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.

Reflections on Exam 1:

• In general the exams were solid, earning 79.2 average on exams that were completed. Congratulations!
• On the other hand, if you would like to do even better on future exams, please review comments on your exam and please come talk to me about how you can show your knowledge and insights even more effectively. The following comments are shorthand, as follows:
  • "Explain" means, you need to say how the idea works.
  • "Significance?" means, you need to say why the idea matters.
  • "?" means, you need to make your point more clearly.
• Perennial spelling challenges (other than the nearly-impossible pomegranate, which many people did perfectly - yay!); of course you're writing fast on an exam, so it's not that spelling is a big deal so long as I can still tell what you're trying to say, but the better you can spell even under stress, the more impressive your writing is going to look when spelling does matter:

  allegiance

  deity

  guard

  heroes (pl.)

  nourish

  sacrifice

  shepherd

From today's class:

• How do the stories of Heracles' Labors build patterns of ideas so as to delineate him? What types of opposition does he encounter? What means does he use to overcome opposition?
• How do the Labors function as a group? That is, within the repetition of similar elements, what trends evolve?
• Within the Labors, what qualities of Heracles/Hercules appear human? What qualities appear divine?
• Besides the abilities he himself possesses directly, how else does Heracles have access to powers that help him complete his Labors? Why, on an ancient Greek view, does he get such assistance?
• What boundaries does Heracles/Hercules cross in his Labors?

• How do the qualities Heracles shows in his first scene in Alcestis relate to his achievement at the end of the play?
• What other figures that we have seen does Alcestis resemble, in her concerns as wife and mother? Where does she differ?
• How does Admetus’s argument with Pheres compare to other views we have seen of the relationship between fathers and sons?
• What does death mean to the different characters?

Tuesday 22 October

From today's class:

• Trace the sequence of bent, stretched, or broken social and cosmic rules that propel the plot-events of Euripides' Alcestis.
  • What rules get transgressed or exceeded?
  • In what way(s)?
  • What factors motivate the transgressions? Who actually transgresses?
  • How does one "transgression" lead to another?
  • Who benefits by the transgressions? In what way(s)?
• How do Heracles’ superhuman appetites relate to his superhuman achievements? What view of humanity and divinity does this relationship imply?
• What attitudes to life, death, and family are enacted in Euripides’ Alcestis?
• How do the other parts of Alcestis help put Heracles’ achievement into a human context?
• What strengths does Heracles display in other myths that, in the myth of his death, help him to meet his death? In what ways do they help?
• What does Heracles’ death imply about the limits of heroic (and human) achievement?

• What has been going on in Mycene, Agamemnon's home kingdom, when the play opens? What has Agamemnon been doing? Why?
• How does Aeschylus's Agamemnon suggest the common people of Mycene feel about their king? What have his recent activities, away from Mycene, affected their lives?
• How many possible reasons does Aeschylus's Agamemnon suggest for Clytaemnestra to want to kill her husband?
• What divine forces does Clytaemnestra invoke? When does she invoke each one? Why does she invoke that divinity then, when she does?

Thursday 24 October

From today's class:

• What chain of events started the Trojan War? How was the chain set off? What views of human nature are implied by this myth?
• Trace the pattern of conflicts that runs through previous generations of Agamemnon’s family. What cycles of crime and retribution keep recurring?
• To what elements in the traditional version of Orestes’ story does Aeschylus add emphasis? What new conflicts join the traditional patterns as a result?
• What factors tend to justify Clytaemnestra in killing Agamemnon? What factors tend to make her act appear unjust? What patterns of associations appear in the factors justifying or condemning Clytaemnestra? Compare and contrast the structural requirements of the myth to what Aeschylus portrays Clytaemnestra as saying in the play.

