Additional information concerning exam

With a few exceptions, you will be responsible for all the readings and material listed in the syllabus, as well as in the handouts. You are not, however, responsible for the material listed for March 29-31 ("Discussion of Near Eastern and Indo-European background of Greek mythology") or the selections from Yeats and Auden (pp. 1035-1038). Note also that there has not been any specific discussion in class of different ways of translating Prometheus Bound (syllabus / handout, pp. 3-4) or of Homeric composition (handout, pp. 23-26). These various items will not be covered in the exam.

In other words, the material and information which you should know for the exam is as follow:

Iliad, Book 1.
Odyssey, selections listed on syllabus.
Hesiod selection listed as sample question no. 5 in information concerning first test, handout, p. 12 (Harris & Platzner, pp. 100-101, lines 671-685).
Xenophanes, frs. 2, 3, 5-13 (Miller's nos.), pp. 108-109, 110-111.
Aeschylus, Eumenides.
Herodotus, Book 1, selections included in handouts.
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex.
Sophocles, Antigone.
Sappho, fr. 4 (16), Miller, p. 54.
Pindar, Olympian 1, Olympian 2 (Miller, pp. 125-136).
Pindar, beginning of Nemean 6, as cited in syllabus.
Bacchylides, Ode 3 (Miller, pp. 201-205).
Roman equivalents of Greek gods and goddesses, H&P, p. 181.
Vergil, Aeneid, Book 2, selections included in handouts.
Vergil, discussion of Eclogue 4, H&P, p. 998.
Nonnos, selection included in handouts.

Possibly useful hint concerning Part I: In identifying speakers and otherwise dealing with short-answer questions in Part I of the exam, you may find that you do not remember a specific name, but do remember the overall circumstances in which the name occurs. If this occurs, you will probably get full credit for stating the latter. For example, if you do not remember Croesus' name, you could write "the king who consulted the Delphic oracle about whether to invade Persia and misunderstood the oracle's response".

The recitation sections on Thursday and Friday, April 15 and 16 dealt with ring-composition. This is a topic which has been dealt with in class primarily in connection with relatively short poems, such as Sappho, fr. 4 (16), Miller, p. 54, and Pindar, Olympian 1 and Olympian 2 (Miller, pp. 125-136). (In these instances, ring-composition can, on the very simplest level, be defined as an "ABA" pattern, with, typically, the "A" sections dealing with some sort of contemporary situation, while the middle, "B" section is some sort of mythological reference.)

Additionally, a pattern of ring-composition can also be identified in the way various story-patterns are handled in a longer work, such as the Odyssey. Books 1 and 24 of the Odyssey, for example, deal in various ways with the homecoming of Odysseus and other Greek warriors in the Trojan War.

Near the beginning of Book 1, we have Zeus's observations concerning Agamemnon and Aegisthus (Fitzgerald, p. 2, lines 42-62, referred to by Harris & Platzner, p. 456). This is followed by Athena and Zeus speaking about Odysseus (Fitzgerald, pp. 3-4, lines 63-122.) Comparably, near the end of Book 24, Athena inquires of Zeus concerning how Odysseus' slaughter of the suitors will turn out - whether the suitors' relatives will avenge this, or peace will come to Itaca (Fitzgerald, pp.459-460, lines 521-541). Still another instance of ring-composition can be illustrated by comparing the handling of Penelope toward the end of Book 1 and the toward the beginning of Book 24. Penelope herself appears in Book 1, speaking about the homecoming of the Achaeans and of her husband Odysseus (Fitzgerald, pp. 11-12, lines 375-413) and the same themes are dealt with by the shade of Agamemnon in speaking with the shade of one of the slain suitors, Amphimedon (Fitzgerald, p. 451, lines 214-228). In Book 1, we see a positive dimension to Penelope - her faithfulness to Odysseus - and this is corroborated in Agamemnon's judgement of her in Book 24.

As noted in the handout, p. 29, Book 24 of the Odyssey has been regarded as "spurious" by some scholars; perhaps as a result of this fact, Harris & Platzner do not include anything from Book 24 in their selections from the Odyssey; as a result, they leave one with a distinctly incomplete picture in their survey of Agamemnon's attitude toward Penelope (p. 465). They mention merely that in Book 11, the shade of Agamemnon (who had been killed by Clytemnestra) warns Odysseus to beware of all women, including Penelope. Book 24, though, presents us with a different assessment of Penelope by Agamemnon.