Stories/characters Flashcards
(16 cards)
How does the Aeneid begin?
Classical
Begins with a statement if theme, “I sing of arms and of man…”, an invocation of the muse, and the conflict (Juno hates the Trojans).
Who wrote Lysistrata?
Summarize it.
Classical
Aristophanes.
It is an anti war comedy.
The women of the Greek states of Sparta, Boeotia, and Corinth refuse to have sex with their husbands until a time of peace.They want to see an end to the Peloponnesian war.
Explain Sophocles’ stories:
Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone.
Classical
After fulfilling the prophecy of killing his father, Laius, and marrying his mother, Jocasta, Oedipus fathers four children: the sisters Antigone and Ismene, and brothers Eteocles and Polyneices.
When Oedipus learns his true parentage he blinds himself; Jocasta hangs herself.
The children debate the succession. Eteocles and Polyneices agree to share rulership of Thebes, alternating active command yearly. Eteocles reigns first, and when his year is up he refuses to yield the throne. Polyneices attacks Thebes. Polyneices and Eteocles die at one another’s hands.
Creon, brother of Jocasta and acting regent of Thebes, decrees that because Polyneices has waged war against his own city, he will not be buried, an act which will prevent him from finding peace in the afterlife.
Antigone defies the decree and performs the burial ceremonies for her brother. For this Creon has Antigone entombed alive within a cave. There she commits suicide, and Haemon (Creon’s son), her lover, finds her body and commits suicide beside it.
What 3 stories did Sophocles write?
Classical
Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone.
Summarize Aristophanes “the frogs.”
Classical
The god Dionysus, despairing of the state of Athens’ tragedians, travels to Hades to bring Euripides back from the dead to rescue the Athenians.
However, in the underworld, a small “civil war” is going on. Euripides, who had only just recently died, is challenging the great Aeschylus to the seat of ‘Best Tragic Poet’ at the dinner table of Pluto.
A contest is held with Dionysus as judge. Dionysus eventually chooses Aeschylus, although he had originally set out to retrieve Euripides, because he knew “from the depth of his heart” that the traditional and morally sound Aeschylus was the only tragic poet for the job.
Who wrote “the frogs”?
Summarize it.
Classical
Dionysus, despairing of the state of Athens’ tragedians, travels to Hades to bring Euripides back from the dead to rescue the Athenians.
In the underworld, a small “civil war” is going on.
Euripides, recently dead, is challenging the great Aeschylus to the seat of ‘Best Tragic Poet’ at the dinner table of Pluto.
A contest is held with Dionysus as judge.
Dionysus eventually chooses Aeschylus, although he had originally set out to retrieve Euripides, because he knew “from the depth of his heart” that the traditional and morally sound Aeschylus was the only tragic poet for the job.
-Vade Mecum
Aeschylus wrote what trilogy? Summarize it.
Classical
The Oresteia is a trilogy of tragedies about the end of the curse on the House of Atreus.
Aeschylus wrote a trilogy of which only the first book survives. Summarize it.
Classical
There is evidence that it was the first play in a trilogy, but the other two plays, Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus Pyrphoros, survive only in fragments.
The play is composed almost entirely of speeches and contains little action since its protagonist is chained and immobile throughout.
At the beginning, Cratos (power), Bia (violence), and Hephaestus the smithy-god chain Prometheus to a mountain in the Caucasus and then depart.
The daughters of Okeanos, who make up the chorus, appear and attempt to comfort Prometheus by conversing with him.
Okeanos himself, a friend, arrives and warns Prometheus not to arouse the further wrath of Zeus by boasting of the god’s future overthrow.
Prometheus is then visited by Io, a maiden whom Zeus pursued, and who has been changed into a cow by Zeus to save her from the wrath of Hera; Prometheus gives her knowledge of her own future, telling her that one of her descendants will release him from his torment.
Finally, Hermes the messenger-god is sent down by the angered Zeus to demand that Prometheus tell him who threatens to overthrow him. Prometheus refuses, and Zeus strikes him with a thunderbolt that plunges Prometheus into the abyss.
Cupid and Psyche (Roman myth)
Classical
100ADish
The tale of Cupid and Psyche first appeared as a digressionary story told by an old woman in Lucius Apuleius’ novel, The Golden Ass.
Apuleius probably used an earlier folk-tale as the basis for his story. It is for the most part a mixture of straightforward fairy tale and parody.
