http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek
“The Ancient Greek language is the historical stage of the Greek language as it existed during the Archaic (9th–6th centuries BC) and Classical (5th–4th centuries BC) periods in Ancient Greece. The Hellenistic (post-Classic) period of Ancient Greece formally constitutes its own stage in the Greek language known as Koine Greek NT Greek).
I bought a HUGE textbook on Classical Greek and tried to teach myself while I was undergoing chemo..A HUGE flop altho very interesting. The language is so inflected that I could only learn the present tense of padeo, to teach, before giving up. Brace yourself. (The participles alone -over 100 for padeo alone made me crazy.) Don’t try this at home, alone.
“In Ancient Greek nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and vocative), three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), and three numbers (singular, dual and plural). Verbs have four moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and optative), three voices (active, middle and passive), as well as three persons (first, second and third) and various other forms.
Verbs are conjugated through seven tenses: the present, future and imperfect tenses are imperfective in aspect; the aorist tense (perfective aspect); a present-perfect, pluperfect and future perfect (all with perfect aspect). Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. There are infinitives and participles corresponding to the finite combinations of tense, aspect and voice.”