WESTERN CIVILIZATIONS I

STUDY GUIDE 30
CLASSICAL GREECE
Spring 2020

Please answer the following questions. Use the Timelines, the class handouts, and your lecture notes as
guides.
Please note that some of the answers have been provided (in bold print).
Finally, you can always email me if you have questions : nhohmann@sfcm.edu

CLASSICAL GREECE

1. DRAMA continued : Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

a. What was the riddle of the Sphinx that Oedipus solved ? (Give the riddle and its answer.)
b. Who was Lord Tiresias, and what did Sophocles believe is the relationship
between eyes and truth as exemplified in Lord Tiresias ?
c. Who was Jocasta, and why did she not believe in prophecies ?
d. What happens to Jocasta, Oedipus and Creon at the end of this drama ?
e. How do Oedipus and Laocoön illustrate the Greek definition of “tragedy” ?
f. What do the following phrases mean in the context of this drama, and who says each of
these :
1. great laws tower above us
2. chance rules our lives

2. The Underworld (the land of the living “dead”) :

a. What are: Hades, Cerberus, Charon, Styx, Elysian Fields, Tartarus, Lethe ?
b. What role did King Minos play in the Underworld ?
c. Who were some of the great heroes who, although alive, went to the Underworld
and then came back to the world of the living ?

3. Greek music:

a. Who was Orpheus ? He played which instrument and he was associated with which God ?

b. What is the story of Orpheus in the Underworld, and what is the name of his beloved ?

c. Who was Dionysos, and what is his Latin name ? Who was his mother ?

d. What were the Maenads, and what is their Latin name ?

e. What does the aphorism mean: “Music has charms to soothe the savage beast” ?

f. How did Orpheus die and who killed him ?

g. Especially important : Explain the Greek concept of the duality of music, as exemplified in
Orpheus, Dionysos, and Apollo.
 h. Especially important : What is the implication that Apollo is both the god of music, and also
the god of medicine and healing ? And once again, how does this intersect the duality of
music ?

i. What are: panflute, aulos, lyre, kithara ?

j. Who are the Muses, and what did they represent (collectively) ?

k. What did Mount Parnassus have to do with Apollo ?

l. Which 18th-century composer wrote the famous Dance of the Blessed Spirits ?

m. Which 19th-century composer included the famous “Can-Can” or galop infernal in his
rendition of Orpheus searching for Eurydice ?

4. The Peloponnesian Wars:

a. True or False : Athens attempted to turn the Delian League, an alliance, into an empire for its
own benefit.

b. Cities of the Delian League suspected that Athens was paying for the construction of its
great acropolis and the Parthenon by using whose money ? Who was Pericles ?

c. Who were the main antagonists of the Peloponnesian War — specifically, Athens was
fighting which major Greek cities ?

ANSWER : Not only against Sparta, but also against Corinth and Thebes

d. What was the purpose of the famous Funeral Oration of Pericles ?

e. What principles does the Melian Dialogue articulate — for example, how did Athens justify
its attack upon the small and neutral island of Melos ? What happened to the people of Melos ?

f. Which Athenian playwright was shocked by the Melian campaign, and which drama did he
write in response as a protest ?

g. At the end of the war, what happened to Athens ? Which cities now dominated Aegean
Greece ?

h. Why was this Peloponnesian War so disastrous for the Greek world ?