Hellenistic

Question 1

Antigone

Answer 1

Sophocles

Polyneices and Eteocles, two brothers leading opposite sides in Thebes’ civil war, have both been killed in battle. Creon, new ruler of Thebes, has declared that Eteocles will be honored and Polyneices disgraced. The rebel brother’s body will not be sanctified by holy rites, and it will lay unburied to be the food of carrion animals. Antigone and Ismene are the sisters of the dead brothers, and they are now the last children of the ill-fated Oedipus. In the opening of the play, Antigone brings Ismene outside the city gates late at night for a secret meeting: Antigone wants to bury Polyneices’ body, in defiance of Creon’s edict. Ismene refuses to help her, fearing the death penalty, and she is unable to dissuade Antigone from going to do the deed by herself. Creon puts Antigone in a cave for the desire. Terisias prophecies and makes Creon bury Polyneices and release Antigone.

Question 2

Oedipus

Answer 2

Sophocles

When the play opens, the city of Thebes is wasting away under a plague that leaves its fields and women barren. Oedipus, the king of Thebes, has sent his brother-in-law, Creon, to ask the house of Apollo to ask the oracle how to put an end to the plague. Creon returns, bearing good news: once the killer of the previous king, Laius, is found, Thebes will be cured of the plague (Laius was Jocasta’s husband before she married Oedipus). Hearing this, Oedipus swears he will find the murderer and banish him. He asks Creon some questions: where was Laius murdered? did anyone see the crime? how many men killed him? Creon answers: Laius was killed outside the city by a group of robbers, and the only witness was a shepherd who still lives nearby. Hearing this, Oedipus asks the people of Thebes if any of them know any information about the king’s death. The Chorus (representing the people of Thebes) suggests that Oedipus consult Teiresias, the blind prophet. Oedipus tells them that he has already sent for Teiresias. When Teiresias arrives, he seems reluctant to answer Oedipus’s questions, warning him that he does not want to know the answers. Oedipus threatens him with death, and finally Teiresias tells him that Oedipus himself is the killer, and that his marriage is a sinful union. Jocasta is Oedepus’s wife and mother. Laius was his father.

Question 3

Ajax

Answer 3

Sophocles

Question 4

Electra

Answer 4

Sophocles

Question 5

Prometheus Bound

Answer 5

Aeschylus

finds the titan, who defied Zeus and gave humanity the saving gift of fire (among other sins), bound on a remote mountain peak with iron spikes driven through his flesh by the unwilling Hephaestus and his assistants Might and Violence, allegorical figures who define the source of Zeus’s power. The scenes of the play consist of a series of dialogues between Prometheus and the ancient god Oceanus (the chorus consists of the daughters of Oceanus), Io, a woman turned into a cow because of Zeus’s attentions, and Hermes, who wants to know the secret held by Prometheus that threatens the power of Zeus. Prometheus (whose name means “foresight”) refuses and is then cast into the underworld to be punished further. At the heart of the play is the conflict between the immovable will of Prometheus and the irresistible force of the power of Zeus.

Question 6

Oresteia

Answer 6

Aeschylus

story of the Cursed House of Atreus—see Princeton review.

Question 7

Medea

Answer 7

Euripides

Medea, betrayed by her lover Jason (of the Argonauts) goes crazy and kills Jason, her children, Jason’s wife and his father in law.

Question 8

Andromache

Answer 8

Euripides

Also done by Racine

Question 9

Bacchea

Answer 9

Euripides

Story of Dionysis’s birth, fathered by Zeus

Question 10

Cyclops

Answer 10

Euripides

Tells story of Odysseus and Cyclops

Question 11

Ion

Answer 11

Euripides

Question 12

Trojan Women

Answer 12

Of all the Achean leaders we hear about in Homer, only Menelaus, husband of Helen, appears. He appears, ready to slay Helen for having abandoned him to run off to Troy with Paris, but we see his anger melt before her beauty and soothing tones. In this play the Greeks do more than enslave women: they have already slain a young girl as a sacrifice to the ghost of Achilles and they take Astyanax, the son of Hector, out of the arms of his mother so that he can be thrown from the walls of Troy. Even the herald of the Greeks, Talthybius, cannot stomach the policies of his people. The play also reminds us that Helen was a most unpopular figure amongst the ancient Greeks, and there is no satisfaction in her saving her life

Question 13

Lysistrata

Answer 13

Aristophanes

“she breaks up armies.” Aristophanes’ comic masterpiece of war and sex remains one of the greatest plays ever written. Led by the title character, the women of the warring city-states of Greece agree to withhold sexual favors with their husbands until they agree to cease fighting. The war of the sexes that ensues makes Lysistrata a comedy without peer in the history of theater.

Question 14

Clouds

Answer 14

Aristophanes

Makes fun of Socrates

Question 15

Frogs

Answer 15

Aristophanes

Ridicules tragedians Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus

Question 16

Virgil

Answer 16

70 - 19 BC

Virgil is known for his epic, the AENEID (written about 29 B.C.E., unfinished), which had taken its literary model from Homer’s epic poems Iliad and Odyssey. The tale depicts Aeneas’s homeseeking and his war to found a city.

Question 17

Aeneid

Answer 17

Virgil

a historical epic depicting one of the great heroes of Trojan war, recounts Aeneas’ wanderings and adventures from the fall of Troy to the establishment of his destined rule in Latium. It was well understood in Virgil’s own time that The Aeneid was in its first half an Odyssey and in its second an Iliad. The poem was written about 29-19 B.C.E. and composed in hexameters, about 60 lines of which were left unfinished at Virgil’s death. The work is organized in 12 book, and starts when Aeneas is forced to land his fleet on the Libyan coast. He is welcomed by Dido, the queen of Carthage, whom he tells about his adventures. Dido falls in love with Aeneas, but her quest is forced to sail again and Dido prepares to kill herself. The Trojans sail to Sicily, then Aeneas journeys to the underworld where he meets Dido and his father Anchises. “Thrice would I have thrown my arms about her neck, and thrice the ghost embraced fled from my grasp; like a fluttering breeze, like a fleeting dream.” Virgil reveals the destiny of Rome in book VI. The Trojans reach Tiber and are received by King Latinus. War breaks out, but the Trojans win with the help of Etruscans the local tribe known as Rutuli. Aeneas marries Latinus’ daughter Lavinia and founds Lavinium.

Question 18

Ovid

Answer 18

46 - 17 BC
Roman poet noted especially for his ARS AMATORIA and METAMORPHOSES. Ovid was the first major writer to grow up under the empire. He died far from home, in a desolate town by the Black Sea. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance Ovidian stories were highly popular among artists, poets and in courts. In England Metamorphoses was one of Chaucer’s favorite books.

Question 19

Metamorphoses

Answer 19

Ovid

It’s fifteen books dealt with mythological, legendary, and historical figures and recorded the history of the world from chaos to the apotheosis of Julius Caesar and the reign of Augustus. Ovid used hexameter, familiar for him from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and and Virgil’s Aeneas. Characteristic for the epic is the view about the unpredictable nature of things and instability of the forms of nature, in which men are transformed into women and vice versa; stones become people; a statue is changed into a woman; a girl becomes a laurel tree. In the final metamorphosis the spirit of the murdered Julius Caesar is changed into a star.