Make greek numeration

Question

How can I print a counter in the greek alphabet?

\newcounter{nc}
\setcounter{nc}{2}
\arabic{nc} %print 2
\greek{nc} %I'd like to see \beta

Answer 1

The package moreenum is actually intended to provide a few more styles for enumeration, but it defines a greek numeral system en passant. I guess it is probably the easiest way to make use of this package and define your counter:

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{moreenum}
\newcounter{greeknumber}
\setcounter{greeknumber}{1}
\begin{document}
\greek{greeknumber}
\Greek{greeknumber}
\stepcounter{greeknumber}
\greek{greeknumber}
\Greek{greeknumber}
\end{document}

By the way: The greek letters employed from the package are generated from the standard mathematical greek letters like \alpha or \beta. IMHO it would be great if this could be turned into a package that makes use of utf8-greek letters of the main font, if available, or even made a standard counter-style in latex.ltx! In Greek philology it is sometimes the case that certain books are enumerated that way until this day, e.g. the eleventh book of the Odyssee is book λ. My skills are, alas, not advanced enough to achieve this.