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25 Cards in this Set

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What news does the Corinthian messenger bring? How does he know that Oedipus is not the son of Polybus?
- News of Polybus’ (Oedipus’ adopted father) death.
- Knows because he himself was the one who took Oedipus from the herdsman (who was supposed to have killed him but instead took pity on him) and gave him to Polybus who desperately wanted a child.
According to Creon, what law has Antigone broken? By what law(s) does she defend herself?
- Written vs. unwritten laws
- Creon: established law he decreed.
- Antigone: unwritten law of the gods says that everyone deserves burial/funeral rites
Explain Haemon’s criticism of his father in the following lines:

“A city belongs to its master. Isn’t that the rule?” (738, Creon)

“Then go to be ruler of a desert, all alone. You’d do it well.” (739, Haemon)
- 738: Creon is acting like a dictator; he is ruling the country as though he is its master.
- 739: a city should be run with all of its citizens in mind; if Creon is ruling only for himself, he is more suited to rule the desert where he would actually be the only one there.
In what sense is “Anti-gonê” (against offspring) a suitable name for Antigone? How does she act out the meaning of her name in Sophocles’ play?
- She will never have children because she never marries Haemon (and she kills herself…)
- Made choice to support brother rather than marry Haemon
When does Creon change his mind about his own edict? How does he try to reverse course? Does he succeed?
- Changes his edict when Tiresias prophesizes that Creon’s son will die for his father’s arrogance and bad judgement.
- Plans to free Antigone and build a tomb for Polynices, but by the time he gets there Antigone has already killed herself
How does Medea appeal to the sympathy of the Corinthian women in her first speech (pp.8-9)? What favor does she ask of them?
- Makes a connection with the chorus by appealing to them as a wife to other wives; compares marriage to slavery; creates bond because they all belong to group of oppressed women.
- Asks them to remain silent and let her pay back Jason (and Creon and his daughter) for treating her like crap.
Do Tiresias and Cadmus both believe in Dionysus as a god? Why does Cadmus encourage Pentheus to take part in Dionysiac ritual?
- Both believe Dionysus is a god.
- Better to just go along with it even if you don’t really believe it. Don’t make war on the gods.
- Don’t be like Actaeon who claimed to be a better hunter than Artemis and died terribly because of it (started out as the hunter and became the hunted.)
Dionysus is the god of wine but also of the theater. Speculate on how these two functions may be related, giving evidence from the Bacchae.
- Dionysian madness is similar to wine intoxication.
- Sees double; blurred vision.
Dionysus is both the product of and cause of a number of inversions of the norm; explain how social categories (male/ female; divine/ human; Greek/Barbarian) and spatial relations are inverted under Dionysus’ influence in the Bacchae. How does Dionysus himself embody the confusion of social categories?
- Greek/Barbarian: one chorus women from Lydia and the other women from Thebes.
- Male/female: Pentheus dresses up like a woman; Dionysus’ appearance is similar to the Bacchae, delicate features, golden hair, etc.; Dionysus born from male womb.
- City/country: women supposed to be inside, domestic, subdued, but instead are out on the mountain going crazy and celebrating.
- Divine/human: Dionysus born from God and mortal; disguised as mortal in the play.
- Hunter/hunted: ex. Actaeon and Pentheus.
Briefly describe the three phases within the Peloponnesian War. What is Pericles’ advice to the Athenians at the outset?
- 431 – 421BC: Archidamian war (Spartan king, Archidamus, attacks Attica yearly.)
- 421 – 413BC: Peace of Nicias (421BC), Siege of Melos (416BC), and [Sicilian Expedition (415 – 413BC) ---> loss of navy]
- 412 – 404BC: Ionian War
- Pericles’ advice: focus on city states on coast of Asia Minor; play defensive.
When did the Athenians begin to build up their navy? Why was this important to their success in the Persian Wars?
- Themistocles encouraged navy in Battle of Salamis.
- Because Spartans were unbeatable by land.
Explain what Thucydides means when he writes (Bk. I.22), “my history will seem less easy to read because of the absence in it of a romantic element.” What is the “romantic element” he refers to? What purpose does Thucydides envision for his History?
- Romantic element in Herodotus: names Helen as the reason for Trojan war; too idealistic, romantic; Thucydides doesn’t accept that the Greeks followed Agamemnon because of an oath sworn; more likely that they followed him because they were afraid of him.
- Thucydides wants his work to be remembered (ktêma es aei = possession for forever.)
- Doesn’t just want details and events to be remembered; wants the forces/causes behind war to be remembered because history always repeats itself and he wants future readers to learn from Athens’ mistakes.
