ἐπεὶ τὸν ποταμὸν διαβαῖεν, οὐκέτι σῖτον ἔχοιεν· ἐνόμιζε δὲ αὐτοὺς ταχέως ἀπιέναι· ᾔδει γὰρ αὐτοὺς ἀποροῦντας, ὥστε οὐδεὶς ἐβοήθησεν. Identify the construction of each report and translate.

The genitive absolute
τῶν ἀγγέλων ἀφικομένων: a genitive noun and a genitive aorist participle agreeing with each other, and no other word in the sentence for them to depend on. Absolute, aorist in aspect, so completed before the main verb: when the messengers had arrived. ἀφικομένων is from ἀφικνέομαι, itself a compound of ἀπό and ἱκνέομαι with the expected aspiration.
The first report: ὅτι with the optative
ἔλεγεν is imperfect, a past tense, so historic sequence applies. ὅτι introduces indirect statement with a finite construction, and its verb ἔχοιεν is a present optative — reportedness, not potentiality. Inside that report sits a further subordinate clause, ἐπεὶ τὸν ποταμὸν διαβαῖεν, whose verb is also an optative for the same reason: this is a subordinate clause within indirect speech, exactly as Appendix 5d names it. In the satrap's own words the two verbs would have been ἐπεὶ διέβησαν and οὐκέτι ἔχουσιν.
The second report: accusative and infinitive
ἐνόμιζε is a verb of thinking, and verbs of thinking take the accusative and the infinitive: αὐτοὺς ἀπιέναι. ἀπιέναι is the present infinitive of ἄπειμι, the compound of εἶμι, and the present infinitive represents a present tense in the original thought. So: he thought that they were going away quickly. The accusative αὐτούς is the subject of the infinitive, not the object of ἐνόμιζε, and translating it as he thought them is the standard error.
The third report: the participle
ᾔδει is the pluperfect of οἶδα with imperfect force, he knew. Verbs of knowing take a participle, and here it is ἀποροῦντας, present participle accusative plural masculine agreeing with αὐτούς: he knew that they were in difficulties. Three reports in three sentences, and the construction of each was fixed by its governing verb — a verb of saying, a verb of thinking, a verb of knowing.
The result clause
ὥστε οὐδεὶς ἐβοήθησεν has an indicative, ἐβοήθησεν, third singular aorist of βοηθέω. ὥστε with the indicative reports a result that actually occurred, so the English is so that nobody came to help — a statement of fact. Had the Greek read ὥστε μηδένα βοηθῆσαι, with the infinitive and its negative μή, the sense would have been so as for nobody to help, a natural consequence rather than a recorded event.
Assemble
Take the absolute as an English temporal clause, then each report in the construction English prefers, which is a that-clause in all three cases even though the Greek used three different constructions, then the result clause as a statement of fact. Note how much of the difficulty was distributed rather than concentrated: no single word here is rare, and every mark depends on construction.

Result: When the messengers had arrived, the satrap said that the Greeks, once they had crossed the river, no longer had any food; and he thought that they were withdrawing quickly, for he knew that they were in difficulties, so that nobody came to help. Constructions: genitive absolute; ὅτι with optatives in historic sequence, including a subordinate clause within the report; accusative and infinitive after a verb of thinking; participle after a verb of knowing; ὥστε with the indicative for an actual result.

Typical mistakes

Missing a genitive absolute because the genitives were assumed to depend on a noun elsewhere in the sentence.
Translating an optative in extended reported speech as would or might, so that a plain narrative becomes speculative.
Turning every supplementary participle into a circumstantial one, so that οἶδα αὐτὸν ἐλθόντα becomes I know him, having come.

