GREEK CORE REVISON

CONTENTS OF THIS DOCUMENT:

Structure of the paper 3

Text-reading 3

Exam technique advice 3

Synopses 4

Alpha texts 4

Hippolytus 4

Thesmophoriazusae 5

Herodotus Histories Book 1 7

Pindar Odes 13

Ajax 15

Text-specific content notes 18

Hippolytus 18

Gods and Hippolytus 18

Values 21

Extra notes 22

Thesmophoriazusae 26

Scythian Archer’s Greek 26

Paratragedy 26

Ajax 29

Hero cult 29

Values 31

Herodotus 34

Croesus 34

Sources and Method 39

Truth and history 41

Herodotean themes 43

Pindar 46

Truth and deception 46

Unity 47

Ideology 48

Individual odes 52

General notes on all texts 56

Values and morality 56

Tragedy 56

Genre 57

Comedy and Tragedy 57

Gender 59

Gender roles 59

Gender in tragedy 61

Women in comedy 63

Gender in Herodotus 64

Rhetoric and Deception 65

Contemporary issues 67

Beginnings 72

Orality and literacy 73

Commentaries 75

Structure of the paper

Paper 1

Paper length: 3 hours

1. Commentary

3 passages (must comment on two).

2. Two essays

You can do one text-specific question, but the others are more general.

Paper 2

Paper length: 1.5 hours

3 translation passages (will be different from the ones set for commentary in morning)

Text-reading

There are five set texts:

Commentary passages:

2014: Pythian 9, Sophocles, Herodotus

2013: Olympian 1, Hippolytus, Thesmophoriazusae

2012: Pythian 1, Sophocles, Hippolytus

2011: Sophocles, Hippolytus, Herodotus

2010: Pythian 9, Hippolytus, Thesmophoriazusae

2009: Sophocles, Thesmophoriazusae, Herodotus

Exam technique advice

• Don’t be Athenocentric

• Essays

  • Commonest fault = lack of detail from texts

  • Good to mention texts not on the syllabus – rewarded if you do

    • Old Oligarch, Aristophanes, Empedocles, Hippocratics, Thucydides, Gorgias, Protagoras, Plato, Hecataeus

  • Extended comparisons & proper development of extended arguments not encountered often enough

  • Don’t need to talk about every texts in every essay

  • Stronger candidates probe & nuance the terms of question in often subtle & interesting ways

    • But do stick to terms of question

  • Don’t essay-dump tutorial essays

  • With terms, think about how they might be translated into Greek

• Commentaries

  • Essential to analyse a passage in detail first before making more general comments. Don’t just recourse to thematic material.

  • Pindar: good to talk about style, rhetoric, language, structure, ring-composition, metaphor, relationship between laudator/laudandus

    • How a particular myth is being manipulated

    • Need to know and explain mythic references

    • i.e. what’s significance of using Theban myth in Cyrene?

  • Drama – not enough people comment on staging (who is on stage, entrances and exits)

Synopses

Alpha texts

Hippolytus

Thesmophoriazusae

Opening

• Conversation between Euripides and Inlaw. Euripides won’t say where they’re going. Discussion of hearing and sight.

• They arrive at Agathon’s house. Poncy slave comes out.

Agathon’s house

• Agathon comes and sings a song to Artemis and Apollo

• Inlaw is confused at Agathon’s strange dress, Agathon explains how poets must write like their appearance

• Euripides asks Agathon to go to the Thesmophoria to speak in his defence

• Agathon refuses, but Inlaw volunteers

• Euripides transforms Inlaw by shaving his cheeks singeing his buttocks, and dressing him up in Agathon’s clothes

• Euripide promises to rescue Inlaw if anything happens to him

• Inlaw has a solo speech getting into the role as if he were really a woman on her way to the...

Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Greek Literature of the 5th century Notes.