Study Questions

• Questions about upcoming readings generally flag issues that I expect will be important in class discussions.
  • Be able to identify, from the assigned reading, the figures the questions ask about. Who are they? What do they do? How do they relate to other figures in the reading?
  • Be able to explain how the stories in the reading present the ideas the questions ask about. What happens? Why? What do the events in the stories imply the storytellers thought about the way the world works?
  • Be ready to discuss in class how the "data" of the myths support the inferences you draw from them. We will work collaboratively at analysis. The better you can show how the texts support your inferences, the more you will help us all along; at the same time, you owe all your colleagues respectful consideration of our insights and explanations. Ideally, we will all help one another understand things better than we could on our own.
  • Since the collaborative process flows from all the different impulses that contribute to it, it's impossible to predict completely. Don't worry if class discussions don't exclusively follow the preparatory questions: insights you developed about one reading will help illuminate other readings and discussions too.
• Questions following from class discussions ask you to reconsider important issues, and see how you can take further the insights developed in class.
  • Summarizing class discussions, for your own reference, is a useful form of studying, too: it helps clarify and reinforce what we have done together. But it's not all the study questions intend to do. Summarize, then build some more.
  • Study questions also don't necessarily forecast exam questions very closely. In fact, they usually try to be much more open-ended, whereas exam questions will point at relatively contained problems that can be addressed well within a fixed period of time. Study questions invite you to develop interesting lines of thought. You'll be able to plug into these lines profitably in further reading, discussions, and exams.
• One thing exams will ask you to do is to discuss specific ideas about Greek and Roman myths in terms of concrete evidence in our course material. Therefore you will find it useful, as you think about even very wide-ranging questions, to identify specific pieces of evidence in the material we are covering that help demonstrate your observations and prove your insights, and to be able to explain clearly just how those pieces of evidence validate the conclusions you draw.

file in progress - perennially

The study questions in this file will be updated through the course of the semester from study questions used the last time this course was taught, when it met three days a week with a slightly different arrangement of material. If the days are off, it's because the questions haven't yet been checked against the current progress and interests of the class. Not that the questions from last year aren't still worth thinking about (most of them will probably continue to appear), just that you should double-check again later.

Tuesday 27 August

• What do a society's myths do for it -- why does a people generate the things we can call myths, and keep them circulating among themselves? Think of specific examples.
• How do members of a community call their common myths to one another's minds: what do they do to evoke ideas connected with their myths? Are myths called to mind neutrally, as unchanging points of common reference, or does the way it is called to mind change its meaning(s) somehow? How does this happen? Think of specific examples.
• How may myths relate to the individual? to larger communities? to the world and its overall operations? Can a myth have meaning at more than one level?

Starting a course on mythology by reading Hesiod's Theogony is like diving into a deep pool to learn how to swim. Don't let yourself get overwhelmed. Look for a few specific figures first (see questions below), and follow their stories. Once they become familiar, the other details will start fitting in to their places.

• According to Hesiod's Theogony, what were the first entities to come into existence? What did they do when they started existing?
• Trace the main family line that produces the entity named Zeus. What generations does it go through? What characteristics does the family display? What are the major side-branches of the family; are their characteristics similar or different from the main family line?
• What impels the cosmos to come into being, according to Ovid's Metamorphoses? Compare and contrast to Hesiod's Theogony.
• How is the cosmos organized once it has come into being? What forces, principles, or considerations affect the way it develops?

Thursday 29 August

• How do Hesiod and Ovid each set up the poems they are about to present, and their own claims to authority in presenting them? What relationship to divinities do they claim in connection with their poetry and knowledge of the way the world-as-we-know-it came to being?
• What does "Chaos" mean, in Hesiod's Theogony and in Ovid's Metamorphoses? How does the concept relate to the beginning of the world-as-we-know-it?
• How does the process of forming the world-as-we-know-it get started, according to Hesiod's Theogony and according to Ovid's Metamorphoses? How do entities with power and will relate to physical reality, according to each way of looking at things? What assumptions about personalities and relationships does each type of interaction imply?
• What motivations drive the family drama in the generations of Gaia and Ouranos, Rheia and Kronos, and Zeus, according to Hesiod's Theogony? What patterns recur? How does each generation try to improve on what the generation before had done?

