CLST 272-001: Heroes and Classical Epics

Fall Semester 2015
Dr. Jacqueline Long

MWF 8:15am - 9:05am
Crown Center 140

Study Questions

file in progress - perennially

The study questions in this file will be updated through the course of the semester. Keep watching this space!

Monday 12 October

• What concerns receive repeated emphasis in the episodes of Odysseus's Wanderings? How do they, with their repetitions and variations, help articulate a many-faceted account of who Odysseus is? For example - and then, how many more important ideas can you trace?
  • Where does Odysseus's record as a hero of the Trojan War matter? What aspects of his activities are especially important?
  • Where does Odysseus's leadership especially matter? What sort of relationship does he have with his crewmen - what "rules" seem to govern the way they treat one another? Besides the negotiation of authority and responsibility, what do Odysseus and his men mean to one another?
  • Where does Odysseus's humanity especially matter? Where is it confronted with monsters? Where is it confronted with animals? Where is it confronted with divinities? What do these different encounters imply about humanity?
  • Where does hospitality matter? What is received? What is offered? How does the relationship that is created help to define the nature of its parties? How closely do Odysseus's encounters in the Otherworld compare with real-life norms on view in Books I-IV, when Telemachus served as either host or guest?
  • Where do food and eating matter? What differences in patterns of food and eating are on view? How do they distinguish one group or character from another?
  • Where do sex and marriage matter? What do they make possible? What dangers do they pose, for whom?
• How do repetition and reconfiguration in different episodes help develop important themes within the Wanderings? How do these concerns connect with the remainder of the Odyssey?

• How does Poseidon react to the Phaeacians' granting Odysseus passage to Ithaca? What impact do his actions have upon the world?
• How does Athene intervene at the moment of Odysseus's return to Ithacan soil? How does Odysseus react? How do they reunite?
• Who is Eumaeus? How does he receive Odysseus?
• What stories does Odysseus tell Eumaeus about himself - what point do they aim at, and how do they go about striking there?
• Trace the omens and other promises of Odysseus's return that start to accumulate in the second half of the Odyssey. Who affirms how much, on what basis? What imagery is used?

Wednesday 14 October

From today's class:

• Identify and be able to discuss the ways Odysseus's Wanderings connect with concerns and operations of his Return:
  • What themes or other patterns of significance recur between the Wanderings and the Return? How do the episodes of the Wanderings serve as preparation for elements of the Return - both in terms of Odysseus's knowledge and competences and of your experience of the Odyssey as a reader or Homer's original audience's experience as listeners?
  • What does juxtaposing the Wanderings with the Return (rather than, for example, tracing Odysseus's whole trajectory chronologically) do for Homer's story-telling?
• In what spheres does the action of the Odyssey concentrate? What activities recur? Why are they important? How do repetition and variation explore the nature of these activities? What do these activities suggest the Odyssey is painting as an image of human nature and heroism?
• What does the fate of the Phaeacians suggest about the importance of Odysseus's Wanderings? Trace how divine power-politics operate in this episode. Compare and contrast to divine interactions throughout the Iliad.

For tonight's reading:

• Trace the omens and other promises of Odysseus's return that start to accumulate in the second half of the Odyssey. Who affirms how much, on what basis? What imagery is used?
• What is Eumaeus's background? What elements of his story resonate with Odysseus's experiences or prospects?
• What do Odysseus and Telemachus plan together? With whom do they think it is important to share information? With whom will they not share? Why and why not?

Friday 16 October

• Trace how Odysseus's actions on Ithaca put his and Athene's plan into action, and how the plan develops in response to action. How does Odysseus utilize knowledge, deception, and endurance?
• How does Homer call attention to Odysseus's attempts to get a cloak from Eumaeus? How do Odysseus's repetitions of this request build significance for the cloak, beyond its material benefits? How do truth, falsehood, and verification come together in Odysseus's requests: what does he show about his methods and long-term purposes? What does getting the cloak, at last, achieve for him?
• What depth does Eumaeus's life-story add to the Odyssey's portrait of the human world in which Eumaeus and Odysseus live? What inferences about human nature and what ideals for human conduct does Eumaeus confirm?
• How does Helen's parting-gift to Telemachus configure themes of women's familial roles, hospitality, and marriage and loyalty?
• How do truth and verification interrelate as concerns of the Odyssey - in these books, in connection especially with Odysseus's masquerade and prophecy, but also throughout the epic?

