A new Chinese-language textbook of ancient Greek with a historical outline of teaching Greek and Latin in China

In this paper we present the project of a new Chinese-language textbook of ancient Greek. This textbook is intended for students majoring in philosophy. In the first part of the paper, we provide an introduction to the historical circumstances inwhich ancient Greek literature and philosophy were originally introduced to China. We draw an outline of the cultural significance of the studies of ancient Greek in China, especially from the beginning of the 20th century. This helps explains the reasons why studies of ancient Greek were tightly connected to those of ancient Greek philosophy — and hence shed light on the intended focus of our textbook. In the second part of the paper, we present the textbook properly speaking: its intended audience and general structure, and an overview of the linguistic diff erence between ancient Greek and modern Chinese. This overview will reveal the types of issues faced by native Chinese speakers when learning ancient Greek and show that in some cases, such as the verbal aspect, Chinese has better resources to translate Greek sentences than English. We provide the example of a sample chapter to make the discussion more material and also to illustrate how the specific resources of Chinese language allow the translator to render the uses of subjunctive in ancient Greek.