Weeks 9 and 10

Question 1

What is the Oikos?

Answer 1

Best translated as “household” -> the Oikos included the physical house, all of its material and living possessions, land (if owned), and its occupants

Question 2

What does the textbook mean by “The Oikos was thus not a fixed entity,…”?

pg 292

Answer 2

The physical Oikos was the join where past, present and future met. Honoring the ancestors who handed down the oikos to family connected Greeks to their past.Hoped to add themselves to the ancestors and ensuring the permanence of their names. Therefore the Oikos was ideally growing

Question 3

What is the myth about Agamemnon’s house?

Answer 3

The failed household of Agamemnon:

Agamemnon is heir to a great house and kingdom, but unfortunately punctuated by acts of kin-killing, cannibalism, rape, adultery, incest, and treachery, much of what arose because individual pre-eminence was privileged over the security of the entire household. While Agamemnon adds significantly to his own kleos, he fails to safeguard and build up his family/ He sacrifices his daughter to ensure the Greek fleet sails to Troy under his command, he is killed on his return, his wife then dies at the hand of their so Orestes, and he, in turn, is driven mad and flees.

Question 4

Why are the cities around Naples able to provide us with a good overview of how houses looked?

Answer 4

Was buried under volcanic ashes (preserved)

Question 5

What was Pericle’s citizenship law?

Answer 5

Only two Athenian citizens could produce a child with citizen statues

Question 6

What was the dowry of a bride?

Answer 6

In a marital union, the brides Kurios attached a dowry of 5 to 10 percent of his wealth to her.

Insurance policy that protects her against abuse from husband. If she goes back to her parents home, she can take her dowry back home

Question 7

Why did ancient Greeks believe menstruation was important according to Hippocratics?

Answer 7

being wetter and more porus than men, women needed to evacuate excess moisture, which was accomplished through menstration.

Best cure for which was marriage, intercourse, and childbirth (for that would restore the imbalance)

Question 8

When were a mother’s parental responsibilities fulfilled?

Answer 8

when a son was registered in a deme or when a daughter was betrothed and married to an Athenian of good standing and of citizen status

Question 9

What is the story of Aristophane’s Lysistrata?

Answer 9

an Athenian woman (Lysistrata) successfully undertakes a mission to end the Peloponnesian War by convincing all women whose families and people are suffering from the war (Spartan, Athenian, corinthian etc.) to commit a sex strike.

Question 10

What were the two main types of organized competition?

Answer 10

1. those of Panhellenic character ( those that were celebrated at sanctuaries where Greeks from all the Mediterranean and black sea came to compete)
2. those of Local character ( associated with local cults and festivals to the gods)

Question 11

What were the four Panhellenic games?

Answer 11

the Olympic, Isthmian, Nemean, and Pythian Games

Question 12

Def: Engue

Answer 12

betrothal, bridegroom would get down on his knee and propose marriage to father in law-could I get your daughter’s hand in marriage, girl may have never met her prospective husband

Legally binding contact of marriage is engue

Question 13

Eispoisesis

Answer 13

don’t know very much about adoption in Greek world, from romans we know adoption is very different from our times

Question 14

Define Epikleros

Answer 14

must marry her closest male relatives outside of bounds of incest, so that property stays within family

Question 15

Define: Promnestria

Answer 15

matchmaker, would find useful to have a go between who would find the best financial arrangement

Question 16

Pherne

Answer 16

important sum of money that women brings with her when she marries, in addition to the money, she also brings a trousseau for personal use

Question 17

Define Hupobeblemenos

Answer 17

could kill another man who was caught in bed with his wife, the problem around adultery wasn’t so much of male ego, but the risk of rearing another man’s child

Question 18

How did women trick men into rearing another man’s child?

Answer 18

supposititious  suppose a woman is scared that she isn’t giving birth to sons, so woman will go smuggle babies that were abandoned into the house without the awareness of his family, will then tell husband who is back from battle that they had a kid

Question 19

What is the final stage in the wedding?