• How has Agamemnon’s death changed things at the court of Mycene? Look at the status of each character, and at the relationships between them.
• Have the time elapsed since the action of Agamemnon, and subsequent actions, put Clytaemnestra’s killing Agamemnon in a different light than at the time she did it?
• Developing from this question, consider: what does a husband and father, even when absent, mean for his family, as Agamemnon and Libation Bearers play it out? What does a king, even when absent, mean for his city: how does his rule, whether he is present or absent, differ from a usurper’s?

Tuesday 29 October

From today's class:

• How do the deaths of Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus pick up on and reshape previously-established patterns of violence in the Mycenean royal family?
• What problems in the family’s equilibrium do these killings solve? What new problems do the killings create?
• How does the Mycenean saga suggest that social bonds, resting on consent between parties, can or should relate to natural bonds, resting on organic, physical relationships? Trace where male and female characters are involved in each kind of bond: does a pattern emerge?

• What forces do the superhuman players in the Oresteia represent (Furies/Eumenides, Apollo, Athene)? How do their characteristic, mythologically-determined interests connect them to the human action of the myth?
• What charge is formally at issue in Orestes’ trial? How does it relate to the question of whether mother or father is more truly parent to a child?
• How does Athene make peace with the Furies/Eumenides?

Thursday 31 October

From today's class:

• How do the different parties to the trial in Eumenides, the dispute that ultimately wraps up the issues of the Oresteia, rate father or mother as the more important parent? What reasons support their different conclusions? What characteristics of their own make them more or less attracted to a given set of reasons? Compare and contrast to the reasoning implied by other mythical material we have read.
• How does the resolution of the dispute change the relationships of social and organic bonds?
• In what senses is Orestes' achievement in the Oresteia heroic? Explain both in terms of his actions, their effects, and their broader significance, and by comparison to other heroes. What wholeness does he attain, for whose benefit?
• How does Athene, in founding the court of the Areopagus, help to resolve the crises precipitated by Orestes’ blood-guilt? Does the court solve all the problems? Be able to explain what considerations it does address, and how it does it. What else does Athene do to resolve the overall crisis and mediate between the opposing forces involved?
• In what ways is the political body of a city involved with the action of the Oresteia, all through?

Review all material assigned to date for Exam II on Tuesday.

• 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. The questions of the exam will focus on work we have done since Exam I, but you are always welcome to cite material from the first part of the course as it helps you to prove your points convincingly.
  • Review your notes from class discussions.
  • Study Questions in these e-files (this file and the earlier study-questions; see also the Study Guide for Exam 2) 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.
• One section of the exam will call for you to identify, very briefly, important items of information in our texts. These items will have been springboards of discussion in class. There will be some choice among the items to identify.
• One section of the exam will give you passages from the ancient texts we have read, and ask you to analyze closely what they say. There will be some choice between passages.
  • Be sure to distinguish clearly between what the text actually, literally, says, and what the text means: what you judge the text shows us about classical mythology and the world-view it represents, what you understand the author's point was in saying what the text says, and all other judgments about the text's significance.
  • Be sure you explain, clearly and concretely, how you get from what the text says to what it means. How do you draw on the evidence of the ancient texts, and on logic, to arrive at your understanding of the texts? Take me with you as you explore their meaning!
• One section of the exam will give you a choice of essay questions involving comparison and analysis.
  • Same recommendations as above, only now you will be picking yourself which passages best help you explore the essay question and prove your points. As you review the reading, think about how you can use the texts to explain and support your insights, so that you have good examples ready to call upon.
• Good luck!

Tuesday 5 November

From today's class:

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

• Who was Cadmus? How and why did he come to found the city of Thebes?
• What natural and supernatural events attend the founding of Thebes? What expectations for the future of Thebes do these foundation-stories appear to suggest? How do subsequent stories about Thebes play off these expectations?
• What patterns of significant actions recur in the history of the kings of Thebes? How are the kings related to one another? How and why do they each come to the throne? Is blood-kinship regularly a factor in the succession? Compare and contrast how Oedipus becomes king with what the myths portray as often happening at Thebes.
• How does Oedipus the King show Oedipus relating to the people of Thebes? his wife and her family, including her previous husband? his parents (whom does he identify in this capacity, when, and why)?
• Trace how the state of Oedipus’s knowledge (about himself or otherwise) affects his actions throughout Oedipus the King. What things does he know or think he knows, about what, when, and what does that (supposed) knowledge make him do?