• What are Zeus and Prometheus competing over: what is at stake between them? Why?
• Who gets what in the sacrifice ritual? What use is it to them?
• What alliances benefit Zeus as he consolidates power in the cosmos? How does he repay his allies?
• What forces oppose Zeus in his rise to power? How does he overcome them?

Tuesday 3 September

• In what ways does Zeus utilize or receive support from natural, organic sources of power, as he achieves his eventual position as ruler of gods and men?
• In what ways does Zeus utilize or receive support from social forms of power?
• What limitations does human existence have to operate within, that Hesiod's Theogony emphasizes, in contrast to divinities?
  • How does the Theogony identify these limitations?
  • How do the existence and capacities of the Female of the Species -a major theme of the Theogony- relate to the limitations of the human condition? What does the narrative of the Theogony do to explore this topic?
  • How does this fundamental difference between humans and divinities affect the experiences of humans and of gods, in other spheres, as the Theogony shows them?

• Compare and contrast the way Hesiod tells the story of Pandora in Works and Days to the version in Theogony.
  • Do the details of the narrative change? What is different, and what remains the same?
  • Think about what the details of the narrative suggest about the relationships among the gods, between gods and humans, and between male and female humans. Do the versions of the myth of Pandora in the Theogony and in the Works and Days imply different ideas, or just different aspects of basically the same world-view? Be able to identify and discuss specific evidence that supports your interpretation.
  • What are the important overall messages of the Theogony and of the Works and Days? How does the story of Pandora fit into each one?
• What attitudes to women and gender does Hesiod show operating in Works and Days? Compare and contrast what he says about women in this version of Pandora's story to what he says elsewhere in the Works and Days about women's role(s) in daily life.

Thursday 5 September

• How does Pandora fit into the story of the evolution of divine order as Hesiod tells it in Theogony? Compare and contrast the symbolism of her story there to other episodes within the Theogony: what ideas about humanity does her story imply?
• How does Pandora fit into the stories about the nature of human challenges that Hesiod tells in the Works and Days? Be able to explain concretely how the details of the story support your insights. Compare and contrast the symbolism of Pandora's story to other stories within the Works and Days.
• Compare and contrast the images and symbolism used in Hesiod's two versions of Pandora's story. What do they contribute to the way the story communicates? Explain both similarities and differences.
• Compare and contrast the ideas about men's relations with women that are implied by Hesiod's other references to women, with those implied by his myth of Pandora. What possibilities does real life hold out that the myth does not seem to? What does the mis-fit between life and myth affect suggest about how fully meaningful myths were expected to be?

• How does Hesiod suggest that justice does, or can, or should function in human life? What use of myth does he make to communicate his points?
• How does Hesiod suggest that strife does, or can, or should function in human life? What use of myth does he make to communicate his points?
• What Ages of Man does Hesiod identify? What Ages of Man does Ovid identify? What do the two systems of Ages have in common? In what details do they differ? What ideas about human development does each version imply?
• Who is Lycaon? What does he do that upsets Zeus/Jupiter/Jove (for equivalent names between Greek and Roman sources, cf. Gods of Olympus). Why is it upsetting?
• Who are Deucalion and Pyrrha? (Cf. Generations of the Gods slide 10.) How do they relate to the gods? to humanity?

Tuesday 10 September

• Compare and contrast and review: What different creation-of-humans stories have we read, between Theogony, Works and Days, and Metamorphoses? Make a list, and assess the differences and similarities.
• What imagery do the different stories use? How, in each case, does the imagery suggest underlying ideas about human nature and the human condition? Consider areas like relationship with god(s), relationship with the earth and nature, relationships of humans with other humans. What ideas about humanity does classical mythology seem to represent consistently? What variations appear?
  All-purpose recommendation: Be able to identify relevant details of the stories specifically, and to explain concretely how they make the suggestions you see operating.
• Compare and contrast Hesiod's and Ovid's Ages of Man. How do the external components of the human condition and the internal conditions of human nature evolve in each of the two versions of this myth? How do the externals and the internals relate to each other and to the ideal image of the world? How does Hesiod alter the 4-metal scheme to introduce considerations of dike ("justice") and hybris ("outrage" or "violation" of the laws that regulate human life)?
• How does Lycaon's transformation relate to his crimes?

