Frogs

Question 1

Which women are negatively portrayed?

Answer 1

Phaedra, Stheneboea, Aphrodite

Question 2

Who wins the Agon?

Answer 2

Aeschylus

Question 3

What are the last two questions of the agon?

Answer 3

What do do about Alcibiades? How to keep Athens safe?

Question 4

What war was contemporary to frogs?

Answer 4

Peloponnesian, ended 18 months after the first performance of Frogs

Question 5

What’s the word for journey to the underworld?

Answer 5

Katabasis

Question 6

What sea battle granted citizenship to slaves?

Answer 6

Arginusae

Question 7

Who’s Cleistenes?

Answer 7

Mentioned in almost all Aristophanes plays, mocked for passive homosexuality

Question 8

What are the different types of humour?

Answer 8

Visual, scatological, satire, parody, word play, character

Question 9

What pun do the initiates make on a politician’s name?

Answer 9

Hippocinus- means horse bonker not victor

Question 10

Why was Alcibiades sentenced to imprisonment?

Answer 10

Profaning the mysteries

Question 11

What’s Euripides’ chief fault?

Answer 11

Sophistry

Question 12

What’s Aeschylus’ best argument?

Answer 12

Little bottle of olive oil

Question 13

Corrupt politicians

Answer 13

Alcibiades, Cleophon

Question 14

Parabasis

Answer 14

a section of a comedy in which the chorus addresses the audience directly, speaking in the voice of the playwright

Question 15

Theme of the parabasis

Answer 15

Athens needs to turn to old ways and reject the politicians leading the city astray. Also contains specific political advice e.g. the citizens who had lost their rights because they were involved in an attempt to overthrow the democracy in 411 BC should have their status restored

Question 16

Date

Answer 16

405 BC

Question 17

Playwrights as teachers

Answer 17

Euripides: ‘we make people in our city better’
Aeschylus: ‘children have teachers to instruct them, young men have poets.’

Question 18

Other plays ridiculing Dionysus

Answer 18

comedy ‘Dionysalexandros’

Question 19

Battle giving citizenship to slaves

Answer 19

Arginusae in 406 BC-the year before Frogs

Question 20

Contemporary issues

Answer 20

Written during a time of great uncertainty as Athens suffered defeat at the hands of Sparta. Extreme measures had been taken i.e. taking gold and silver from the Acropolis

Question 21

Alcibiades’ biggest crime

Answer 21

defected to Sparta

Question 22

What is the competition between playwrights reminiscent of?

Answer 22

The dramatic festivals where 3 tragic playwrights competed

Question 23

Breaks 4th wall

Answer 23

Dionysus asks the priest sitting in the prohedria to save him and Dionysus will buy him a drink after the show.