CLAS C101 Midterm Examination
October 31, 2002
Instructions:
EXAM
Do not open this exam until instructed to do so. There are 50 questions, and time will be called
at 2:15 p.m.
NAME
Write and bubble your name (Last, First). In the empty space to the right of the label “NAME
(Last, First, M.I.),” write your network ID (your email address minus the “@indiana.edu”).
SPECIAL CODES
Under “K,” write and bubble in “1.”
1. An important reason why Plato’s Protagoras takes place inside is because
A) the sharing of food and wine is a central symbol of the dialogue
B) this expresses the essential Athenianness of the sophists’ typical activities
C) sophists were travelers whose wisdom moved along the xenia circuit of rich hosts
D) the sophist Prodicus is a vampire and cannot look upon the sun
2. Which change in tragic performances at the Festival of Dionysus was of crucial importance to
giving tragedy the form in which we know it?
A) the requirement that all choral songs be sung in the Athenian dialect and accompanied with the
traditional Athenian musical forms
B) the addition of a raised stage (proskênion) and stage-building (skênê) behind the “dancing place”
(orchestra)
C) Sophocles’ innovative addition of choral songs to “punctuate” the scenes of the drama
D) Aeschylus’ innovative addition of a second actor
3. Darius’ expedition against the Athenians in 490 B.C. was motivated by
A) the Athenian support for the revolt of Ionian cities in 499
B) his father’s humiliating defeat at Marathon a decade earlier
C) the democratic political institutions employed by Athens at home
D) Persian support for the Spartans against the Athenians
4. Which Athenian politician was associated with both democratic reforms and Athens’ successful
military policies during the Persian Wars?
A) Xerxes
B) Themistocles
C) Pericles
D) Solon
5. At the end of the Odyssey, what is Odysseus’s role on Ithaca?
A) king
B) paramount basileus
C) tyrant
D) aristos
6. Which of the following had a constitution featuring two kings, a council of elders (gerousia), and
officers called ephors or “overseers”?
A) Athens
B) Sparta
C) Persia
D) the Greek poleis of Sicily
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7. Which of the following statements about Antigone is not true?
A) There are respects in which both Creon and Antigone could be seen as the “hero.”
B) Creon runs afoul of the gods of death and the gods of love.
C) Creon runs afoul of the gods whose special function is to look out for the political
community.
D) Creon’s disgust with female power shows that he is applying the political values of the citystate.
8. Who used poetry to convince his fellow-citizens of the importance of giving ordinary citizens a
stake in the political community?
A) Bacchylides
B) Pindar
C) Solon
D) Protagoras
9. Synoecism is
A) a development in Presocratic philosophy
B) a style of poetry typical of the Archaic period
C) a way of recognizing the rights of ordinary citizens to participate in politics
D) the formation of a polis out of many households in a region
10. Important poetic performances at Sparta included
A) dramas similar to the Athenian tragedies and comedies
B) songs for victors at the Olympic Games and major athletic competitions
C) songs for choruses of young girls who honored Artemis
D) melismatic war cries
11. Who composed these lines?
A)
B)
C)
D)
Like the sweet apple turning red on the branch top, on the
top of the topmost branch, and the gatherers did not notice it,
rather, they did notice, but could not reach up to take it.
Alcman
Homer
Pindar
Sappho
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12. How can Protagoras’ beliefs about society best be described?
A) All human beings are endowed with justice and a sense of shame, thus allowing society
as a whole to educate them throughout their lives in what is right and wrong.
B) The many cannot grasp wisdom, which can only be achieved by devoting your whole life to
philosophy.
C) Talk about right or wrong is only talk, since in the real world all questions of right or wrong
boil down to who is stronger and holds the power.
D) Loyalty to the family is dictated by nature and must be held more sacred than the merely
conventional bonds that connect fellow-citizens to each other.
13. Which of the following groups is closely connected to the emergence of the polis as a new kind
of political community?
A) sophists
B) hoplites
C) priests
D) resident foreigners (metoikoi or metics)
14. Which of the following best describes early Archaic Greek sculpture?
A) It features the expression of intense emotions.
B) Human figures are interacting with their environment.
C) Standing figures have a distant and vacant smile.
D) The crude pre-Classical methods are not yet capable of realism.