For tonight's reading:

• Of what Telemachus has learned about Odysseus, what information does he pass on to Penelope? How is this information contested, on what grounds?
• How is Odysseus treated when he comes as a beggar to his house in Ithaca by human dependents of the household; by animals; by Telemachus; by the suitors; by Penelope?
• Who is Irus? What is he doing at Odysseus's house? How does he treat Odysseus?
• How does Penelope challenge the suitors in Book 18? How does Odysseus interpret her challenge, and how does he react?

Monday 19 October

• Trace how concerns connected with hospitality play around Telemachus, both as guest and as host. In what ways does he re-play themes of hospitality that are connected, elsewhere in the Odyssey, to Odysseus? In what ways does Telemachus re-play themes of hospitality in connection with Odysseus presently?
• What patterns develop through episodes of hostile challenge Odysseus faces on his way to his home, and after he arrives there? Who gains power in these encounters? How?
• Trace how the narrative of the Odyssey brings Penelope closer, on the one hand, to contact with Odysseus, and, on the other hand, to the point of choosing a husband.
  • What actions and motivations are credited to Penelope, and what to Athene's inspiration? Compare and contrast Athene's interventions with Penelope to her interventions with Odysseus and with Telemachus: how much does the goddess do? How does she do it? What other impulses does Penelope identify as motivating her actions?
  • What concerns are identified as uppermost in Penelope's mind? How?
  • What reactions do Penelope's words and actions generate? How do other characters value her - in what ways, and for what qualities?

For tonight's reading:

• How do Penelope and Odysseus interact? What does she report about her own behavior in Odysseus's absence? What does she say she is going to do now? How does he react? What does she say she has dreamed, and how does he interpret it?
• What is the history of Odysseus's scar? What does it make happen now?
• Who is Philoetius? How does he identify himself and his sympathies? How does Odysseus respond?
• How does Telemachus assert himself before the suitors in Book 20? How do they respond?

Wednesday 21 October

• For each presentation, identify for yourself three (3) things that, in the light of our discussions this semester, you judge most important among the ideas the group presented about their books or more indirectly inspired you to think about. For each important idea you identify, identify also one (1) additional piece of evidence in the text by which you can confirm and carry further the idea you derived from the presentation.
• Trace how themes of truth and verification play around Penelope: how does she go about assessing how much she can rely on things she is told? What does she comment about the problem of verifying information? Consider supernatural evidence such as dreams and omens, hearsay evidence of what people say, and deeds and events - including the prospective archery-contest.
• What can Penelope's interview with Odysseus in Book 19 tell him about her? Consider both what she actually says and what he can infer from what she says.
• What do Odysseus's remarks in the interview of Book 19 contribute to Penelope's decisions? What events does she appear to be designing her decisions so as to produce? How will these events help resolve her troubles?
• How much does Penelope know? How can the audience tell? What does this question do for the audience?
• How does Odysseus's scar contribute to the plot of the Odyssey (what happens)? How does it contribute to the thematic development of the Odyssey (why what-happens matters)?

For tonight's reading:

• Who runs the archery-contest? On what basis of authority? How is authority contested?
• Who tries the bow? How does each attempter fare?
• Who fights on which side? With what results?
• What happens to the women? On what basis of authority?

Friday 23 October

• How does Odysseus's scar contribute to the plot of the Odyssey (what happens)? How does it contribute to the thematic development of the Odyssey (why what-happens matters)?
• To what considerations important in the Odyssey as a whole does the story of Odysseus's bow draw attention?
• What does the progress of the archery-contest suggest about the abilities and character of Telemachus, the suitors, particularly Antinous, and Odysseus?

