Sample exam questions: Part 1 1. Epic poetry Then bitterly Hera of the white arms answered him, saying: 55 'What you have said could be true, lord of the silver bow, only if you give Hektor such pride of place as you give to Achilleus. But Hektor was mortal, and suckled at the breast of a woman, while Achilleus is the child of a goddess, one whom I myself nourished and brought up and gave her as bride to her husband 60 Peleus, one dear to the hearts of the immortals, for you all went, you gods, to the wedding; and you too feasted among them and held your lyre, o friend of the evil, faithless forever.' In turn Zeus who gathers the clouds spoke to her in answer: 'Hera, be not utterly angry with the gods, for there shall not 65 be the same pride of place given both. Yet Hektor also was loved by the gods, best of all the mortals in Ilion. I loved him too. He never failed of gifts to my liking. Never yet has my altar gone without fair sacrifice, the smoke and the savour of it, since that is our portion of honour. 70 The stealing of him we will dismiss, for it is not possible to take bold Hektor secretly from Achilleus, since always his mother is near him night and day; but it would be better if one of the gods would summon Thetis here to my presence so that I can say a close word to her, and see that Achilleus 75 is given gifts by Priam and gives back the body of Hektor.' He spoke, and Iris storm-footed sprang away with the message, and at a point between Samos and Imbros of the high cliffs plunged in the dark water, and the sea crashed moaning about her. She plummeted to the sea floor like a lead weight which, mounted 80 along the horn of an ox who ranges the fields, goes downward and takes death with it to the raw-ravening fish. She found Thetis inside the hollow of her cave, and gathered about her sat the rest of the sea goddesses, and she in their midst was mourning the death of her blameless son, who so soon was destined 85 to die in Troy of the rich soil, far from the land of his fathers. (Iliad Book 24) 1 2. Drama QUEEN As the first interpreters of these dreams you have pronounced them favourable to my son and my household. May everything work out for the best. We will do everything for the gods and our friends beneath the earth, as you instruct, when we return to the palace. But there is 230 something I want to find out, my friends. In what part of the world do they say that Athens is situated? CHORUS Far away towards the west, where the Lord Sun sets. QUEEN Was this the city my son was so eager to make his prey? CHORUS Yes, for thus all Hellas would become subject to the King. QUEEN Do they have such a large supply of men for their army? 235 CHORUS Their army is large enough; it did the Medes great harm. QUEEN Besides their men what else do they have? Is there plenty of wealth in their palace? CHORUS They have a spring of silver, a treasury in the earth. QUEEN Do they wield bows and arrows in their hands? CHORUS Not at all. They have spears for close combat and are equipped with shields. QUEEN 240 Who leads them and is sole commander of the army? CHORUS They are called neither the slaves nor subjects of any single man. QUEEN So how then can they withstand hostile invaders? CHORUS Well enough to have destroyed Dareios' large and excellent army. QUEEN What you say is terrible for the parents of our men to contemplate. 245 (Aeschylus Persians) (Aeschylus Persians) 2 3. Other poetry When that senator’s wife, Eppia, eloped with her fancy swordsman To the land of the Nile, the Alexandrian stews, Egypt itself cried out at Rome’s monstrous morals. Husband, family, sister, all were jettisoned, not One single thought for her country; shamelessly she forsook Her tearful children, as well as – this will really surprise you – The public games, and her favourite matinée star. Luxury-reared, cradled by Daddy in swansdown, Brought up to frills and flounces, Eppia nevertheless Made as light of the sea as she did of her reputation – 90 Not that our pampered ladies set any great store by that. Boldly she faced this long and arduous voyage, The chop and toss of Tuscan waters, the loud Ionian swell. When a woman endures danger and hardship In a good cause, her conscience clear, then chill Terror ices her heart, her knees turn to water, She can scarcely stand upright; but wicked audacity Breeds its own fortitude. To go aboard ship is torture Under a husband’s orders: then the smell of the bilges Is sickening, then the sky wheels dizzily around. 100 But a wife who’s off with her lover suffers no qualms. The one Pukes on her husband, the other sits down to a hearty Meal with the crew, takes a turn round the quarter-deck, Helps to haul on the sheets, and enjoys it. What was the youthful Charm that so fired our senator’s wife? What hooked her? What did Eppia see in him to make her put up With being labelled ‘The Gladiatress’? Her poppet, her Sergius Was no chicken, forty at least, with a dud arm that held promise Of early retirement. Besides, his face looked a proper mess – Helmet-scarred, a great wen on his nose, an unpleasant Discharge from one constantly weeping eye. What of it? He was a gladiator. That name makes all the breed 110 Seem handsomer than Adonis; this was what she preferred To her children and her country, her sister, her husband: steel Is what they all crave for. Yet this same Sergius, Once