Active revision

Take a passage of narrative prose containing at least one speech in reported form. List every participle with its type and, for circumstantial participles, the relationship you have chosen and the evidence for it. Then list every verb inside the report and state whether its mood is caused by the construction itself or by historic sequence. Finally, rewrite the reported speech as direct speech in Greek, restoring the indicative moods, and check that your English translation of the report still says the same thing.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR A Level in Classical Greek (H444) specification, section 2c and Appendix 5d (Cambridge OCR) · OCR A Level in Classical Greek (H444) specification (Cambridge OCR)

The lexical neighbourhood: march, supply, council and battle#

StandardOCR H444 Component 01 — there is no Defined Vocabulary List; learners should build on and develop their range of vocabulary through wider reading of textsOCR H444 Component 01 — for examination from 2027 to 2032 the unseen prose passage will be taken from Xenophon

Because the specification names one author for a six-year window, the vocabulary that an unseen prose passage is likely to draw on is not a mystery. Xenophon writes about armies moving through territory, and the recurring subject matter generates recurring words. This is the single most efficient piece of targeted preparation available in the whole qualification: not learning a list at random, but reading enough of one author that the neighbourhood becomes familiar. The words below are grouped by the situation that produces them, which is how they are met and how they should be revised.

Marching and terrain. πορεύομαι and its compounds are the ordinary verbs of movement, with ἐλαύνω for a mounted or driven advance, ἀναβαίνω for going up country and καταβαίνω for coming back down, ἀφικνέομαι for arriving and ἀπέρχομαι for withdrawing. A stage of a march is a σταθμός and a Persian measure of distance a παρασάγγης; the road is ἡ ὁδός, the pass ἡ εἰσβολή or τὰ στενά, the plain τὸ πεδίον, the hill ὁ λόφος, the mountain τὸ ὄρος, the river ὁ ποταμός, and crossing it is διαβαίνω, a compound whose noun ἡ διάβασις names the crossing itself. The camp is τὸ στρατόπεδον, pitching it στρατοπεδεύομαι, breaking it up ἀναζεύγνυμι.

Supply and hardship. σῖτος is grain or food in general and τὰ ἐπιτήδεια the necessities or supplies; ἡ ἀγορά is both the market and the provisions bought in it; ἀπορέω is to be at a loss or short of something and ἡ ἀπορία that state; λιμός is famine, δίψα thirst, χιών snow. These words cluster with each other and with verbs of enduring — ἀνέχομαι, καρτερέω, ὑπομένω — because the situations they describe are the ones Xenophon most often narrates.

Council and command. ὁ στρατηγός is the general, ὁ λοχαγός the company commander, ὁ ἡγεμών the guide or leader, ὁ ἄγγελος the messenger, ὁ κῆρυξ the herald. To deliberate is βουλεύομαι, to advise συμβουλεύω with a dative, to persuade πείθω with an accusative, to obey πείθομαι with a dative, to order κελεύω with an accusative and infinitive, to announce ἀγγέλλω. An assembly is ἡ ἐκκλησία or, in an army, ὁ σύλλογος; a plan is τὸ βούλευμα, a decision τὸ δόγμα, a treaty αἱ σπονδαί, an oath ὁ ὅρκος, a truce ἡ ἐκεχειρία.

Fighting. ἡ μάχη is the battle and μάχομαι, with a dative of the enemy, the verb; προσβάλλω with a dative is to attack, ἐπιτίθεμαι with a dative to fall upon, τρέπω to rout and τρέπομαι to turn in flight, φεύγω to flee, διώκω to pursue, νικάω to win, ἡττάομαι to be beaten. The line is ἡ τάξις, the wing τὸ κέρας, the hoplite ὁ ὁπλίτης, the peltast ὁ πελταστής, the horseman ὁ ἱππεύς, the archer ὁ τοξότης; weapons are τὰ ὅπλα, the shield ἡ ἀσπίς, the spear τὸ δόρυ, the sword τὸ ξίφος, the wall τὸ τεῖχος, the trophy τὸ τροπαῖον. Learning these in their groups, with the case each verb governs attached, converts a large part of a typical passage into reading rather than decoding.