For tonight's reading:

• When the suitors are dead, who first tells Penelope Odysseus has returned? What proof is offered? How does Penelope react? How does she verify the report: what information does she seek, and how does she conduct herself till she gets it?
• What do Odysseus and Penelope do once verification is achieved?
• What do the ghosts of the suitors report to the heroes of the Trojan War about Odysseus's return? How does Agamemnon assess the news?
• How does Odysseus effect his reunion with Laertes?
• How do the suitors' deaths affect their survivors on Ithaca? How are conflicts resolved?

Monday 26 October

• In what ways do the archery-contest and its aftermath fulfil the promise of the "Telemachy" in Books 1-4: how does Telemachus establish maturity without overstepping into conflict with his returned father?
• What motifs and replayed narratives in the climactic books of the Odyssey contribute to re-establishing Odysseus's identity -in its fullness- at his home? How? Compare and contrast Odysseus's interaction with Laertes to earlier, more spontaneous instances of this pattern: the scar, the bow, the bed, the tale of the Wanderings -- and what others can you identify?
• Why is Book 24 necessary? How does Laertes recover his identity through this action? Why do both Laertes' and Telemachus's identity matter to the story the Odyssey is telling about Odysseus?

• What rights does the Odyssey suggest that Odysseus is regarded as having? What responsibilities? How can you tell?
• Within the context of what Odysseus is regarded as justified or obliged to do, what methods does the Odyssey display Odysseus using to assert his rights and his identity? What do his methods imply about the nature of his distinctive excellence? In what ways does Odysseus both exemplify and transcend his humanity: what makes him a "hero" in ways ancient Greek culture identified "heroes"?
• How do different parties align themselves with respect to Odysseus and his identity and rights? How do their interactions reflect on Odysseus? Consider also what is distinctive in the different individuals' and groups' connections to Odysseus.
  • Penelope; Telemachus; Laertes
  • Eurycleia; Eumaeus; Philoetius
  • Melantho, Melanthius, and other disloyal servants
  • Antinous, Eurymachus, and the other suitors
  • the suitors' families
  • other citizens of Ithaca
  • Athena; Poseidon; other divinities
  • denizens of the Otherworld
  • Nestor; Menelaus; Helen; other participants in the Trojan War

Wednesday 28 October

• How do the different settings, challenges, and relationships surveyed by the Odyssey round out the picture of heroism sketched by the Iliad? What capacities does Odysseus in the Odyssey embody that are the same as heroic qualities portrayed in the Iliad? What capacities does Odysseus in the Odyssey embody that are different from heroic qualities portrayed in the Iliad? Do different qualities of Odysseus in the Odyssey appear as additions to or changes from the heroic qualities portrayed in the Iliad? How can you tell? Compare and contrast Odysseus in the Odyssey particulary to
  • Odysseus in the Iliad
  • Achilles in the Iliad
  • the collective of generally-held values as expressed by various characters in the Iliad (Hector, Sarpedon, Diomedes, Nestor, etc.)
• In what ways do Odysseus's experiences evoke common challenges of human life in the heroic Bronze Age of epic legend; in the rustic Dark Age in which developed the traditions of epic story-telling on which Homer drew; and in general, even now?

Review your reading, your notes, your quizzes, your presentation-papers, the Study Questions from before mid-term break and in this file, the Study Guide for Exam 2, and in short all material assigned to date, for Exam 2 on Friday.

• What are major concerns we have been focusing on? What are important ideas in the Odyssey? What passages especially well illustrate important concepts, patterns of understanding and interpretation, or kinds of expression? These key passages will be good things to refer to as evidence for proving points on your exam.
• What types of analysis have we brought to bear on our texts? You can apply techniques of analysis we have used on one passage, to another, and get still more out of it. On the exam, you should explain clearly how the evidence you are citing helps to support your insights.
• Study Questions (before mid-term break and in this file) flag important issues within the material we are studying. Typically they are fairly open-ended: they encourage you to think through the implications of our material, and explore the connections you find. Exam questions will suggest a tighter focus, in the interests of being possible to answer within the confines of an in-class exercise. But if you have been thinking about the issues raised by class discussions and the study questions, and noting passages of our texts that provide important evidence, you will be well prepared to write concrete, specific, persuasive essays on the exam.
• Assessment on the exam will look for familiarity with the material to the extent that you need to know what you're talking about in order to say meaningful things about it. But the main emphasis of the assessment will be on the skills of literary analysis and expression. Be sure to distinguish clearly between what the text actually, literally, says, and what the text means - then explain how reasoning takes you from one to the other.

