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Examination Paper
Examination Session:
May/June
Title: Introduction to the Greek World
Release Date/Time
Latest Submission Date/Time
Format of Exam
Duration:
Word/Page Limit:
Additional Material provided:
Expected form of Submission
Submission method
Instructions to Candidates: Candidates should attempt both questions.
CLAS1601-WE01
Year: Exam Code:
2021 CLAS1601-WE01
13 May 2021 – 09:30
14 May 2021 – 09:30
Take home exam
Within the 24 hour window, it is expected that you will spend
approximately 3 hours in total on this paper.
We expect essays to be in the range of 1000-1300 words; there
is an absolute maximum word-limit of 1700 words (10% leeway
as detailed in the UG handbook does not apply)
We expect commentaries to be in the range of 400-600 words;
there is an absolute maximum word-limit of 700 words (10%
leeway as detailed in the UG handbook does not apply)
N/A
Word Document using template provided or PDF of handwritten
work (PDF option applies to Greek language exams only)
Your uploaded file should be named with your student ID and
the Exam Code e.g 000123456 CLAS1111-WE01
Turnitin
Question 1 carries 40 marks (20 marks for each commentary)
Question 2 carries 60 marks (30 marks for each essay)
The paper as a whole counts for 100% of the total assessment
for the module
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Question 1.

Select TWO of the following sources, and comment on the content, context and significance of each.

You MUST select ONE passage from (a)-(c) and ONE image from (d)-(f).

(a) Isocrates Panegyricus 23 (Loeb tr.)

For it is admitted that our city is the oldest and the greatest in the world and in the eyes of all men
the most renowned. But noble as is the foundation of our claims, the following grounds give us even
a clearer title to distinction: for we did not become dwellers in this land by driving others out of it, nor
by finding it uninhabited, nor by coming together here a motley horde composed of many races; but
we are of a lineage so noble and so pure that throughout our history we have continued in
possession of the very land which gave us birth, since we are sprung from its very soil and are able
to address our city by the very names which we apply to our nearest kin; for we alone of all the
Hellenes have the right to call our city at once nurse and fatherland and mother.

(b) Aeschylus, Persians 739-753 (Loeb tr.)

[Ghost of Darius] Ah, how swiftly the oracles have come true! Zeus has launched the fulfilment of
the prophecies against my son. I used to think confidently, “I suppose the gods will fulfil them in
some distant future”; but when a man is in a hurry himself, the god will lend him a hand. Now, it
seems, there has been discovered a fountain of sorrow for all who are dear to me—and it is my son,
by his youthful rashness, who has achieved this without knowing what he was doing. He thought he
could stop the flow of the Hellespont, the divine stream of the Bosporus, by putting chains on it, as
if it were a slave; he altered the nature of its passage, put hammered fetters upon it, and created a
great pathway for a great army. He thought, ill-counselled as he was, that he, a mortal, could lord it
over all the gods and over Poseidon. Surely this was a mental disease that had my son in its grip! I
am afraid that the great wealth I gained by my labours may be overturned and become the booty of
the first comer.

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c) Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.37 (Loeb tr.)

We live under a form of government which does not emulate the institutions of our neighbours; on
the contrary, we are ourselves a model which some follow, rather than the imitators of other peoples.
It is true that our government is called a democracy, because its administration is in the hands, not
of the few, but of the many; yet while as regards the law all men are on an equality for the settlement
of their private disputes, as regards the value set on them it is as each man is in any way
distinguished that he is preferred to public honours, not because he belongs to a particular class,
but because of personal merits; nor, again, on the ground of poverty is a man barred from a public
career by obscurity of rank if he but has it in him to do the state a service.

(d) Ostrakon bearing the name “Kallias, son of Kratios” and a Persian archer on the
reverse; ca. 471 BCE (Kerameikos Museum, Athens; inv.no. Ο849 / 3616)

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(e) Panathenaic black-figure amphora, both sides, dating late 6th to early 5th century BCE
(Hood Museum, Dartmouth: C.959.53; Beazley number 351283)

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(f) Red-figure cup, 500 to 450 BCE (Louvre G 121; Beazley number 205123)

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Question 2. Answer TWO of the following essay questions.

a) Can we trust ancient accounts of archaic Greek “colonisation”?

b) Why was Sparta never ruled by a tyrant?

c) Was Herodotus a cultural relativist? Support your answer with examples.

d) “The primary goal of the Athenian Empire was the enrichment of Athens.” Do you agree?

e) Did Thucydides invent the Peloponnesian War?

f) “Mistresses we keep for the sake of pleasure, concubines for the daily care of our persons,
but wives to bear us legitimate children” (Against Neaira 59.122). Discuss this categorisation
of the roles of Athenian women.

g) What was the point of religious festivals in the ancient Greek world?

h) How has Kenneth Dover's view of Greek homosexuality been revised by more recent
scholars?

END OF PAPER