Worked example

A march, a shortage and a council, translated with the neighbourhood doing the work

Constructed teaching Greek in the manner of fourth-century narrative, not a quotation: ἐντεῦθεν ἐξελαύνουσι διὰ τοῦ πεδίου, καὶ ἀφικόμενοι πρὸς ποταμὸν μέγαν οὐκ ἐδύναντο διαβῆναι. τῶν δὲ ἐπιτηδείων ἀπορούμενοι, οἱ στρατηγοὶ σύλλογον ἐποίησαν, καὶ ὁ πρεσβύτατος συνεβούλευε τοῖς στρατιώταις μὴ τοῖς πολεμίοις προσβάλλειν, ἀλλὰ σπονδὰς ποιεῖσθαι.

The march formula
ἐντεῦθεν ἐξελαύνουσι is the standard opening of a leg of a march: from there they march out. ἐξελαύνω is ἐκ plus ἐλαύνω, and the present is historic, to be rendered as a past. διὰ τοῦ πεδίου is διά with the genitive, spatial: through the plain. Recognising the formula means the first four words cost no time at all.
Arrival and obstacle
ἀφικόμενοι is the aorist participle of ἀφικνέομαι, nominative plural masculine, circumstantial and temporal: when they had arrived. πρὸς ποταμὸν μέγαν is πρός with the accusative, motion towards: at a large river. ἐδύναντο is imperfect of δύναμαι and takes a complementary infinitive, διαβῆναι, the aorist infinitive of διαβαίνω: they could not cross. Three words from the neighbourhood in one clause, each with its expected construction.
The shortage
τῶν ἐπιτηδείων is a substantivised neuter plural in the genitive: of supplies. ἀπορούμενοι is the present middle participle of ἀπορέω, which governs a genitive of the thing lacking. So the phrase is being short of supplies, circumstantial and causal — the shortage is why the council happens, and the English should say because or since.
The council
σύλλογον ἐποίησαν, they made an assembly, is the idiom for holding a meeting. ὁ πρεσβύτατος is the superlative of πρέσβυς used substantivally, the oldest man. συνεβούλευε is imperfect of συμβουλεύω, which takes a dative of the person advised: τοῖς στρατιώταις. The imperfect suggests he kept urging rather than said once.
The advice and its negative
συμβουλεύω takes an infinitive for the content of the advice, and the negative of an infinitive is μή, not οὐ — which is itself a signal that what follows is advice rather than a statement of fact. προσβάλλειν takes the dative τοῖς πολεμίοις, attack the enemy. The contrast is carried by ἀλλά and a second infinitive, σπονδὰς ποιεῖσθαι — the middle, because to make a treaty in one's own interest is what the middle voice expresses; the active ποιεῖν would be wrong here.
Assemble
Every difficulty in this passage was a construction attached to a vocabulary item: ἀπορέω with a genitive, δύναμαι with an infinitive, συμβουλεύω with a dative, προσβάλλω with a dative, ποιοῦμαι σπονδάς in the middle. That is what learning the neighbourhood means — not the English glosses alone, but each word with the shape of the phrase it builds.

Result: From there they marched out across the plain, and when they arrived at a large river they could not cross it. Being short of supplies, the generals held an assembly, and the oldest of them kept advising the soldiers not to attack the enemy but to make a treaty. Constructions carried by the vocabulary: ἀπορέω with the genitive; δύναμαι with a complementary infinitive; συμβουλεύω with the dative of the person; προσβάλλω with the dative of the enemy; μή as the negative of an infinitive of advice; the middle ποιεῖσθαι σπονδάς.

Typical mistakes

Learning a verb without the case it governs, so that τοῖς πολεμίοις after προσέβαλε is translated as an indirect object.
Treating τὰ ἐπιτήδεια as an adjective, when as a substantivised neuter plural it means the supplies.
Reading ἀναβαίνω and καταβαίνω only as physical going up and down, and missing the Anabasis sense of marching inland and returning to the sea.