pensioned off, would soon have bored her as much as her husband. Do such private scandals move you? Are you shocked by Eppia’s deeds? (Juvenal Satire 6) 3 4. Historiography ‘In short, I say that as a city we are the school of Hellas; while I doubt if the world can produce a man, who where he has only himself to depend upon, is equal to so many emergencies, and graced by so happy a versatility, as the Athenian. And that this is no mere boast thrown out for the occasion, but plain matter of fact, the power of the state acquired by these habits proves. For Athens alone of her contemporaries is found when tested to be greater than her reputation, and alone gives no occasion to her assailants to blush at the antagonist by whom they have been worsted, or to her subjects to question her title by merit to rule. Rather, the admiration of the present and succeeding ages will be ours, since we have not left our power without witness, but have shown it by mighty proofs; and far from needing a Homer for our panegyrist, or other of his craft whose verses might charm for the moment only for the impression which they gave to melt at the touch of fact, we have forced every sea and land to be the highway of our daring, and everywhere, whether for evil or for good, have left imperishable monuments behind us. Such is the Athens for which these men, in the assertion of their resolve not to lose her, nobly fought and died; and well may every one of their survivors be ready to suffer in her cause.’ (Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War 2.41) 5. Letter I’m glad to hear, from these people who’ve been visiting you, that you live on friendly terms with your slaves. It is just what one expects of an enlightened, cultivated person like yourself. ‘They’re slaves,’ people say. No. They’re human beings. ‘They’re slaves.’ But they share the same roof as ourselves. ‘They’re slaves.’ No, they’re friends, humble friends. ‘They’re slaves.’ Strictly speaking they’re our fellow-slaves, if you once reflect that fortune has as much power over us as over them. This is why I laugh at those people who think it degrading for a man to eat with his slave. Why do they think it degrading? Only because the most arrogant of conventions has decreed that the master of the house be surrounded at his dinner by a crowd of slaves, who have to stand around while he eats more than he can hold, loading an already distended belly in his monstrous greed until it proves incapable any longer of performing the function of a belly, at which point he expends more effort in vomiting everything up than he did in forcing it down. And all this time the poor slaves are forbidden to move their lips to speak, let alone to eat. The slightest murmur is checked with a stick; not even accidental sounds like a cough, or a sneeze, or a hiccup are let off a beating. All night long they go on standing about, dumb and hungry, paying grievously for any interruption. (Seneca Letter 47) 4 6. Inscription C. Plinius Secundus, son of Lucius, of the voting tribe Oufentina, consul, augur, propraetorian legate of the province of Pontus and Bithynia who was sent to that province with consular power, following a vote of the senate, by the emperor Caesar Nerva Trajan Augustus Germanicus, conqueror of Dacia, father of his country; he was curator of the river Tiber’s channel and banks and of the sewers of the city, prefect of the treasury of Saturn, prefect of the military treasury, praetor, tribune of the plebs, quaestor of the emperor, sevir of the Roman equites, military tribune of Legion III Gallica, decemvir for judging cases, ordered in his will that baths be constructed from (amount lost) sesterces and that a further 300,000 sesterces be added for their decoration and another 200,000 sesterces for their upkeep. He also bequeathed 1,866,666 sesterces to the city for the support of his one hundred freedmen, the increase of which he wished put toward a banquet for the urban plebs thereafter, [lacuna]. While alive, he gave 500,000 sesterces for the support of boys and girls of the urban plebs, and he gave 100,000 sesterces for the library and its upkeep. (Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum V 5262. Comum. Early second century CE) 7. Pottery Dipylon amphora Athens c.725BCE 5 8. Sculpture Athens: Parthenon. South metope XXXI. Lapith and centaur. 447–439 BCE 6 9. Architecture Athens: Acropolis. The Propylaea (437–432 BCE), looking north east from the Nike bastion. 7 Sample exam questions: Part 2 Group A (Red) Prepare an answer to the question: What motivates the Homeric gods to take an interest in the lives of mortals? Group B (Blue) Prepare an answer to the question: To what extent do the sources you have studied in Block 2 reveal social tensions in fifth-century Athens? Answer with reference to at least two of the following: the art and architecture of the Acropolis, the Epitaphios Logos, Persians and Lysistrata. Group C (Green) Prepare an answer to the question: What kinds of propaganda did Augustus employ to promote his image and convey his ideology to the Roman people? Group D (Yellow) Prepare an answer to the question: ‘The Roman élite lost no opportunity to display their status.’ Does the available evidence support this statement? Answer with reference to Roman dining, the Roman theatre, amphitheatre and circus, and their houses and tombs. 8