15. “Panhellenic” refers to
A) the ecstatic religious celebrations devoted to the god Pan that represent the earliest form of
Greek poetry
B) the system of guest-friendship that is of central importance to the Odyssey
C) a political change in the constitutions of Greek city-states in the 5th century B.C.
D) festivals, religious sites, and poetic performances that were important to all the Greeks
16. Which of the following clearly showed that Athens was ruling over an empire, rather than just
presiding over a military alliance?
A) The transfer of formal Greek naval leadership from Sparta to Athens in the early 470’s
B) The Battle of Eurymedon in 467
C) Pericles’ doubling of the tribute owed to Athens by the allies in 460
D) The transfer of the Delian League treasury away from Delos in 454
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17-21. MATCHING.
17. Achilles
C
18. Arete
B
19. Eumaeus
E
20. Laertes
A
21. Nausicaa
D
A) Odysseus’s sole living parent, who is ragged with grief because of his absence
B) one of Odysseus’ Phaeacian hosts, who is impressed with his story and decides to honor him
as a guest and send him on his way home
C) declares to Odysseus that being the lowliest living person is preferable to death
D) the first person who speaks to Odysseus when he washes up on Scheria
E) Odysseus’s loyal swineherd who fights alongside him for the oikos
22. Which Odyssey character’s subconscious feelings and reactions are most fully described by
Homer?
A) Athena
B) Penelope
C) Polyphemus
D) Telemachus
23. Spartan propaganda justified Sparta’s international politics as being
A) opposed to tyranny and in support of traditional “good laws” (eunomia)
B) necessary to prevent the Greek poleis from becoming unfit for warfare
C) in favor of expanding political rights to all classes of each city’s citizenry
D) a catalyst for the increased flow of wealth into Greece
24. Odysseus’s return home coincides with the festival of
A) Apollo of the New Moon
B) Athena the Protectress
C) Dionysus God of Wine and Revelry
D) Zeus God of Strangers and Guests
25. Odysseus’s bow has strong symbolic associations with
A) the father-son relationship
B) guest-friendship
C) marital love
D) renewal through the spilling of blood
26. Identify an event in Athenian civic life in or around which all of the following took place: a ritual
performed in common by all ten of the elected generals (stratêgoi); the recognition of citizens who
had benefited the polis; public auditing of proper conduct; decision making by persons chosen
by lot; the use of the official classification of citizens into ten tribes.
A) regular meetings of the Assembly (ekklêsia)
B) regular meetings of the Council (boulê)
C) the Festival of Dionysus (Dionysia)
D) the empanelling of large citizen juries to decide cases in the law courts (hêliaia)
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27. The variety of beggars and servants in the Odyssey serves to demonstrate
A) how firmly Homer believes that only the wealthiest and most famous are truly good
B) a wide range of social statuses, with several degrees of being unfree
C) a morality that looks beyond outward appearance and status
D) that household attendants and servants are not important to a great chieftain’s power base
28. What provides important evidence for understanding how far back the Greek tradition of
singing epic poetry goes?
A) quotations of Homeric poetry in Egyptian, Hittite, and Assyrian texts
B) references in the Bronze Age Greek tablets to the story of Odysseus
C) the comparison of phrases and rhythms in Greek and Sanskrit texts
D) Herodotus’s statement that Homer invented his stories from scratch
29-32. MATCHING.
29. reformed homicide law to make it no longer a family affair, 620 B.C.
30. intervened in a social crisis and abolished debts and debt slavery, 594 B.C.
31. tyrant of Athens, 546-527 B.C.
32. leading politician who radicalized democracy, 461-429 B.C.
A) Solon
B) Pericles
C) Peisistratus
D) Draco
D
A
C
B
33. Melanthius and Melantho are
A) spirits Odysseus meets in his visit to the Underworld
B) Odysseus’ sailing companions
C) Odysseus’ disloyal servants
D) people Odysseus meets in his fantastic voyages
34. Which of the following is not a style of argument seen in Plato’s Protagoras?
A) one speaker discrediting another’s views by raising questions about his character
B) telling long made-up mythological stories to make a point
C) literary criticism of a well-known poem
D) Socratic dialectic
35. Which of the following is not true of Odysseus’s “Cretan tales”?
A) They are lies.
B) They include many elements that are true to Odysseus’s story.
C) They represent Odysseus as an ambusher and in general as a “sketchy” character.