Psyche, in Roman mythology, is a beautiful princess loved by Cupid, god of love. Jealous of Psyche’s beauty, Venus, goddess of love, ordered her son, Cupid, to make Psyche fall in love with the ugliest man in the world. Fortunately for Psyche, Cupid instead fell in love with her and carried her off to a secluded palace where he visited her only by night, unseen and unrecognized by her. Although Cupid had forbidden her ever to look upon his face, one night Psyche lit a lamp and looked upon him while he slept. Because she had disobeyed him, Cupid abandoned her, and Psyche was left to wander desolately throughout the world in search of him. Finally, after many trials she was reunited with Cupid and was made immortal by Jupiter, king of the gods.
Niobe Greek Myth
Classical
Niobe
A mortal woman in Greek mythology, Niobe, daughter of Tantalus and either Euryanassa, Eurythemista, Clytia, Dione, or Laodice, and the wife of Amphion, boasted of her superiority to Leto because she had fourteen children (Niobids), seven male and seven female, while Leto had only two. Apollo killed her sons as they practiced athletics, with the last begging for his life (Apollo would have spared his life, but had already released the arrow), and Artemis, her daughters. Apollo and Artemis used poisoned arrows to kill them, though according to some versions a number of the Niobids were spared (Chloris, usually). Amphion, at the sight of his dead sons, either killed himself or was killed by Apollo after swearing revenge. A devastated Niobe fled to Mount Sipylus in Asia Minor and turned into stone as she wept, or committed suicide. Her tears formed the river Achelous. Zeus had turned all the people of Thebes to stone and so no one buried the Niobids until the ninth day after their death, when the gods themselves entombed them.
Niobe: Greek Myth
Classical
A mortal woman, Niobe, daughter of Tantalus and either Euryanassa, Eurythemista, Clytia, Dione, or Laodice, and the wife of Amphion, boasted of her superiority to Leto because she had fourteen children (Niobids), seven male and seven female, while Leto had only two.
Apollo killed her sons as they practiced athletics, with the last begging for his life (Apollo would have spared his life, but had already released the arrow), and Artemis, her daughters. Apollo and Artemis used poisoned arrows to kill them, though according to some versions a number of the Niobids were spared (Chloris, usually).
Amphion, at the sight of his dead sons, either killed himself or was killed by Apollo after swearing revenge. A devastated Niobe fled to Mount Sipylus in Asia Minor and turned into stone as she wept, or committed suicide. Her tears formed the river Achelous.
Zeus had turned all the people of Thebes to stone and so no one buried the Niobids until the ninth day after their death, when the gods themselves entombed them.
Lamia: Greek Myth
Classical
On the fringes of myth, Lamia was one of the monstrous bogeys that terrified children and the naive, like her daughter Scylla, or Empousa.
Laimos, the name Aristophanes gave her is the gullet.
She is depicted as eating children out of jealousy.
She is associated with snakes.
Harlots might be named “Lamia.”
Ariadne: Greek Mythology
Classical
Ariadne’s divine origins were submerged and she became known as the daughter of King Minos of Crete, who conquered Athens after his son was murdered there.
The Athenians were required to sacrifice seven young men and seven maidens each year to the Minotaur. One year, the sacrificial party included Theseus, a young man who volunteered to come and kill the Minotaur. Ariadne fell in love at the first sight of him, and helped him by giving him a magic sword and a ball of thread so that he could find his way out the Minotaur’s labyrinth.
She ran away with Theseus after he achieved his goal, and according to Homer was punished by Artemis with death, but in Hesiod and most others accounts, he left her sleeping on Naxos, and Dionysus wedded her. With Dionysus, she was the mother of Oenopion.
Cassandra: Greek Myth
Classical
Cassandra (“she who entangles men”) (also known as Alexandra) was a daughter of King Priam of Troy and his queen Hecuba, who captured the eye of Apollo and so was given the ability to see the future. However, when she did not return his love, he placed a curse on her so that no one would ever believe her predictions. Thus Cassandra foresees the destruction of Troy (she warns the Trojans about the Trojan Horse, the death of Agamemnon, and her own demise), but is unable to do anything about them. Coroebus and Othronus came to the aid of Troy out of love for Cassandra. Cassandra was the first to see the body of her brother Hector being brought back to the city.
Daphne:
Classical
Pursued by Apollo who has been shot with an arrow by Eros, Daphne prays Pheneus to be turned into a tree, which later becomes sacred to Apollo, the Bay Laurel.
Europa: Greek Myth
Classical
Europa was a Levantine woman.
There were two competing myths relating how Europa came into the Greek world: in the more familiar one she was seduced by the god Zeus in the form of a bull and carried away to Crete on his back, but according to Herodotus she was kidnapped by Minoans, who likewise were said to have taken her to Crete. P
The mythical Europa cannot be separated from the mythology of the sacred bull, which had been worshipped in the Levant.