Thursday 7 November

From today's class:

• In what phases of Thebes' mythological history are ties of blood-kinship important? When are the ties upheld strongly? By what actions are they upheld, when they are upheld? When are kinship-ties violated, and by what actions?
• In what phases of Thebes' mythological history is autochthony important? What patterns are observed in autochthonous relationships?
  • When does autochthony create a bond among autochthonous beings? (Authochthony functioning like blood-kinship.)
  • On the other hand, when do autochthonous beings seem to be radically separate from one another? (Autochthony emphasizing spontaneous generation of beings unlike their source, with no necessary reason to be like one another.)
  • When autochthony creates some expectation of bonding between autochthonous beings, when are the bonds violated? What actions violate autochthonous bonds?
• What do the patterns of violation in kinship and/or autochthonous bonds do for the succession of Thebes as a kingdom? How does its mythological political history underline other typical concerns of Greek and Roman mythology as associated with Thebes?
• What sort of relationship between men and gods is implied by Oedipus’s story?
• What concept(s) of personal responsibility does Oedipus live by? Does his attitude change over the course of Oedipus the King?
• What concept(s) of fate do characters discuss in Oedipus the King? What concept(s) operate within the action of the play?

• Who has an interest in where Oedipus dies, or what happens to his body? Why?
• What powers are associated with the place where Oedipus does end up?
• How has Oedipus’s situation changed from Oedipus the King to Oedipus at Colonus? Has Oedipus himself changed, and if so, how?

Tuesday 12 November

From today's class:

• What do the events of Oedipus’s life have to do with his death and fate after death? Explain the connections.
• In what sense(s) is Oedipus a "hero"? What events cause him to transcend his humanity? In what ways does he transcend?
• What sort of relationship between men and gods is described by Oedipus’s story? What does Oedipus's story suggest about how fate or destiny operates in human life?
• In what other ways do the myths of Thebes explore what it means to be human? Be able to identify and to explain pertinent elements of the stories.

Odysseus has been washed up at the island of the Phaeacians, whose king is Alcinous and queen is Arete. He is welcomed to their feast, and now they ask him who he is. He tells the story of his journey from Troy and the Trojan War (after the ten-year war, it finally takes him another ten years to return home to Ithaca).

• Start listing the landfalls Odysseus makes, and his adventures at each of them. What types of events keep recurring in these incidents?
• How does Odysseus relate to his men as they journey?
• What forces distract Odysseus from the idea of getting home again, and what forces remind him?

Thursday 14 November

From today's class:

• Trace how the themes of hospitality, eating, and distinctions between humans and animals come together at each of Odysseus’s and his men’s landfalls. Suggestion: make a chart, identifying what elements of each episode pick up on each of these themes; note also how the themes connect to each other in each episode.
  • How do these details portray the natives at each place as civilized or uncivilized?
  • How do these episodes shape an image (or counter-image) of how human society ought to work?
• When, and why, do the episodes of Odysseus’s Wanderings take Odysseus and his men beyond the "real" Mediterranean, as the Greeks who told these stories could know it by going there themselves?
• Why, after the brilliant ruse of "Nobody", does Odysseus have to tell Polyphemus his real name? What does this episode reveal about recognition as an element in the hero’s identity? How does recognition figure in other episodes of the Wanderings? Add this theme to your chart.

• Continue listing the landfalls Odysseus makes, and his adventures at each of them. What types of events keep recurring in these incidents? How do they relate to the episodes we have already discussed?
• Why does Odysseus have to go to the Land of the Dead? Where is it located? How does he get there? What does he find when he gets there?

