Closed book examination. For this exam, as for all exams at Reed, the
Honor Principle applies.
This is a four hour exam. Your work is due back in Vollum Lecture Hall no later than 12:00 noon.
The exam consists of three parts (with approximate times given):
Part One: 1 hour Part Two: 1 and 1/4 hours Part Three: 1 and 1/4 hours
Take 1/2 hour to review your answers and essays. Be sure to write your name and the name of your conference leader on your exam.
Part One (one hour):
Identify TEN (and no more than ten) of the following thirteen quotations, describe the quotation's place in the work in which it appears, and the significance of the issues it addresses, supplying author, and where appropriate, the title of the work and the speaker.
1. If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right?
2. Here are the words the daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus,
the Muses of Olympos, first spoke to me:
"Listen, you country bumpkins, you swag-bellied yahoos,
we know how to tell many lies that pass for truth,
and we know, when we wish, to tell the truth itself."
3. X: I give you sober warning, fools:
place no chains on me.
Y: But I say: chain him.
I am the stronger here.
X: You do not know
the limits of your strength. You do not know
what you do. You do not know who you are.
4. Some there are who say that the fairest thing seen
on the black earth is an array of horsemen;
some, men marching; some would say ships, but I say
she whom one loves best. . .
5. You think that shepherds and cowherds seek the good of their sheep and cattle, and fatten them and take care of them, looking to something other than their master's good and their own. Moreover, you believe that rulers in cities -- true rulers, that is -- think about their subjects differently than one does about sheep, and that night and day they think of something besides their own advantage.
6. If we are sensible people, we shall see that the question is not so much whether they are guilty as whether we are making the right decision for ourselves. I might prove that they are the most guilty people in the world, but it does not follow that I shall propose the death penalty, unless that is in your interests; I might argue that they deserve to be forgiven, but should not recommend forgiveness unless that seemed to me the best thing for the state.
7. Discuss the following work and its context:
[graphic]8. You tell of how my father was murdered. Meanwhile I
9. Yes, it was not Zeus that made the proclamation;
nor did Justice, which lives with those below, enact
such laws as that, for mankind. I did not believe
your proclamation had such power to enable
one who will someday die to override
God's ordinances, unwritten and secure.
10. The recourse to a spatial image to express the self-awareness that a human group has acquired, its sense of existing as a political unit, is of value not only as a comparison; it also reflects the creation of a social space that was altogether new. Indeed, urban buildings were no longer grouped, as before, about a royal palace ringed with fortifications. The city was now centered on the agora, the communal space and seat of the hestia koine [the central or public hearth], a public area where problems of general interest were debated...Once the city was centered on the public square, it was already a polis in every sense of the word.
11. If I say that it is impossible for me to keep quiet because that means disobeying the god, you will not believe me and will think I am being ironical.
12. But I will speak to you the way it seems best to me: neither
do I think the son of Atreus, Agamemnon, will persuade me,
nor the rest of the Danaans, since there was no gratitude given
for fighting incessantly forever against your enemies.
Fate is the same for the man who holds back, the same if he fights hard.
A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much.
13. At which Demaratus said, "My lord, since you have bidden me speak the truth utterly, so that I should hereafter be not convicted by you of speaking anything less than truth: poverty has always been native in Greece, but the courage they have comes imported, and it is achieved by a compound of wisdom and the strength of their laws. By virtue of this, Greece fights off poverty and despotism. My praise applies to all those Greeks who live in Dorian countries, but I am prepared to make my speech not about all of these but about the Lacedaimonians alone; and the first thing I say is that in no way will they accept your proposals bearing slavery to Greece, and the second thing is that they will challenge you to battle, even though all the other Greeks were on your side."
Part Two (one and one quarter hour):
Choose one topic and write an essay answering it.
1. The Greeks were very concerned about the nature of aretê ("excellence, virtue"). Discuss the concept of aretê in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and two of the following: Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Herodotus, Sophocles, the Parthenon, Thucydides, Socrates (in the Apology). How are these various conceptions of aretê related to each other? How do you account for the changing views about the nature of aretê?
2. Many of the works we have read this semester consider the possibility of human beings becoming "godlike" or "divine". Discuss the way in which human beings can (or cannot) become godlike in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and two of the following: Homer's Iliad, Hesiod's Works and Days, Greek kouroi statues, Herodotus' Histories, Sophocles' Oedipus the King, Plato's Apology, and Plato's Republic. What accounts for the differences and similarities in the views of the works you discuss?
Part Three (one and one quarter hour):
Choose one topic and write an essay answering it.
1. Is the conception of justice in the Oresteia the same as in the Republic?
2. Fifth-century Greeks recognized important political and cultural differences between full members of the community --the citizens-- and all those "others" who lived both within and outside the boundaries of the polis. Who were these "others", and how did the Greeks view them? What do the Greeks' attitudes toward the "other" reveal about their perception of themselves? Discuss in some detail at least two works we have read.
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