Friday 30 October

• CONGRATULATIONS! You have completed the second examination.
• Keep thinking about the exam questions: in an even-more-perfect world, what more could you say about these topics?

• How does the opening of the Aeneid situate itself in mythological tradition? On whom does it focus attention first, so as to orient the audience? What familiar figures are concerned? What information is supplied?
• Who is Aeneas? What is he doing? What does he think about his activity and his present circumstances?
• Who is Dido? What is she doing? How does she receive her guests?
• Which gods are concerned in the action of the Aeneid? Why? What outcomes do they seek? What are they prepared to do in order to promote the outcomes they desire?

Monday 2 November

• Compare and contrast how Vergil introduces his composing-and-performing of the Aeneid to how Homer introduces his composing-and-performing of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
  • In what ways does Vergil invoke Homeric tradition, so as to imply continuity between what Homer did and what he is doing?
  • In what ways does Vergil suggest he is operating differently from Homer?
  • Compare and contrast the cultural background of Homer's epics and of Vergil's Rome: to what general differences do Vergil's differences from Homer correspond? Think of cultural trends in understanding epic poetry as a literary tradition, in heroic legend as material for story-telling, in the western Mediterranean as a place, and in Roman history as a context.
• How do fate and power-relationships among the gods promise to figure in the events whose story the Aeneid sets itself up to tell? How conflicted is the world of the gods over Aeneas's fate? Compare and contrast to divine concerns for the actions of the Iliad and of the Odyssey.
• How does Aeneas regard his fated future and its relationship to his past - both personally within himself, and as his people's leader? Continue to track this question as the Aeneid progresses.
• Compare and contrast Dido's circumstances and attitudes, as of the time when the Aeneid first introduces her, to Aeneas's.

• What account does Aeneas give of how the Trojan Horse was brought into Troy? Who does what to promote the idea of bringing the Horse into the city? Who objects? What happens to decide the question?
• What goals does Aeneas pursue during the last round of fighting, now within Troy? What goals does he pick for himself? How does he come to change goals, when he changes: what does he change to, and why?
• What happens to Priam? to Helen? to Creusa?

Wednesday 4 November

• According to Aeneas's narrative in Book 2, why did Troy fall? Distinguish reasons Aeneas himself identifies from reasons Aeneas gives information allowing a reader to identify, even if Aeneas himself does not identify that reason. What participants are involved in the Sack of Troy, according to Aeneas's narrative, at what levels?
  • What patterns of thought and actions does Aeneas highlight among the Greeks? How does his version interpret the Sack differently from how a Greek perspective might interpret it? Consider especially the interpretations we have seen in Homer's epics: analyze perspectives, and compare and contrast them on the basis of concrete details in Vergil's and Homer's texts.
  • What patterns of thought and actions does Aeneas highlight among the Trojans? What values and other character-traits does this episode ascribe to the Trojan people? (They are also, for Vergil and his readers, the Roman people-to-be.)
  • What other causes operated to cause the Sack? What larger patterns do these additional causes help shape?
• Why does Aeneas suggest he kept trying to fight on Troy's behalf? What values and attachments does he embody? What considerations change his mind?
• Compare and contrast the deaths of Laocoon, Priam, and Creusa. What actions cause their deaths, as Aeneas's narration portrays them? What emotions attach to their deaths - what do the deaths each contribute to Vergil's explanation for the end of Troy, and to his portrait of Aeneas? Identify concrete details of the text that support your interpretations.

• Track Aeneas's landfalls in his Wanderings. Where do the Trojans go? What do they hope to find, or try to do, at each site? What do they find and do?
• What encounters in Aeneas's Wanderings give Aeneas information about the future? How clear is the information he receives? How does he go about interpreting it: what kinds of authority does he consult, and what considerations shape his thinking?