Tuesday 19 November

• As a group, your papers from Exam 2 looked very solid (completed exams averaged 82.5 points) - well done! Read thoughtfully the comments I have made in your margins, and consider how you can do still more impressively on the next exam.
• It is good to present information that comes from our texts, and it is good to present interpretations that have emerged from our class-discussions of textual material. What really makes essays excel, though, is for them to show clearly how the information helps support the interpretations. Show your reasoning at work!
• It is also good for essays to show how they relate to the specific text on which a passage-essay asks you to focus, or the specific question a question-essay poses. Many connections are possible and perfectly justifiable: don't risk losing your reader by neglecting to say what connections you're using to get where you want to go with the essay!
• Please come and see me if you want to talk over your exam and strategize for even better performances.
• Spelling targets:

  definitely

  dilemma

  receive

  sacrifice

  strength

From today's class:

• What does Odysseus achieve in his Wanderings? How do these exploits serve to define him as a hero?
• What ideas about the relationship of life and the afterlife are suggested by Odysseus’s visit to the Land of the Dead? What connection(s) do the dead maintain to the living? How does being dead affect the dead? Compare and contrast this image of the afterlife to others we have seen referred to in works like the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and Alcestis. (any others?)
• How do Odysseus’s relationships with various Others in his Wanderings help to define him as a hero? Others to consider include: Odysseus's crewmen, female figures, superhuman monsters, divine figures, alien peoples. (Who else?)

• What elements of the myths about Jason parallel other myths we have seen?
• What folktale elements can you find in myths about Jason?
• What patterns of events and relationships recur in the myths of the Voyage of the Argo and Jason’s Quest for the Golden Fleece?

Thursday 21 November

From today's class:

• How does the element of place function in the adventures of the Argonauts? How does place affect the stories? Does it affect different stories in different ways? What do the mythological functions of place imply about the Greek and Roman conception of the "real" world?
• What sort of a hero is Jason, as shown in his life-story overall and particularly in the adventures of the Argonauts? Compare and contrast to other models of heroism we have seen.
• Compare and contrast the adventures of the Argonauts on their voyage to those of Odysseus and his crew in the Wanderings of the Odyssey.
  • What types of challenge do they each face? How do they meet these challenges? In what ways do the different encounters of the Wanderings explore the parameters governing the human condition as such?
  • How do Jason and Odysseus each relate to their crews? How do the different styles of leadership and collaboration between leaders and crew-members in the two myth-cycles explore the nature of leadership as such?

• Review Medea's contribution to Jason's myth-cycle in the stages preceding the Medea: how does her role correspond to the roles of Jason's other "Fantastic Companions", and how does she differ from the others?
• How do Euripides' Medea and Jason each value
  • their own and each other's actions in the past history of the Argo's voyage?
  • family ties? (How does each define "family"?)
  • other social relations?
  • personal honor?
  • the gods and their involvement in human affairs?
• What considerations does Euripides make move Medea to her final decision?

Tuesday 26 November

From today's class:

• Euripides is not so much changing the underlying heroic story in his Medea as reassessing it from different perspectives; in what light does he cast the heroic past? How does he develop fifth-century Athenian assumptions about social life in the community, and twist them to subversive conclusions?
• What aspects of the mythical voyage of the Argo appear most important to the Nurse? to Jason? to Medea?
• When, for what purposes, by what means, and in what respects does Medea align herself with the Everywoman represented by the Chorus? Before whom, when, for what purposes, by what means, and in what respects does she represent herself as extraordinary? What does the figure of Medea represent for the Chorus?
• What does Medea’s final appearance in the chariot of Helios signify? How does Euripides’ portrayal of Medea in this scene relate to the more "human" Medea of the earlier parts of the play? What about her has changed, and what remains the same?