Answer 19

the husband is leading the way about to enter the porteko of his house

Question 20

How was adoption different in the ancient world

Answer 20

Adopting a child can be risky (take someone else’s child into your house and raise it, invest time and money)

Much safer to adopt a grown adult, know what they are like, don’t have to worry about child morality or them growing up to be a creep

Question 21

What Adonis gardens?

Answer 21

common to bury a deceased person with a very small garden of wheat planted in a bed of earth in the shape of Adonis, who like Osiris, dies and rises again
• In honour of Adonis, who Aphrodite placed his body on a bed of lettuce, women planted on rooftops “Adonis gardens” of lettuce
• No evidence of men worshipping Adonis – a women’s practice

Question 22

Why was the swing invented?

Answer 22

To prevent young Greek women from hanging themselves, suggested by the oracle of Delphi

Question 23

What is the story about Oinimanous and pelops?

What is the significance?

Answer 23

• needed to choose a suitor for his daughter
• also opposed to his daughter to be married (didn’t want thrown to be passed to his new son and law and himself be dethroned)
• created a chariot race competition to win her - special clause (suiters would not compete agains one another but himself)
• The chariot race in which pelops won is the first competition ever won at Olumpia and is the begining of the Olymic games

Question 24

Why is Pelops linked to Zeus? (the worships to both are intertwined)

Answer 24

 Greek thinking was that Pelops is worshipped in conjunction with Zeus because he went against Zeus (killed two people and cheated in the race)
 He outrighted the sanctuary and violated Zeus
 Positive and negative poles from these two people
 Its not about goodness or holiness but about the energy rising out of this opposition

Question 25

What was the first competition at Olympia?

Answer 25

The foot race

Question 26

Who are the three most famous dramatists (and tragedians)

Answer 26

Aeschylus, Sophacles, and Euripides

Question 27

Who is the most famous comedian?

Answer 27

Aristophanes

Question 28

What is the ancient myth of the life of Homer?

Answer 28

: a gifted poet named Melesigenes who falls blind on the island of Ithaca, and then again permantenly at Colophon. In Cyme, takes the name Homer, given to him b.c. of his disability (homeros possibling being Aeolian word for ‘blind’). Name Homer is not originally Greek

Question 29

What was blindness commonly associated with?

Answer 29

Prophets/ poets

- the absence of physical faculty of sight was linked to an inspired inner sight

Question 30

What makes a poem a poem in Ancienc eGreek times?

Answer 30

The rhythm - not necessarily rhymes like in contemporary english

Question 31

WHo is Sappho?

Answer 31

a women lyric poet

Question 32

What was the poem Pindar wrote?

Answer 32

Olympian One:

a poem to commemorate the victory of the tyrant of Syracuse who won with one horse

• To praise a victor, would compare a noble historic feat with victory of victor that just happened

Question 33

What is Thespus credited with?

Answer 33

The invention of drama

Question 34

Why could you not have more than 3 actors for a comedy?

Answer 34

• so that competition between plays is fair

- didn’t necessarily mean only three characters `

Question 35

What was the Greek thinking of what Tragedy and Comedy dealt with?

Answer 35

Tragedy deals with boundry between humans and death. Comedy deals with boundry between humans and animals

Question 36

What are the two basic ways to make a sculpture?

Answer 36

o Start with a large piece of stone and removing bits until get down to finished product (pretty much a lost art now). Have chisels. Nut of a palm tree was used as a thimble to protect when using the saw.
o Start with nothing and with clay gradually build up. Clay figure was the base, then would coat with uniform layer of wax, then encase with more clay. Need to put braces at various points to ensure that two clay layers remain equidistant from each other. Then fire up so wax melts out (and clay hardens). Then this is the cast, where melted bronze/gold poured in, hardens, chip away the clay, and voila.