Active revision

Take three chapters of Xenophon, one describing a march, one a council and one a battle. Build three vocabulary pages, one per situation, and for every verb record the case it governs and one phrase from the text in which it does so. Then close the book and write, in Greek, three sentences per page using the words correctly — production, not recognition, is what fixes a case-governing verb.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR A Level in Classical Greek (H444) specification (Cambridge OCR) · OCR A Level Classical Greek — specification at a glance (Cambridge OCR)

Exam technique: turning Greek into English, and how the fifty marks are earned#

AdvancedOCR H444 Component 01 — Section A, translate an unseen passage of Classical Greek prose into English, 50 marksOCR H444 Component 01 — present relevant information in a clear, concise and logical manner using appropriate terminology in English

Greek construction into natural English

Fig. 2Greek subordinates by participle and case; English subordinates by conjunction and preposition. Each row of this table is one instance of that single conversion. The emphasised cell is the commonest of all in narrative prose: a genitive absolute must become an English subordinate clause with an explicit relationship, and the choice between when, since and although is itself part of the translation.

Component 01 is one hour forty-five minutes for two fifty-mark sections, so the working budget is a little under fifty minutes for the prose, leaving a few minutes at each end for reading and checking. Inside that budget the shape that works is roughly one third reading and annotating, one half writing, and one sixth checking. The temptation is to start writing at once, because writing feels like progress; the evidence from candidates' scripts is that the annotated approach finishes earlier and with fewer self-contradictions, because it never has to unpick a sentence that was begun on a false assumption.

Translation is marked in sense units rather than word by word, and understanding that changes what to do when you are stuck. A sense unit is roughly a phrase or a short clause, and it earns its marks if the meaning is conveyed, even where the English is not elegant. The practical consequences are three. Never leave a gap, because a gap is guaranteed to score nothing while a plausible attempt may score in full. Keep the structure right even when a word is wrong, because the surrounding units survive. And do not abandon a sentence half-finished in order to move on; finish it with your best guess and mark it for return.

The English matters, and not only as a courtesy. The specification asks candidates to present relevant information in a clear, concise and logical manner using appropriate terminology in English, and a translation that is not English is evidence that the Greek was not understood. Aim for a version that a reader who knows no Greek could follow without stumbling: finite English verbs where Greek has participles, English relative clauses where Greek has attributive participles, English past tenses where Greek has a historic present or a reported optative. Do not paraphrase away difficulty — if the Greek has a genitive absolute you must show what relationship it expresses — but do not transliterate the Greek word order either.

A small number of renderings recur so often that they should be automatic, and the table below sets them out. The principle behind all of them is the same: Greek subordinates with participles and cases, English subordinates with conjunctions and prepositions, so translation is largely a matter of converting one system into the other. When you have written an English sentence, the test is not does this contain all the words but does an English reader learn from this exactly what a Greek reader learned.

Finally, the check. Reserve the last seven or eight minutes and use them systematically rather than by rereading from the top. Check every verb for tense and voice, because a passive read as active reverses a clause. Check every negative, because οὐ and μή are easy to skate over and a dropped negative inverts the sense. Check that every English sentence has a subject and that it is the subject the Greek supplied. Check the proper names against the glosses. And read the last sentence of your translation against the last sentence of the Greek, because that is the one most often rushed.

Worked example

The same Greek translated twice: what the second version earns that the first does not

Constructed teaching Greek, not a quotation: ταῦτα ἀκούσαντες οἱ στρατιῶται, τοῦ στρατηγοῦ κελεύοντος, τὰ ὅπλα λαβόντες ἐβοήθουν, ὥστε τοὺς πολεμίους φυγεῖν· ὁ δὲ ἄγγελος ἔλεγεν ὅτι ταῦτα καλῶς ἔχοι. Produce first a word-for-word version, then the version an examiner would credit, and account for every difference.