• How do Orpheus’s powers of song enable him to cross boundaries between men and gods? Which boundaries does he cross: how is he like or unlike either group, and what are his relations with each?
• Think back to compare Orpheus with the attitude(s) taken to song by Hesiod and by the singers of the Homeric Hymns. Do they operate similarly?
• Compare and contrast the Underworld that Orpheus visits with other ideas about the Underworld we have seen.
• What do the songs Ovid represents Orpheus as singing have to do with Orpheus’s own mythological experiences?

Tuesday 3 December

From today's class:

• What special qualities of Orpheus enable him to overreach the boundaries between man and gods, and between man and animals? Are these qualities specific to him, or do they extend to bards generally? How far do they extend?
• What special qualities does bardic song possess? How does the literature we have been studying this term account for these special qualities: what resources do actual poets claim for their own work, and what resources do they assign to bards and song within mythology? Be able to cite specific instances and discuss their mechanics.
• What does the special status of the bard imply about the relationship of artistry and human nature?

For Thursday week - Final Examination, 12 December, 10:20 AM - 12:20 PM:

• Review all material assigned to date. See also Study Questions (from before the midterm break and after it ), Study guide 1, Study guide 2, and the Study guide specifically for the Final Exam.
• 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. The exam will focus on work we have done since Exam II, but you are always welcome to cite material from earlier parts of the course as it helps you to prove your points convincingly.
  • Review your notes from class discussions.
  • Study Questions in these e-files 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 a timed exercise. 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.
• One section of the exam will call for you to identify, very briefly, important items of information in our texts. These items will have been springboards of discussion in class. There will be some choice among the items to identify.
• One section of the exam will give you passages from the ancient texts we have read, and ask you to analyze closely what they say. There will be some choice between passages.
  • Be sure to distinguish clearly between what the text actually, literally, says, and what the text means: what you judge the text shows us about classical mythology and the world-view it represents, what you understand the author's point was in saying what the text says, and all other judgments about the text's significance.
  • Be sure you explain, clearly and concretely, how you get from what the text says to what it means. How do you draw on the evidence of the ancient texts, and on logic, to arrive at your understanding of the texts? Take me with you as you explore their meaning!
• One section of the exam will give you a choice of essay questions involving comparison and analysis. The questions will focus on material from the last third of the course, but comparison with earlier texts will also be appropriate.
  • Same recommendations as above, only now you will be picking yourself which passages best help you explore the essay question and prove your points. As you review the reading, think about how you can use the texts to explain and support your insights, so that you have good examples ready to call upon.
  • Be sure that you make clear WHAT PIECES OF INFORMATION (in the case of this class, from the texts we have read and/or from the images we have seen in class) RELATE TO THE QUESTION you are discussing. Generalizations that aren't anchored in specific, concrete evidence don't display your knowledge of the material; they can also run the risk of being contradicted by some of our material.
  • Be sure that you make clear the REASONING that LEADS your argument FROM THE EVIDENCE TO YOUR CONCLUSION. Even very interesting ideas can't be persuasive if the reader can't see why they should be valid.
  • Since the exam starts from fairly specific questions, be sure you make clear HOW YOUR ANSWER RELATES TO THE QUESTION. An answer that doesn't start from the same focus as the question has an extra-hard job to be convincing.
  • Reminder for the future: the skills outlined above, when practiced (and they do apply to all kinds of communication) will cause teachers and colleagues in all walks of life to be favorably impressed with your knowledge, insight, and eloquence. That's what we're here to work on developing.
• Vocabulary and spelling notes from the second paper: spell-checkers are not enough! If you don't know at a glance the difference between the following pairs of words, of if you're not positive you observe that difference correctly every time you use one of them, take this opportunity to look them up:
  • choose - chose
  • lead - led
  • loose - lose
  • revenge - avenge
  • suppose - supposed
• Good luck, and thanks for a good semester!