Humanities 110 Paper Topic #4

Due Date: Saturday, December 2, 2000, 5 p.m. in the Faculty mailboxes in Eliot.

Length: 1500 words.

Write on one of the following questions:

1. Discuss the significance of voyeurism in The Bacchae.

    

2. In The Bacchae, the blind Tiresias exclaims to his companion Cadmus:

   We do not trifle with divinity.

   No, we are the heirs of customs and traditions

   hallowed by age and handed down to us

   by our fathers. No quibbling logic can topple them,

   whatever subtleties this clever age invents. [lines 200-204]

   Compare Tiresias' account of the relation between "tradition hallowed by age" and "quibbling logic" to the role these same issues play in the dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro. 

    

3. Book 7 of the Republic recounts the myth of the cave. Is the cave an "image" in Plato's sense of the term? If so, does it constitute a contradiction to Plato's views on the mimesis in Books 3 and 10?

    

4. Compare the arguments made in the Lysistrata about the role of women and their sources of power to those made in Plato's account of the ideal Kallipolis.

    

5. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using Aristophanes' Lysistrata, written in 411 BCE, as a historical document for understanding the position of Athens in the last years of the Peloponnesian War.

    

6. At 581c-583b of the Republic Plato argues that, although the lives of the money-lover, honor-lover and wisdom lover each have their own pleasures, the life of the wisdom lover is the most pleasant of all. Is this argument convincing? Why or why not?

    

7. In the Republic, justice is among the highest goods for each individual and for the city as a whole (see Books 2 and 4). Do Plato's arguments convince you that both of these assertions about justice can be true simultaneously? Why or why not?

    

8. In consultation with your conference instructor, write on a topic of your own devising.