Friday 6 November

• What happens, along the course of the Wanderings of Aeneas and the Trojans, that helps determine where they are going? How and why do these events change the Trojans' plans? How do they change the nature of the journey?
• In what ways do different landfalls of the Trojans re-play parts of their own national past? What ideas about the past and its viability do the events of these landfalls suggest? What elements of the past echo? How do these echoes enrich interpretation of the Trojans' ongoing experiences?
• In what ways do different landfalls of the Trojans re-play parts of epic tradition? What ideas about heroic epic do the events of these landfalls suggest: into what Homeric (or other) parallels are Aeneas and the Trojans cast? How do these parallels enrich interpretation of experiences within the context of the Aeneid?
• How do the events through which Aeneas progresses, understood chronologically (Book 2 - Book 3 - Book 1), change the position of leadership he occupies? What factors cause the nature of his "job" as leader to change?

• What does Dido want? Why: what forces shape her desires? What circumstances make her desires change? How does she reconcile old desires with new ones?
• What does Aeneas want? Why: what forces shape his desires? Does he change in his desires? When he changes the course of his actions, what causes him to make the changes? Can he reconcile old desires with new ones? Can he make himself want to do what he does or needs to do?

Monday 9 November

• Compare and contrast Aeneas's time in Carthage to the stopping-points of Odysseus's Wanderings where he has the prospect of remaining permanently.
  • How similar or how different are the prospects: what does Vergil suggest Aeneas stands to lose or gain by staying, as compared to what Homer suggests for Odysseus? How do the prospects for either hero compare to his long-term goals, as otherwise established in the epic?
  • What forces control Aeneas's having the possibility of staying permanently in Carthage, as compared to the forces controlling Odysseus's possibilities? Whose agency does Vergil show operating? What resistance and what counter-agency does it encounter? How does this picture of why Aeneas stays or goes characterize Aeneas and his fate?
  • On whose emotions does Vergil focus, at what points of Aeneas's stay in Carthage? Compare and contrast Homer's handling of Odysseus's stays at the various stopping-points of his Wanderings: how does Vergil's emotional focus color interpretation of this episode?
• What future would a Roman audience have recognized within Dido's curse? What did it mean for Roman history and identity? How does Vergil's portrait of Dido and this episode of the Aeneid connect with Roman self-imaging?

• What is the occasion of the games in Book 5? What sports are competed in? How are the contests determined? Compare and contrast to the funeral-games for Patroclus in the Iliad.
• What do the Trojan women do while the male Trojans are competing in the games? Why? What stops them?
• Who leaves Sicily, and who stays? Why?

Wednesday 11 November - Happy Armistice Day!

• How do the games in which male Trojans compete in Book 5 of the Aeneid look forward to future Roman cultural practices? As we work through the whole Aeneid, continue noting how Vergil treats such aetiological anticipations: what emphasis does he give them? Why would they matter to a Roman reader?
• How do the games in which male Trojans compete in Book 5 of the Aeneid work through themes of competition and reconciliation? How do the games effect social integration - both within their own framework and beyond? In what ways does Vergil show the games operating to help heal the Trojans' grief at various losses?
• In what ways do feelings the Trojan women express in Book 5 correspond to emotions Vergil also suggests male Trojans share? What insights does he gain for his poem by narrating women as vehicles for expressing emotions? What Roman gender-values does Vergil access - and how does his access critique them?
• How do the remedies offered for the women's feelings address the causes of distress that the women identify?

• What goals does Aeneas come to the Sibyl in order to pursue? What sort of a figure is she? How does she help to pursue Aeneas's goals?
• How does Vergil depict the underworld to which and through which the Sibyl leads Aeneas: what does it contain? how is it organized? whom does he see there? what interactions with the dead does he have? Compare and contrast to Odysseus and his experiences in the Land of the Dead.

Friday 13 November - absit omen!

• Compare and contrast Aeneas's viewing of the gates Daedalus built with his viewing of the doors to Juno's sanctuary in Carthage, with his viewing of the Underworld, and with other moments when Aeneas stands looking at things. What ideas about looking, as opposed to acting, does Vergil appear to be developing? What ideas does he appear to be developing about art as an object of looking?
• Why do Misenus and Palinurus matter to Aeneas's visit to the Underworld? Compare and contrast them to Elpenor in the Odyssey: how is Vergil developing his Homeric precedent? What new ideas does he add?
• Analyze the symbolism Vergil packs into the Golden Bough and the Ivory Gate. How do these elaborated artefacts relate to his narrative?
• What does Aeneas's visit to the Underworld achieve: what does he learn? what does he do? how do the figures he encounters relate to him? why does this visit matter to the story of Aeneas's mission to settle in Italy?