For tonight's reading:

• Part review and summation (Theogony, Works and Days): What is Zeus/Jupiter's role in the cosmic order? What are his powers? How does he obtain his powers?
• The lists of Zeus/Jupiter's sexual partners in both Theogony (cf. Matings of Zeus) and our readings in Metamorphoses are partial, but generalize from them as far as extrapolation is valid. With what categories of female entities does Zeus/Jupiter have sex? What opposition does he face? How does he overcome that opposition? What happens afterward? What patterns can you see?
• What are Athene's main areas of interest and competence?
• The city-state of Athens was particularly devoted to Athene, as its name reflects. How does mythology account for her relationship with this community? What is she supposed to have done for them? What does the community do to worship her?

Thursday 12 September

• What are Zeus's main areas of competence, as a deity? How are they related to one another? What forces tend to be distinguished from him and his competencies?
• How does Zeus's sexuality relate to his other areas of competence? How does it relate to ancient Greek and Roman ideas about divinity and the natural world, generally?
• What do stories about Zeus's human mates illustrate about the differences between humans and divinities, and about how it is possible for them to deal with one another?
• How are Athene's particular interests and competencies as a divinity represented in the stories about her? What types of images, interactions, and motifs recur in her mythology?
• Classify Athene's interests as "natural" or "social". What criteria are you using to make the distinction? Explain how Athene's interests relate to the story of her begetting and birth.
• Compare and contrast how Athene functions as she is associated with Athens and how she functions in myth generally. What qualities connect the two?

• What types of power operate in the myth told by the Homeric Hymn to Demeter? Who exerts power? How?
• How is Persephone/Kore identified (a) as she relates to Demeter? (b) as she relates to Hades? Does either identification change over the course of the Hymn?
• What social roles for women (mortal or divine) are outlined in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter? How does the action of the myth define, and challenge or reinforce, these roles?
• How does the Homeric Hymn to Demeter show gods and humans relating to one another?
• In what ways is human death addressed as an issue by the Hymn? List the incidents, and explain how death figures in them. How does the identification of Hades as ruling over the world of the dead, affect what his marriage to Persephone might mean for Persephone and for Demeter, and therefore for their affinities with human beings, who experience death?

Tuesday 17 September

• What relationships are created, violated, and/or repaired in the myth told in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter? How - when do divinities act unilaterally (by authority or by physical force), and when do they act cooperatively (by consultation and consensus)? How well does each method work to attain a stable result? How does each divinity's gender relate to his or her power to create and change relationships?
• Compare and contrast the life cycles of women and of agriculture, as they progress through the stages highlighted by the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. What positions in the cycle(s) are filled by which figures in the myth? How are connections made between females (divine or human) and the cycle of the earth's fertility?
• Compare and contrast the life cycles of women and of men. What do women do, and what do men do, to move through the different phases of the cycle and to perpetuate it: how are their bodies involved? What ancient Greek social practices corresponded to and reinforced these physical differences? Explain the connections. How do these ideas help shape the myth and the Hymn?
• How do the issues of agricultural fertility, marriage, and death fit together in human life? Compare and contrast to the divine parallel set up by the Hymn. Explain how the Hymn draws connections.

• What sort of problems does Leto encounter in bringing Apollo to birth? How are they resolved?
• What is at stake in Apollo's encounter with Telphousa? in his encounter with Typhaon? What other episodes do these confrontations remind you of (one, the other, or both of them)?
• What is at stake in Apollo's encounter with the Cretans?

Thursday 19 September

• In what areas do Apollo's special interests and influence as a divinity concentrate? With what types of force does he have affinities? With what types of force does he tend to contrast?
• How do the stories related within the Homeric Hymn to Apollo explore Apollo's affinities and contrasts? Be able to explain in concrete detail how elements of the stories relate to fundamental concepts Apollo represents.
  • Leto's difficulties in bringing Apollo to birth
  • Apollo's quest for a shrine: Telphousa, Pytho, and the Cretans
• How do Apollo’s erotic relationships relate to his other divine functions and attributes? What types of energies is he able to use successfully, what unsuccessfully? What do his erotic relationships show about the type of divinity he represents?
• Summarize what our reading so far has shown about Apollo’s relationships with female, chthonian (earth-related) and/or other "natural" forces. What objectives does Apollo have when he encounters them? What resources does he use to deal with them? What do these encounters show about him?

• What goals does the Homeric Hymn to Hermes show Hermes pursuing? What means does he use to achieve them?
• How does the Apollo of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes compare with the Apollo we have seen in other readings? How does he compare with Hermes within the hymn?
• Compare and contrast Hermes to other divinities we have seen so far. What does he share in common with them? How is he different? What qualities (like or unlike other gods) especially make Hermes who he is?

