Identifying Ancient Works - section 2

Question 1

Selections from Elegy 2, Anacreon

Answer 1

Key words/themes:
1. Love,
2. drinking games,
3. symposium,
4. erotism,
5. Eros,
6. Cleoboulos

Question 2

Antigone, Sophocles

Answer 2

1. Characters: Kreon, Antigone, Oedipus, Ismene, Polynices, Eteocles
2. Pollution in Thebes
3. Law forbidding the burying of Polynices
4. The religious responsibility of women

Question 3

From the Clouds, Aristophanes

Answer 3

1. Characters: Pheidippides, Strepsiades, Socrates
2. Dissing Euripides, Socrates
3. Rhetoric
4. Arguing in favor of abusing elders

Question 4

Aetia, Callimachus

Answer 4

1. Reminiscent of Homer
2. Questioning of membership and whether the reader is in the know
3. Minor mythological figures
4. Incredibly fragmented

Question 5

Encomium of Helen, Gorgias

Answer 5

1. Symmetry in sentences
2. In defense of Helen
3. Epideictic oratory

Question 6

The Histories, Herodotus

Answer 6

1. Interest in Persian Wars and what caused the the Persian Wars
2. Willingness to admit there are aspects of history which remain unclear to him
3. Indulges religiosity and divinity in his account of history
4. Characters Xerces, Candeules, Gyges

Question 7

Theogony, Hesiod

Answer 7

1. Titans, Olympian gods
2. Great battles
3. Origin of the cosmos

Question 8

On Airs, Waters and Places, Hippocrates

Answer 8

1. Effects of the seasons on people
2. Diagnosing
3. Archival prose
4. Explanations

Question 9

The Hymn of Demeter, Homeric Hymns

Answer 9

1. Homeric writing style
2. Characters: Demeter, Persephone, Hades, Metaneira
3. Key terms: eleusis, grief

Question 10

The Iliad, Homer

Answer 10

1. Characters: Achilles, Agamemnon, Peleus, Athena, Priam, Hektor
2. Trojan War
3. Themes: anger, sulking, recognition

Question 11

Panegyricus, Isocrates II

Answer 11

1. Panhellenism
2. Uniting Greeks against Persians
3. King’s Peace
4. Epideictic Oratory

Question 12

True Histories/Lucius or the Ass, Lucian

Answer 12

1. Parody, comedy, exaggeration
2. Roman/Hellenistic Scholarship
3. Criticism of tradition

Question 13

Lyric Selections, Sappho/Alcaeus/Anacreon/Alcman

Answer 13

Sappho
1. Aphrodite,
2. love,
3. desire,
4. vulnerability
Alcaeus
1. Lyric,
2. political,
3. illusion of historical accuracy
Alcman
1. Self-deprecating,
2. imaging own success
Anacreon
1. Symposiastic,
2. crude perspective of women

Question 14

On the Murder of Eratosthenes, Lysias

Answer 14

1. Forensic oratory
2. Affair, murder, assembly
3. Athens

Question 15

Medea, Euripides

Answer 15

1. Characters: Medea, Jason, Aegeus, Corinth
2. Murder, magic, poison, revenge

Question 16

Apology, Plato

Answer 16

1. Trial of Socrates

Question 17

Selections, Solon

Answer 17

1. Reforms to Athenian law

Question 18

Selections, Theognis

Answer 18

1. Aristocratic ideology
2. Cyrnus, Megara

Question 19

A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides

Answer 19

1. Archival prose, clinical approach to history
2. Peloponnesian war, Greeks, Sparta, Athens
3. Detailed, military knowledge