• Into what extended-family dynamics does Aeneas enter when he encounters Latinus: who plans what for whom? What relationships connect these people? What ancestry stretches back behind them to inform their identity now?
• How does Latinus receive Aeneas and the Trojans? What factors does he identify as important to their relationship?
• What does Allecto do to cause trouble: what forces does she mobilize, by what means, to what ends?
• Among the Italian forces, note the general types of characterizations and connections Vergil identifies, and in particular the figures of Mezentius, Turnus, and Camilla.

Monday 16 November

• In what ways does Vergil mark Book 7 as a new beginning to the Aeneid by devices of literary form and epic convention? In what ways does Book 7 function as a new beginning thematically?
• What motifs associated with Dido in Book 4 does Book 7 re-play? How do these echoes create connections between the events of Aeneas's stay in Carthage and of his arrival in Italy? What do they encourage a reader to expect?
• What analogies to the Trojan War do characters in the Aeneid draw, as Aeneas and the Trojans arrive in Italy? What expectations do the characters seem to be drawing from the likenesses they perceive? Compare and contrast to your own sense of how the Aeneid is developing in relationship to the Iliad and its back-story: how are the characters' unique roles in this story influencing the way they interpret the past and form expectations?
• In what ways do points of the narrative in Book 7 look ahead to Roman social and cultural institutions? How would these connections resonate for a Roman reader of the Aeneid?

• What information and instructions does the River Tiber give Aeneas? Compare and contrast to other information and instructions Aeneas has received about his mission.
• Who is Evander? Where does Aeneas meet him? How does he treat Aeneas? What information does he communicate to him - about what topics?
• What does Venus request of Vulcan, and how does he treat her request? What gets produced? Compare and contrast to similar scenes in the Iliad.
• What relationships connect Evander, Aeneas, and Pallas? To what other constellations of people in the Aeneid can this trio and their relationships be compared meaningfully?

Wednesday 18 November

• Compare and contrast Homer's emphasis in the Odyssey on hospitable reception of individual travelers with the welcomes offered to Aeneas and the Trojans by Dido, Latinus, and now Evander. What different emphases is Vergil building in these scenes of welcome, and how do they relate to his concerns in the Aeneid overall?
• To what patterns of behavior previously established in the Aeneid does Evander conform - what other characters constitute partial parallels for him and his interaction with Aeneas? Trace the parallels, comparing and contrasting points of similarity and difference. Why is Evander's being Greek, specifically, an important component of his performing these functions - in view of the Trojans' past and in view of the Romans' future? Consider both broad and specific elements of Greek identity in Greek and Roman epic and culture.
• How does Aeneas assess the arms Vulcan forges for him? What does he appreciate? What does he fail to appreciate? How does this episode compare to other moments of art-appreciation in which Vergil depicts him?

• What happens to the Trojans' ships? Why? How do those who see the event react?
• What do Nisus and Euryalus initially set out to do? What further purposes do they add on as they go? How do their actions work out? Why? What is at stake for the Trojans in each phase of their operation? What Homeric precedent does Vergil seem to be evoking with this episode - how similar and how different is his variation?
• Compare and contrast Vergil's battle-scenes to Homer's in the Iliad.
• What does Ascanius do for the first time in the battle of Book 9? How does his action work out? What Homeric precedents does Vergil invoke, to what effect?

Friday 20 November

• How do episodes of the war of Trojans and Italians re-play and alter elements of episodes in the war of Greeks and Trojans at Troy? How do characters identify themselves with Trojan-war precedents, and what expectations do they draw from their identifications? How much validity does Vergil imply for their identifications and expectations? What other factors condition the application of these parallels?
• How could a strictly rational analysis of goals, risks, benefits and losses weigh up Nisus's and Euryalus's expedition: what did they achieve? What other considerations does Vergil introduce into the problem of assessing the expedition? Compare and contrast Vergil's emotional assessment to his treatment of other episodes of the Aeneid.
• To what extent is Ascanius/Iulus yet able to play an adult role in the war?

