Midterm Preparation Assignment for Wed. Oct. 14 Clas. 4110

I. Terms and ideas from lectures (30%). Review the following for a practise test in section. The introductions to the texts, your notes and your friends' notes will be your resources. Study groups are encouraged.
Identify and state the relevance to the study of epic literature of the following. Be brief (roughly 3-4 line answers are expected) and include an example from the Iliad, Odyssey or Gilgamesh, where possible.

Literary	Archaeological/Historical
aristeia	750-700 BCE
arming scenes	boat-building
athletic games	battle scenes
'best of the Achaians' (who? why does it matter?)	Bronze Age (dates, relevance to epic)
Catalogue of Ships	chariots (uses in and out of battle, who rides in these)
catalogues (in epic)	Homer (a person?)
conflict between main characters (basis? what's at issue?)	a "king" in Homer (power base, status)
conflict within a main character (basis? what's at issue?)	Mesopotamia or Uruk
council scenes	mortise and tenon joints or pitch (as used in boat- building - how, why?)
death of the hero (importance/representation in any text we've read)	Mycenae or Pylos or Knossos (what, where, and who comes from here)
divine intervention (circumstances, restrictions?)	Ninevah tablets (or Assurbanipal's library at Ninevah)
ecphrasis	a 'town' in Homer (layout, approx. size, construction)
Epic Cycle	Troy, Heinrich Schliemann
epic hero	weapons and armour (helmets, shields, spears, sword, cuirass, greaves)
epic poetry (what is it? typical features?)
epic simile	Religious
Homeric flashbacks (and narrative organization, e.g. starting in medias res)	god-protege relationship
Homeric foreshadowing	goddess-mortal lover relationships
kleos	Olympian gods (Homer's contribution?)
lament	prayer
landscape description	sacrifice (who, why, and what relationship to the gods)
legend/folklore/myth (difference from epic poetry?)	theodicy (=divine justice)
meter (importance to epic?)
parody/comic relief	Linguistic
recklessness, in Homer	patronymic
return (nostos) stories	Akkadian
single combat scene	ancient Greek
songs of Demodocus	Fitzgerald's translation
songs of Phemios	formula
speaking name	Homeric Greek ("artificial dialect")
Standard Babylonian Version	Lattimore's translation
Telemachy	Milman Parry
the hero's friend/substitute/double	oral poetry
type scenes	(Yugoslavian) guslar (relevance to epic)
visit to the underworld (nekuia, crossing the waters of death)
witch-in-the-woods tales
wrath (menis) stories
xenia (hospitality obligations)
invocation (of a muse/goddess)
Argonautica (=Voyage of Argo)

II. Commentary on a passage (25%). Please write in continuous prose (no point form answers on the midterm). In the space of roughly one page:
1) Situate the passage in the work. Be succinct (one-two sentences) and precise.
2) Explain the significance of this passage to major themes or critical issues in the poem discussed in this course


Gods and the Supernatural

1.
This is a disastrous matter when you set me in conflict
with Hera, and she troubles me with recriminations.
Since even as things are, forever among the immortals
she is at me and speaks of how I help the Trojans in battle.
Even so, go back again now, go away, for fear she
see us. I will look to these things that they be accomplished.
See then, I will bend my head that you may believe me.
For this among the immortal gods is the mightiest witness
I can give, and nothing I do shall be vain nor revocable
nor a thing unfulfilled when I bend my head in assent to it.'
From The Iliad of Homer, Tr. Richmond Lattimore, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London: 1951.

2.
Ninsun went into her room, she put on a dress becoming to her body, she put on jewels to make her breast beautiful, she placed a tiara on her head and her skirts swept the ground. Then she went up to the altar of the Sun, standing upon the roof of the palace; she burnt incense and lifter her arms to Shamash as the smoke ascended: 'O Shamash, why did you give this restless heart to Gilgamesh, my son; why did you give it?'
From The Epic of Gilgamesh, An English Version with an Introduction, N.K. Sandars, Penguin Books: 1972.

3
. My word, how mortals take the gods to task!
All their afflictions come from us, we hear.
And what of their own failings? Greed and folly
double the suffering in the lot of man.
See how Aigisthos, for his double portion,
stole Agamemnon's wife and killed to soldier
on his homecoming day. And yet Aigisthos
knew that his own doom lay in this. We gods
had warned him, sent down Hermes Argeiphontes
our most observant courier, to say:
'Don't kill the man, don't touch his wife...'
From The Odyssey: Homer. Tr. Robert Fitzgerald, Vintage Classics, New York: 1990.


The Epic Hero

1.
Swift that loveliest goddess answered me:
'Must you have battle in your heart forever?
The bloody toil of combat? Old contender,
will you not yield to the immortal gods?
That nightmare cannot die, being eternal
evil itself - horror, and pain, and chaos:
there is no fighting her, no power can fight her,
all that avails is flight. Lose headway
along that rockface while you break out arms,
and she'll swoop over you, I fear, once more,
taking one man again for every gullet.'
From The Odyssey: Homer. Tr. Robert Fitzgerald, Vintage Classics, New York: 1990.

2.
'Hear me, great one of Uruk,
I weep for Enkidu, my friend,
Bitterly moaning like a woman mourning
I weep for my brother.
O Enkidu, my brother
You were the axe at my side,
My hand's strength, the sword in my belt,
The shield before my,
A glorious robe, my fairest ornament;
An evil Fate has robbed me.
From The Epic of Gilgamesh, An English Version with an Introduction, N.K. Sandars, Penguin Books: 1972.

3.
As when some stalled horse who has been corn-fed at the manger
breaking free of he rope gallops over the plain in thunder
to his accustomed bathing place in a sweet-running river
and in the pride of his strength holds high his head, and the mane floats
over his shoulders; sure of his glorious strength, the quick knees
carry him to the loved places and the pasture of horses;
so from uttermost Pergamos cam Paris, the son of
Priam, shining in all his armour of war as the sung shines,
laughing aloud, and his quick feet carried him;
From The Iliad of Homer, Tr. Richmond Lattimore, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London: 1951.

Women in Epic


1.
She said, 'Come to me Gilgamesh, and be my bridegroom; grant me seed of your body, let me be your bride and you shall be my husband. I will harness for you a chariot of lapis lazuli and of gold, with wheels of gold and horns of copper; and you shall have mighty demons of the storm for draft-mules. When you enter our house in the fragrance of cedar-wood, threshold and throne will kiss your feet.'
From The Epic of Gilgamesh, An English Version with an Introduction, N.K. Sandars, Penguin Books: 1972.

2.
His loving nurse Eurykleia gave a cry,
and tears sprang to her eyes as she wailed softly:
'Dear child, whatever put this in your head?
Why do you want to go so far in the world --
and you our only darling? Lord Odysseus
died in some strange place, far from his homeland.
Think how, when you have turned your back, these men
will plot to kill you and share all your things!
Stay with your own, dear, do. Why should you suffer
hardship and homelessness on the wild sea?'
From The Odyssey: Homer. Tr. Robert Fitzgerald, Vintage Classics, New York: 1990.

3.
She came on Helen in the chamber; she was weaving a great web,
a red folding robe, and working into it the numerous struggles
of Trojans, breakers of horses, and bronze-armoured Achaians,
struggles that they endured for her sake at the hands of the war god.
Iris of the swift fee stood beside her and spoke to her:
From The Iliad of Homer, Tr. Richmond Lattimore, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London: 1951.