D) Their skill is demonstrated by their ability to convince both humans and a goddess.
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36. The slaying of the suitors is justified by all of the following except what?
A) their violation of social customs
B) their doomed status as seen by a prophetic vision
C) their failure to accompany Odysseus to the Trojan War
D) their mistreatment of the lowly
37. The line “You have a heart that is hot for things that are cold” refers to:
A) Odysseus’s willingness to slaughter the suitors in revenge
B) Antigone’s attachment to the gods of death
C) Prodicus’s intense enthusiasm for fussy and pedantic distinctions between words
D) Odysseus’s undying willingness to endure harsh trials at sea in order to reach home
38. Which of the following is not a distinctive feature of Spartan life?
A) women received a more thorough education than elsewhere
B) an ideology of radical equality among citizens
C) an old-fashioned emphasis on family values
D) boys were required and encouraged to steal their food
39. Which of the following is not true of early Greek (8th/7th centuries) alphabetic writing?
A) It was much easier to master than the “Linear B” Bronze Age Greek writing system.
B) It made possible the composition longer and greater epic poems than had ever been
composed before.
C) It was an import from the East.
D) It was used to inscribe laws on stone.
40. Who is described by means of the following comparison?
And even as a woman weeps,
flinging herself across the fallen body
of her dear husband where he lies, before
his city and his fellow warriors,
a man who tried to keep the day of doom
far from his children and beloved home;
she, clinging to him, wails; and lance on lance,
the enemies behind her strike her back
and shoulders, then they carry her away
to slavery and trials and misery;
her cheeks are wasted with the pain, the grief…
A)
B)
C)
D)
Antigone
Demeter
Odysseus
Penelope
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41. The example of Persian imperial rule over Judah, as described in the Hebrew Bible, suggests that
the Greeks, if conquered by the Persians, would have
A) been forced into slave labor
B) seen the polis replaced by the satrapy
C) been ruled as much as possible through their traditional institutions
D) been transferred to Asia Minor (in a fashion similar to the Jews’ Babylonian Exile)
42. Which of the following is not missing from the society of the Cyclopes?
A) an Assembly
B) families
C) guest-friendship
43. Which was symbolically most important to the unity of new polis communities?
A) the laying down of a rationally planned grid of streets and infrastructure
B) the composition of patriotic anthems for public song-and-dance performance
C) the amalgamation of local and household cults into a civic religion
D) the king now had to rule according to laws and with the advice of the aristocrats
44. Which of the following is a description applied to Odysseus when he is barely alive after one of
the low points of his wanderings?
A) A fever brings him delirious hallucinations of all the comforts of his home in Ithaca.
B) He is like the living dead; his body is pale, and his voice has become faint and indistinct.
C) The spark of his life is being kept alive like fire on an isolated farm.
D) He is compared to nature slumbering at night: “All asleep—the mountain peaks and gorges,
the forelands and ravines, all the creeping things bred by the black earth…”
45. The fundamental unit of Homeric society is
A) the polis
B) the oikos
C) the assembly/council
D) the dêmos
46. The term xenia refers to
A) a system of ritualized guest-friendship and gift-exchange
B) relations between Greeks and foreigners
C) the prevalence of women in mythological (as opposed to real-world) warfare
D) the rules governing proper relations with the gods
47. A shared feature of Mycenaean and later Greek religion was
A) an emphasis on festivals and oracles
B) the placement of a community’s most important places of religious worships in “extramural”
locations (scattered through the countryside)
C) a vague undercurrent of human sacrifice
D) religion focused on the megaron at the center of the main political unit (palace or
household)
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48. What poet is famous for his odes in honor of athletic victors?
A) Alcaeus
B) Alcman
C) Anacreon
D) Pindar
49. The approximate date for the Trojan War (if it happened) and the destruction of the Bronze Age
Greek palace civilization is
A) 1650 B.C.
B) 1400 B.C.
C) 1200 B.C.
D) 750 B.C.
50. The Telemachy provides all of the following except
A) stories about Odysseus that are valuable to Telemachus’s self-discovery
B) “the power of xenia”
C) a trick-or-treat bag for Telemachus full of sesame crunch candy (which was commonly
consumed among the Iron Age peoples of the ancient Mediterranean)
D) a connection back to the Iliad through Nestor, Menelaus, and Helen
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