• How do the gods assess current events in the war between Italians and Trojans? What considerations move them? What policies do they make?
• Compare and contrast the figures of Pallas and Lausus: who are they? how do they come to be participating in the war as they do? what acts do they perform and what qualities of themselves do they display? what happens to them? how do others react?
• What character does Mezentius show of himself on the battlefield? Compare and contrast to the description Evander reports of him in Book 8.

Monday 23 November

• How does Vergil emphasize the fact that Pallas is Evander's son, in connection with his aristeia and death? Why does this fact matter so much: how does it connect with other emphasis in the Aeneid on the relationships between fathers and sons?
• Compare and contrast to Zeus's conversation with Hera, in the Iliad, about Sarpedon, with the following scenes that evoke it: what ideas about divine connections with the human realm does Vergil pick up from Homer? how does he modify them?
  • Juno's request to preserve Turnus's life for a while; with what other Iliadic precedents does this scene also resonate, with what additional implications?
  • Hercules' reaction to Pallas's prayer for success; with what other Iliadic precedents does this scene also resonate, with what additional implications?
• How does Mezentius substitute love for his son Lausus for what a Roman would have considered the normal and proper network of social and religious relationships and responsibilities? In what ways does the narrative show this substitution mattering to Mezentius's actions in life, as ruler and as warrior, and to Mezentius's death?

• What does Aeneas do with Mezentius's arms? The object he constructs and the dedication he makes with it constitute a very particular cultural institution of the Roman world. (This passage uses the term "trophy", from a Greek word for a victory-monument constructed at the point where the line of battle broke and was "turned", yielding the victory.) What attitudes get attached to it? Where else have we seen the concept of such a trophy evoked?
• How is Pallas mourned? On whose reactions does Vergil focus? What ideas do these characters emphasize?
• Who is Drances? What sentiments about the community and its fortunes does he express?
• Trace Camilla's aristeia and the reactions it generates at divine and human levels. What ideas about gender and the wild countryside of Italy does she seem to represent?

Monday 30 November

• Trace the patterns of grief in the Aeneid, as individuals die in connection with Trojan/Roman destiny. What emotions do the deaths arouse in Vergil's other characters? in Vergil's readers? How do Vergil's accounts of the deaths produce these emotions? What ideas about war and death and national purpose does Vergil seem to be exploring - both within the story of the Aeneid and beyond it? Be able to analyze specific instances in concrete detail.
• What kind of a force in communal decision-taking does Drances represent? How do personal and public motives interact to produce his political opinions? On what bases of personal and public interest does Turnus criticize Drances' political opinions? Why does Vergil include such a character?
• Why does Latinus's attempt to make a compromise fail? What ideas about communal decision-making do his proposal and its failure present in action?

• Trace how Turnus sets himself up for his final conflict with Aeneas: what purposes does he embrace? what opposition does he overcome? why?
• Who is Juturna? What does she do? Who authorizes her actions? How far does the authorization extend? How does her involvement in action affect her emotions?
• What terms for combat does Aeneas set? How are his emotions involved in the action of war?
• What final conditions does Juno demand?

Wednesday 3 December

• Trace the course of agreements and violence in Book 12: what impulses work for peace, and what impulses disturb it? What do the individuals who promote violence want, whether they are causing violence deliberately or not? How do their actions operate (in accordance with their will, or not) so that they promote violence: what responses do their actions generate in others, and why?
• What insights into Turnus's attitudes and actions in war are suggested by the interactions between Juturna and Turnus? Compare and contrast with what Turnus's interactions with other characters suggest about him.
• What insights does Vergil suggest into the way(s) Aeneas assesses his own actions in the war?
  • What techniques does Vergil, as an epic poet, use to portray a character's interiority?
  • What assessment(s) of war and heroism does Aeneas's perspective suggest, in the context of the Aeneid's action? Does Aeneas's assessment seem to change over the course of the epic, or the book; if so, how does it change and what causes it to change?

