Unit 1-2 Flashcards
By 2800 BCE, scribes began using wedge-shaped letters to make a script called ______________, which was used to compose The Epic of Gilgamesh.
Cuneiform
The Phoenicians developed a system of writing with 22 simple signs for consonants and four symbols for vowels.
A. True B. False
False
The myth of ____________ describes how the King of Tyre taught the Greeks to write with Phoenician letters.
A. Io B. Sisyphus C. Cadmus D. Icarus
Cadmus
The Myceneans on the island of Crete has a writing system called ________, but it disappeared along with their society around 1200 BCE.
Linear B
War between Athens and Sparta (the Peloponnesian War) begins in ________.
431 BCE
Unlike Athens, ancient Rome was never a democracy.
A. True B. False
True
Unlike the epic works The Odyssey and The Iliad, ____________ was conceived as a written work intended for scholars and members of the royal court.
Epic of Gilgamesh
To escape his own mortality, King Gilgamesh seeks out __________, who survived the Great Flood and was granted immortality by the gods.
Utanapishtim
Homer’s The Odyssey alludes several times to the story of ___________, whose wife, Clytemnestra, plotted to kill her husband when he returned from war.
Agamemnon
When Odysseus returns home, one of the slave women named __________ recognizes him by the scar on his leg.
Eurycleia
At the end of The Odyssey, Penelope asks one of their slaves to bring Odysseus’ bow and arrows and tells him to shoot their bed as a final ‘test.’
A. True B. False
False
Athenian drama was usually performed at two religious festivals: the Dionysia and ______________.
the Lernaea
The god Dionysus, at whose festivals tragedies were often performed, was the god of wine and ___________.
Overturning rules and conventions
Nearly all the complete works of Greek drama to survive to the present day were written by Aeschylus, Euripides, and ____________.
Sophecles
One of Sophocles’ theatrical innovations was to expand the chorus from twelve to _________ members.
Fifteen
When he was an infant, Oedipus’ father, King Laius, and mother, Jocasta, abandoned him to die on Mount Cithaeron.
A. True B. False
True
In Poetics, Aristotle argued that Oedipus was the best Greek tragedy because it has two plot patterns that were essential: peripeteia and __________.
anagnorisis
When he is a young man, Oedipus solves the riddle of _______, which is “What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?” with the answer “Man.”
the Sphinx
Oedipus’ name can be translated as _____________.
“know-foot” or “swell foot”
While a common translation of hamartia describes it as a ‘tragic flaw,’ for Greeks the meaning of this word was closer to “mistake” or “error.”
A. True B. False
True
After he discovers Jocasta has killed herself, Oedipus ____________.
blinds himself
Both The Iliad and The Odyssey depict the Trojan War, which was an actual conflict between Athens and Sparta.
A. True B. False
False
The oral poets, or bards, of ancient Greece used a six-beat line called hexameter.
A. True B. False
True
In The Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh finds a magical plant that will grant him immortality, but a _____________ steals it from him.
The serpent
When __________ tries to seduce Gilgamesh, he insults her, and as a result she brings the Bull of Heaven to destroy Uruk.
Ishtar
When Polyphemus asks his name, Odysseus tells him that it is ___________.
Noman
In The Odyssey, Circe tells Odysseus that he must go to Hades to speak with ____________.
Tiresias
Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit have a common linguistic ancestor that scholars have called ___________.
proto-Indo-European
The Indo-Harappan people who settled Pakistan and western India from 2600 – 1900 BCE had their own system of writing that remains untranslated to this day.
A. True B. False
True
The first written works on the Indian subcontinent were ________, or ‘revealed knowledge.’
Vedas
Vedic hymns are not classified as poetry, or _________, because they are sacred and divine in origin.
Kavya
The Hindu cannon was transmitted orally by priests and scholars in the ___________ caste, who memorized literature from childhood.
brahmana
In Hinduism, ____________ is the original matter in the universe from which all things originate and into which all things eventually return.
the godhead
The Bhagavad-Gita addresses how karma, or human action, accords with __________, or divine law.
dharma
The text of The Bhagavad-Gita includes two layers of interpersonal dialogue: one between Sanjaya and Dhrtarastra and one between ______________.
Arjuna and Krishna
____ 38. In chapter 2 of The Bhagavad-Gita, Lord Krishan says that a wise man will withdraw from his senses like a(n) __________ (couplet 58).
tortoise
The story of the Mahabharata focuses on conflict between two branches of a royal dynasty in northern India: the Kauravas and the __________.
Pandavas
In chapter 11 of The Bhagavad-Gita, Arjuna asks Lord Krishna to _________.
reveal his divine form
- The earliest written documents (from about 3300 – 2990 BCE) that scholars have recovered and translated were found in ____________, a region whose names means literally “the place between the rivers.”
A. Mesopotamia B. Egypt C. Crete D. Punjab
Mesopotamia