- Homer = Helen
- Herodotus = Candaules
According to Pericles, what makes Athens superior to other Greek cities?
Athens is superior because its citizens “born from the earth;” no one had lived their before them.
What is the Lenaea? Who attended, and how did the composition of the audience at the Lenaea differ from that at the City Dionysia?
- Festival open to Athenians only vs. City Dinoysia was open to anyone.
- Comedies usually referred to political events and figues that only Athenians could understand and relate to.
How is the subject matter of comedy different, in general, from that of tragedy?
- Comedy: topical references and plots (Athenocentric.)
- Tragedy: heroic and mythical plots (universal appeal.)
Where and when was Aristophanes’ Lysistrata originally performed? How does this play incorporate the Peloponnesian War in its plot?
- Originally preformed at the Lenaea festival in 411BC.
- The play is about a conjugal sex strike in order to end the Peloponnesian War.
Does Lysistrata offer a serious advice to the audience on how Athens could end the war? What advice might Aristophanes have been trying to communicate through Lysistrata’s analogy between government and wool-working?
- Unprocessed wool must be cleaned and have all the parasites plucked out of it before it can be woven into a tapestry (analogy for city at war?)
- Politicians destroying city; have own profit in mind rather than the well being of the city.
Who was Socrates? When and how did he die? What were the charges brought against Socrates in 399BC? What other factors may have influenced his being prosecuted in Athens?
- 469 – 399BC
- Classical Greek philosopher and sophist.
- Sentenced to death for corrupting youth and not worshipping the Olympian gods (and introducing new ones.)
- Underlying motives: “gadfly”/annoyance to Athens; he annoyed and embarrassed a lot of important people, asked too many questions, etc.
What did Plato criticize the sophists for?
- Teaching anyone for a fee (allowed social mobility and no careful selection of students of who students who would be in a position to use it well.
- Charged money for lessons; Plato didn’t think knowledge/wisdom should be a commodity.
- Confused rhetoric with knowledge; taught people to speak, persuade and debate well without needing substantial background knowledge about their argument.
- Promoting moral relativism (no such thing as right or wrong, everything depends on the surrounding context/culture.)
What kinds of intellectual debates were the sophists involved in?
- Debates (all basically the same thing)
- Nomos (convention/law/custom) vs. physis (culture/convention)
- Moral relativism
- Protagoras on “man is the measure”
- No universal standard exists by which to assess an ethical proposition's truth.
- No absolute, concrete rights and wrongs.
- Ethics and morality don’t reflect universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to cultural and contextual circumstances.
- Protagoras example: would you eat/burn your dead?
Did Plato consider Socrates to be a sophist? Did Aristophanes consider Socrates to be sophist? From what you have read of both authors, give your best assessment of why Socrates was brought to trial and condemned to death by the Athenians.
- Plato: Socrates is the opposite of a sophist; sophists created an intellectual climate that covered up fact that people really didn’t know what they were talking about, but Socrates tried to uncover it by asking lots of questions.
- Aristophanes: Socrates is a sophist; teaches people how to make the worst argument seem like the better argument.
- Put to death because he was embarrassing important people and undermining laws and Socratic system.
How is Pheidippides true—and not true—to his name? What kind of a fix has he gotten his father into?
- Pheidippides = “thrifty knight”
- Contradicting lineage: follows after his mother, big into horses and extravagance.
- NOT thrifty; got dad into trouble by spending too much money and getting into debt.
Why are clouds especially suitable divinities for sophists? Be sure to explain who/what sophists are.
- Sophists: professional teachers of rhetoric who teach you to win an argument even if you’re wrong and even if you have no intellectual background behind it.
- Suitable because clouds are constantly changing; they have no fixed essence; reflect back whatever you’re projecting onto them which is kind of a paradigm for sophistry.
What is wrong with the first definition of piety that Euthyphro offers? How does he revise it in response to Socrates’ suggestions?
- First question: what is piety?
- First answer: piety is what I’m doing right now.
- Bad answer because it doesn’t tell anything about what piety actually is. Socrates wants a definition, a list of characteristics or paradigm that explains piety in any situation.
- Second answer: ?
Who writes each play/book?
- Sophocles: Theban plays (Oedipus Tyrannus and Antigone)
- Euripides: Medea and Bacchae
- Plato: Euthyphro
- Thucydides: Histories
- Aristophanes: Lysistrata and Clouds