• What sort of an epic is Vergil's Aeneid? What kind of a story does it tell? What emphases does it make in telling that story? What techniques does it use to tell its story? Compare and contrast to Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: in what ways does Vergil follow Homer's example, and in what ways does he make changes?
• What sort of a hero is Vergil's Aeneas? What kinds of concerns, relationships, and actions characterize him as an individual focus of attention within the Aeneid? Compare and contrast to Homer's Achilles, and other major warriors, within the Iliad and to Homer's Odysseus within the Odyssey.

Friday 4 December

• If you asked Homer and Vergil, "What is the essential purpose and nature of violent conflict," what answers do their epics suggest they each would give? What parts of their answers might be similar, and what parts different? Identify key passages in each epic that help you infer an answer, and explain how the course of specific events in the epic suggests underlying views. Points to consider could include:
  • What is at stake in the resolution of conflicting interests by violence?
  • In what ways does violence resolve conflict - and in what ways does it fail to make resolution?
  • What other purposes besides conflict-resolution does violence serve? How do our epic texts encourage their audiences to assess these goals?
• If you asked Homer and Vergil, "what makes a hero a hero," what answers do their epics suggest they each would give? What parts of their answers might be similar, and what parts different? Identify key passages in each epic that help you infer an answer, and explain how the course of heroes' specific actions suggests underlying views and values. Points to consider could include:
  • What do heroes achieve through their actions? To what extent do they shape the world around them? Who else is affected, and in what ways?
  • What do heroes want to achieve? How do their goals relate to the actions they take and the effects of their actions?
• If you asked Homer and Vergil, "What does epic poetry do for its audiences, as an image of epic conflict and heroic action (depending of course, Homer or Vergil, on how you define epic conflict and heroic action)," what answers do their epics suggest they each would give? What parts of their answers might be similar, and what parts different? Identify key passages in each epic that help you infer an answer, and explain how the ways the poets each relate their heroes' specific actions suggest underlying poetic values. Points to consider could include:
  • How does the poet approach his material? How does he portray himself or his enterprise?
  • What connections does the poet draw between the world in which he and his primary audience lived, and the world about which he tells?
  • What action does the poet ascribe to bards and other artistic story-tellers, within his narrative: how does he portray characters whose roles correspond to his own?

Review your reading, your notes, the Study Questions in this file and from before mid-term break, the Study Guide for the final exam, and in short all material assigned to date, for the final exam next Tuesday. (Obviously, Study Questions relating to the Iliad and Odyssey will be relevant for the Aeneid by way of comparison, rather than necessarily directly: see what good ideas comparison gives you.)

• What are major concerns we have been focusing on? What are important ideas in the Aeneid? What passages especially well illustrate important concepts, patterns of understanding and interpretation, or kinds of expression? These key passages will be good to refer to as evidence: equip yourself to indicate succinctly what pertinent information they say, and then to explain clearly how this information proves your insights.
• What types of analysis have we brought to bear on our texts? You can apply techniques of analysis we have used on one passage, to another, and get still more out of it. Again, the exam will be asking you to explain clearly how the evidence you are citing helps to support your ideas: you will be exercising critical thought and effective argumentation.
• Study Questions flag important issues within the material we are studying. Typically they are fairly open-ended: they encourage you to think through the implications of our material, and explore the connections you find. Exam questions will suggest a tighter focus, in the interests of being possible to answer within the confines of an time-limited exercise. But by thinking about the issues raised by class discussions and the study questions, and noting passages of our texts that provide important evidence, you will prepare yourself well to write concrete, specific, persuasive essays on the exam.
• Assessment on the exam will (as ever) look for familiarity with the material to the extent that you need to know what you're talking about in order to say meaningful things about it. But the main emphasis of the assessment will be on the skills of literary analysis and of academic expression. Be sure to distinguish clearly between what the text actually, literally, says, and what the text means - then explain how reasoning takes you from one to the other.

Thanks for a good semester. Good luck with all your end-of-term endeavors, and enjoy wonderful holidays!

Revised 4 December 2015 by jlong1@luc.edu
http://www.luc.edu/classicalstudies/