The word-for-word version
These things having heard the soldiers, the general ordering, the weapons having taken were helping, so as the enemy to flee; and the messenger was saying that these things well might have. Every word is present and almost every mark is at risk, because nothing in this English tells a reader what the relationships between the events are.
ταῦτα ἀκούσαντες
An aorist circumstantial participle agreeing with οἱ στρατιῶται. The aorist places the hearing before the helping, so the relationship is temporal and the English should say when they had heard this. Committing to when rather than leaving having heard is the difference between showing that you have identified the relationship and merely reproducing the form.
τοῦ στρατηγοῦ κελεύοντος
A genitive absolute, present in aspect. The relationship here is not temporal but attendant or causal — the order is why they act, and it is going on as they act. Natural English: at the general's command, or since the general was ordering them to. Both show the relationship; having the general ordering does not.
τὰ ὅπλα λαβόντες ἐβοήθουν
A second aorist participle, again temporal, and then the main verb, imperfect: they took up their weapons and began to help. English will normally coordinate the participle with the main verb here rather than subordinating it a second time, because two subordinate clauses in a row before the main verb is bad English even where it is good Greek. The imperfect ἐβοήθουν is inceptive: began to help, or were coming to the rescue.
ὥστε τοὺς πολεμίους φυγεῖν
ὥστε with the accusative and infinitive, not with the indicative, so this is a natural consequence rather than a recorded fact: so that the enemy fled reads it as an event, so as to put the enemy to flight reads it as a consequence. Either is defensible in English, but the version that marks it as consequence shows the construction has been seen.
ὅτι ταῦτα καλῶς ἔχοι
ἔλεγεν is past, so ἔχοι is an optative of reportedness, not a potential. καλῶς ἔχει is the standard idiom in which ἔχω plus an adverb means to be in a certain state: it is well, all is well. So the report is that all was well. The word-for-word these things might well have is a triple error — mood, idiom and sense — and it is exactly the error the last row of the table exists to prevent.

Result: Word-for-word: These things having heard the soldiers, the general ordering, the weapons having taken were helping, so as the enemy to flee; and the messenger was saying that these things well might have. Credited version: When the soldiers had heard this, at the general's command they took up their weapons and came to the rescue, so as to put the enemy to flight; and the messenger said that all was well. The differences are four: explicit relationships for both circumstantial participles and the genitive absolute; a coordinated rather than doubly subordinated main clause; the ὥστε construction marked as consequence; and the reported optative with the ἔχω idiom read correctly.

Typical mistakes

Producing word-for-word English that preserves Greek word order and is therefore unreadable, which the marking treats as evidence of misunderstanding.
Spending disproportionate time perfecting the opening sentences and leaving the final third rushed or incomplete.
Checking by rereading from the beginning, which re-reads what is already right, instead of running targeted checks on verbs, negatives and subjects.

Active revision

Translate a full-length unseen prose passage under timed conditions, allowing yourself fifty minutes and no dictionary. Then, without correcting anything, mark your own version in sense units: award a mark for each phrase whose meaning is conveyed and none for each gap. Count separately how many marks you lost to unknown vocabulary and how many to misread constructions. Almost every candidate discovers that the second number is the larger one, and that is where the next week of practice should go.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR A Level in Classical Greek (H444) specification, section 2c and Appendix 5d (Cambridge OCR) · GCE AS and A level subject content for ancient languages (Department for Education)

References & sources

Sources

Cambridge OCR

Department for Education

GCE AS and A level subject content for ancient languages

Unseen prose translation (Xenophon)

5 sections~39 min reading time3 competenciesLevel Standard 2 · Advanced 3

The structures that carry the marks: participles, absolutes and reported speech#

Advanced

OCR H444 Appendix 5d Syntax — uses of the participle (including genitive absolute); indirect statement (including extended reported speech); subordinate clauses within indirect speech

OCR H444 Component 01 — demonstrate a detailed understanding of the linguistic structures of material written by ancient authors

Unseen prose translation (Xenophon)

Key points

The opening of the Anabasis, worked clause by clause

Key points

Taking a long period apart in six moves

Key points

Three indirect statements, one genitive absolute and a result clause

Key points

A march, a shortage and a council, translated with the neighbourhood doing the work

Key points

The same Greek translated twice: what the second version earns that the first does not

Sources

Unseen prose translation (Xenophon)

Key points

The opening of the Anabasis, worked clause by clause

Key points

Taking a long period apart in six moves

Key points

Three indirect statements, one genitive absolute and a result clause

Key points

A march, a shortage and a council, translated with the neighbourhood doing the work

Key points

The same Greek translated twice: what the second version earns that the first does not

Sources