Tuesday 24 September

• How does Hermes win honor for himself? Trace how the different actions he performs in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes contribute to achieving Hermes' ultimate goals. What do his methods suggest about the nature of his divinity?
• What sort of honor does Hermes care about winning for himself?
• What mythological functions does Hermes perform, in his Homeric Hymn and elsewhere? What are his special abilities? What kinds of energies does he embody?
• What features stand out as recurrent elements in Hermes’ relationships with other gods and with humans? Do these relationships follow similar patterns?
• How can it make sense mythologically, that Hermes is right to lie and steal? What beneficial possibilities does his rule-breaking open up?

• What sorts of forces does the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite show Aphrodite subject to? What does her susceptibility to these kinds of compulsion imply about her?
• What sorts of forces does the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite show Aphrodite using to manipulate others? What does the power she controls imply about her?

Thursday 26 September

• What do the different stories about Aphrodite's origins imply about her nature and her powers? Explain how the details of the narratives explore the ideas metaphorically or symbolically.
• What does the narrative of the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite imply about the nature and operation of the forces Aphrodite represents? How does this story compare, in its underlying ideas, to the stories of Aphrodite's origins?
• How does the narrative of the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite show power being negotiated among the gods? How does this action affect the relationships gods and humans will have in future? Why?
• How does the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite suggest gods might feel about their connections to human beings? Compare and contrast to other myths about relationships between gods and humans.
• In what ways does Aphrodite embody ideas about sexuality, and the relationship of Self and Other in sex?

• What symbols and patterns of behavior are associated with Dionysos? What types of challenge does he face in his myths? What powers does he typically use to combat his challenges? What do both the challenges and their answers suggest about the concepts ancient Greek and Roman mythology associated with Dionysos?
• What elements of fluidity, in any senses, does the Homeric Hymn to Dionysos associate with Dionysos? What senses? How does the Hymn make the associations? How does it fit into the broader pattern of Dionysiac mythology?
• What symbols and patterns of behavior are associated with Artemis? What types of challenge does she face in her myths? What powers does she typically use to combat her challenges? What do both the challenges and their answers suggest about the concepts ancient Greek and Roman mythology associated with Artemis?
• What qualities does Artemis share with other divine figures? Which qualities with which other divinities? In what respects does she differ?
• How "feminine" or "masculine" a divinity is Artemis? What mythic actions underline either "feminine" or "masculine" qualities in her?

Tuesday 1 October

• How do do the myths of Dionysos's begetting, birth(s), and nurture suggest ideas about the types of forces in the cosmos that he represents in traditional Greek mythology? Explain how imagery and events in the myths play out the ideas in concrete forms.
• In what ways do the myths of Dionysos put him at odds with the rules that usually organize social relations within the thought-world of traditional Greek mythology? In what ways does even the concept of fixed identity appear as a regulation Dionysos's qualities undermine?
• What are the crucial elements of Artemis's identity as a goddess? How do her characteristic connections with archery, wild nature, childbirth, and virginity relate to one another?
• Compare and contrast the myths of Artemis defending Leto with the myths of Artemis defending her own honor. How do they relate to the particular sort of goddess she is?
  • What threats are faced? List and identify the myths to trace a pattern.
  • To what extent does Artemis face off against assaults specifically on her own identity as a god, her own style of divinity, or her particular areas of divine patronage?
  • To what extent does Artemis face off against generalized assaults on divinity as such?
  • Be able to explain how the actions of the myth support the distinctions and generalizations you judge are going on.

Review all material assigned to date for Exam I on Thursday.

• What do the ancient texts we have studied (both directly and through summary in Tripp, Meridian Handbook) tell us about the conceptions of the cosmos that ancient Greeks and Romans explored through the stories of myth?
  • Review assigned readings to date and your notes on them. What are the major concerns we have been focusing on? What passages especially well illustrate important concepts, patterns of understanding and interpretation, or kinds of expression? These key passages will be good things to refer to as evidence for proving points on your exam.
  • Review your notes from class discussions. What types of analysis have we brought to bear on our texts? You can apply techniques of analysis we have used on one text, to another, and get still more out of it. On the exam, you should explain clearly how the evidence you are citing helps to support your insights.
  • Study Questions in this e-file flag important issues within the material we are studying. Typically they are fairly open-ended: they encourage you to think through the implications of our material, and explore the connections you find. Exam questions will suggest a tighter focus, in the interests of being possible to answer within the confines of an in-class exercise. But if you have been thinking about the issues raised by class discussions and the study questions, and noting passages of our texts that provide important evidence, you will be well prepared to write concrete, specific, persuasive essays on the exam.
  • Assessment on the exam will look for familiarity with the material to the extent that you need to know what you're talking about in order to say meaningful things about it. But the main emphasis of the assessment will be on the skills of literary analysis and expression. Be sure to distinguish clearly between what the text actually, literally, says, and what the text means - then explain how reasoning takes you from one to the other.
• See also Study Guide for Exam 1.
• Good luck!

