Iliad Flashcards
Named after the mythical king ________, the Minoan civilization flourished on the island of ______ in the second millennium B.C. In the same period, the Mycenaeans developed a wealthy and powerful civilization on mainland Greece.
Minos; Crete
At some point in the last century of the millennium, the great palaces were destroyed by _____. With them, the arts, skills, and language of the Mycenaeans vanished for the next few centuries, a period called the “_________” of Greece. Much of what we know about them is based on the body of oral poetry that became the raw material for Homer’s epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey.
fire; Dark Age
By serving as a basis for education, the ______ and __________ played a role in the development of Greek civilization. The irreconcilable difference between the ______________________ and the _____________ led to a struggle from which only one survived.
Iliad; Odyssey
Greek gods of Olympus; Hebrew god
Focused around the events that transpired in a few weeks of the ten-year Trojan War, the Iliad tells the story of the _________ and _________ in war.
Achaeans; Trojans
TRUE OR FALSE
Only the men who do battle are affected in this tale of wars.
FALSE - Both genders– the men who do battle and the women who depend on them– are affected in this tale of wars.
Focused on around the events that transpired in a few weeks of the __________________, the Iliad tells the story of the Achaeans and Trojans in war.
ten-year Trojan war
Starkly unsentimental, Homer’s tale suggests that human beings must implicitly deal with both ___________ and __________ impulses.
destructive; creative
Neither the Iliad nor the Odyssey offers easy answers; questions about the nature of aggression and violence are left unanswered, and questions about human suffering and the __________ generated by war are left unresolved.
waste
Whereas the Hebrews blamed humanity for bringing disorder to God’s harmoniously ordered universe, the Greeks conceived their gods as an _____________________ of the world and its uncontrollable forces.
expression of the disorder
To the Greeks, morality is a ___________________; and though ______ is the most powerful of their gods, even he can be resisted by his fellow Olympians and must bow to the mysterious power of fate.
human invention; Zeus
Except for his name, we know nothing about the poet _________, and there is no trace of his identity in the poem.
Homer
The basis for Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey was an immense poetic reserve created by generations of ______________ who lived before him. Homer made use of an intricate system of _________________, a repertoire of standard scenes, and a known outline of the story.
singers; metrical formulas
Unlike most oral literature, the poetic organization of the two works (Iliad and Odyssey) suggests they owe their present form to the hand of _____ poet.
one
__________ cities claim to be his birthplace, and they are all in what the Greeks call _______. The Iliad contains several accurate descriptions of the Ionian landscape.
seven; Ionia
The Iliad is intended for ____________________, and not for reading.
oral recitation
