Dr. Siegel's Midterm Examination Review Sheet

Classical Foundations

The Exam will be composed of a combination of objective questions (true/false, multiple choice, fill in the blanks from a word list...), quotations identifications, and short essays. For the most part, you won't have to come up with names and dates off the top of your head, but you will have to recognize them when you see them. Be smart - visit the webpages I have indicated and you will be SUPER-prepared. Oh - and make sure you have read everything assigned. For the essays and quotations identifications, I will expect that you have not only memorized information, but that you have thought about the significance of these ideas in relation to the texts as a whole. There's lots to think about it. You had better get started...


Pericles' Funeral Oration:

Know the following quotations:

"The dead are lain in the public sepulchre, maintained for those who fall in war, in the most beautiful suburb of the city - with the exception of those slain at Marathon, who for their singular and extraordinary valor were interred where they fell."

"It is both just and fitting that our ancestors should be honored first on an occasion like the present."

pretty much all of paragraphs 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

"...the good action blots out the bad, and his merit as a citizen more than outweighs his faults as an individual."

"Realize for yourself the power of Athens, and feed your eyes upon her day after day, until you become her devoted lover."

for a complete understanding of the material, consult:

Dr. J's Illustrated Pericles' Funeral Oration
Dr. J's Illustrated Pericles' Funeral Oration and America


Plato's Apology

Be able to expand on the following big ideas:

"an unexamined life is not worth living"
"the tending of the soul is the major business of life"
"there is no man wiser than Socrates"

Know the following quotations from Plato's Apology:

"I have not the slightest skill as a speaker - unless, of course, by a skillful speaker they mean one who speaks the truth."

"Take the case of horses; do you believe that those who improve them make up the whole of mankind...?"

"You are mistaken, my friend, if you think that a man who is worth anything ought to spend his time weighing up the prospects of life and death. He has only one thing to consider in performing any action; that is, whether he is acting rightly or wrongly, like a good man or a bad one."

"God appointed me, as I supposed and believed, to the duty of leading the philosophic life, examining myself and others..."

"I owe a greater obedience to God than to you; and so long as I shall draw breath and have my faculties, I shall never stop practicing philosophy and exhorting you and elucidating the truth for everyone that I meet."

"My very good friend, you are an Athenian and belong to a city which is the greatest and most famous in the world for its wisdom and strength. Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to acquiring as much money as possible, and similarly with reputation and honor, and give no attention or thought to truth and understanding and the perfection of your soul?"

Also, be able to identify the following names, terms related to our study of Greek philosophy:

pre-Socratics (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Pythagoras, Heraclitus)
cosmology
sophist
Anaxagoras
Protagoras
Socrates
Plato
Meletus/Anytus
Platonic definition of the soul
Realm of Ideas/Forms
Agathon
Socratic Irony
Socratic method
arete

for a complete understanding of all the material covered in our discussion of Greek Philosophy, Plato and the Apology, consult:

Dr. J's Background Lecture on Greek Philosophy
Dr. J's Illustrated Plato's Apology
Dr. J's Plato's Apology Study Questions

Greek History: be familiar with these important dates:

1500-1100 Mycenean Age
1250 Trojan War
1100-800 Dark Ages
800-500 Archaic Age
776 First Olympiad
720 Homer's epics
500-338 Classical Age
Persian Wars:
490 Marathon
480 Thermopylae
480 Salamis
479 Plataea
477 Delian League
454 Athenian Empire
431 Peloponnesian War begins
429 Plague in Athens
404 Peloponnesian War ends
399 Socrates executed
338 Philip of Macedon conquers Greece

names, words to know: Pericles, eulogium, polis, Thucydides, Herodotus

Helpful webpages are Dr. J's Illustrated Persian Wars and Dr. J's Illustrated Classical Greek Timeline


Greek Theater

Be familiar with the following names/terms:

Dionysus/Festival of Dionysus
Aeschylus
Sophocles
Euripides
orchestra
skene
parados
theatron
Epidavros
Aristophanes

consult Dr. J's Illustrated Greek Theater and Dr. J's Illustrated Greek Drama


Sophocles' Antigone and Oedipus Rex

know the plot, characters, and settings of both plays
know who the Chorus is composed of

For each quotation, know speaker of quotation, circumstances of quotation (when during the course of events of the story this happens, if it is said in response to something significant, if it is in any way a focal point of plot or theme)

Quotations from Antigone:

Remember we are women…we are not born to contend with men.

I have longer to please the dead than to please the living here: in the kingdom down below I’ll lie forever.

And whoever places a friend above the good of his own country, he is nothing. I have no use for him.

Nor did I think your edict had such force that you, a mere mortal, could override the gods, the great unwritten, unshakable traditions. They are alive, not just today or yesterday: they live forever…

Show me the man who rules his household well: I’ll show you someone fit to rule the state.

But that man the city places in authority, his orders must be obeyed, large and small, right and wrong. Anarchy – show me a greater crime in all the earth! She, who destroys cities, rips up houses, breaks the ranks of spearmen into headlong rout.

The man in the street, you know, dreads your glance, he’d never say anything displeasing to your face.

Whoever thinks that he along possesses intelligence, the gift of eloquence, he and no one else, and character too…such men, I tell you spread them open – you will find them empty.

You’ve seen trees by a raging winter torrent, how many sway with the flood and salvage every twig, but not the stubborn =-- they’re ripped out, roots and all. Bend or break.

A husband dead, there might have been another. A child by another, too, if I had lost the first. But mother and father both lost in the halls of Death, no brother could ever spring to light again.

…hanged by the neck in a fine linen noose, strangled in her veils – and the boy, his arm flung around her waist, clinging to her, wailing for his bride…

I don’t even exist – I’m no one. Nothing.

The mighty words of the proud are paid in full with mighty blows of fate, and at long last those blows will teach us wisdom.

Quotations from Oedipus Rex:

You pray to the gods? Let me grant your prayers.

…let that man drag out his life in agony, step by painful step – I curse myself as well…if by chance he proves to be an intimate of our house, here at my hearth, with my full knowledge, may the curse I just called down on him strike me!

But if any man comes striding, high and mighty in all he says and does, no fear of justice, no reverence for the temples of the gods – let a rough doom tear him down.

What should a man fear? It’s al chance, chance rules our lives. Not a man on earth ca see a day ahead, groping through the dark. Better to live at random, best we can.

Many a man before you, I his dreams, has shared his mother’s bed. Take such a thing for shadows.

I must know it all. I must see the truth at last.

But the hand that struck my eyes was mine, mine alone – no one else – I did it all myself!

Oh but this I know: no sickness can destroy me, nothing can. I would never have been saved from death – I have been saved for something great and terrible, something strange.

But my two daughters, my poor helpless girls, clustering at our table, never without me hovering near them…whatever I touched they always had their share. Take care of them, I beg you.

Still the king, the master of all things? No more: here your power ends.


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