Thursday 3 October

• CONGRATULATIONS! You have completed the first examination.
• Keep thinking about the exam questions: in an even-more-perfect world, what more could you say about these topics?

• When and how is the concept of identity at issue in Euripides' Bacchants? Whose identities are recognized or contested? How do individuals promote their own identities? When and how do individuals' identities change?
• Compare and contrast the views of Dionysos expressed by the different characters. Who does the play prove to have been correct in their views? How? Note particularly:

  Pentheus	Cadmus	Teiresias
  Theban women, as reported from before the play's action	Agave, in the closing scenes	Asian women of the Chorus

• Why does Pentheus refuse to respect the Dionysian religion: what goals and values does he think he is protecting? How do the things Pentheus thinks he is opposing (rightly or wrongly, as the play shows) relate to aspects of what other myths show that Dionysos represents?
• How does Euripides' Bacchants expand the repertoire of images associated with Dionysos and his cult?

Tuesday 8 October

• What aspects of Dionysos, as generally conceived in the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, make theatre a particularly appropriate environment for his patronage? What aspects of theatrical performance, as practiced in fifth-century B.C. Athens specifically, pick up on the energies and ideas Dionysos represents? Explain the connections.
• In what other myths we have seen do other gods follow patterns of behavior similar to what Dionysos does in the Homeric Hymn to Dionysos and the Bacchants? How similar or different is Dionysos and what he does?
• What aspects of Pentheus make him vulnerable to Dionysos? What do Pentheus’s vulnerabilities imply about Dionysos and his cult?
• In what ways does the Bacchants suggest the worship of Dionysos contrasts with the ordered norms of civic life (at Thebes-in-the-play or at Athens-in-real-life)? How can an orderly city incorporate the need for Dionysiac release?

• What forces motivate the divine characters in the Hippolytus?
• What forces motivate the human characters in the Hippolytus?
• How does the rivalry between Aphrodite and Artemis (on view explicitly in the prologue and the epilogue) relate to the central action?
• How do Aphrodite’s sexuality and Artemis’s virginity connect with human life?

Thursday 10 October

• What do the divine prologue and epilogue of Hippolytus, as a "frame" to the play's central action, contribute to the meanings the human action might have suggested if it had been presented on its own? How do the prologue and epilogue help clarify the concerns the play (and myth) have with the differences between divine and human life?
• How do Hippolytus’s allegiance to Artemis and non-allegiance to Aphrodite help make him fall victim to essential differences between the divine condition and the human condition?
• In what senses do Artemis and Aphrodite (and Poseidon) represent forces of nature in Hippolytus? What other natural forces operate in the play?
• How do other elements in the mythological backgrounds of Phaedra, Theseus, and Hippolytus each contribute, in addition to Aphrodite's intervention, to causing the events of this tragedy?
• Technically (in terms of Greek cult), Hippolytus becomes a "hero" at his death because Artemis ordains that he will receive worship thereafter. How much does his heroization have to do with his character? Are his actions in life "heroic" in the modern sense, or are they simply perverse? Define your terms clearly and defend them from the ancient texts we have been reading.

• In what types of activity is Heracles/Hercules perennially getting involved? How do they characterize him? Identify specific examples that are especially characteristic, and think about how they work to characterize Heracles.
• What common elements (images, patterns of activity, etc.) appear in the Labors?
• How do the Labors compare to the rest of Heracles’ story? Are similar elements shared between the Labors and other stories? Do other images and patterns emerge as characteristic outside the Labors?
• How well does Lord Raglan’s "Pattern of the Hero" fit Heracles?

This file last updated 10 October 2002 by jlong1@orion.it.luc.edu.
http://www.luc.edu/depts/classics/