Humanities 110

Paper Topic #2

Due Date: Saturday, October 6, 2001, 5 p.m. in the Faculty mailboxes in Eliot.

Length: 1500 words.

1. "Perses, you take all this to heart, Listen

to what's right, and forget about violence.

The Son of Kronos has laid down the law for humans.

Fish and beasts and birds of prey feed on

Each other, since there's no justice among them.

But to men he gave justice, and that works out

All to the good. If you know in your heart what's right

And come out and say so, broad-browed Zeus will

Give you prosperity. But if you bear false witness

Or lie under oath, and by damaging Justice

Ruin yourself beyond hope of cure, your bloodline

Will weaken and your descendants fade out. But a man

Who stands by his word leaves a strong line of kinfolk.

Justice is one of Hesiod's central concerns in both the Theogony and Works and Days. To what extent does Hesiod show that Zeus's actions in the Theogony are just?

2. In his response to Croesus, Solon asserts that "man is entirely a creature of chance." (Histories, p. 14). To what extent does this opinion comport with the world view of Herodotus?

3. Contrast Sappho's assessment of women in Fragment 16 with that of either

Semonides (Fragment 7) or Hesiod (either Works and Days 58-128 or Theogony

573-620)

4. Compare the ideals represented by either the New York Metropolitan kouros, the Kritios Boy or "Cleobis and Biton" with those of the poetry of either Archilochus, Anacreon or Alcaeus.

(Images can be found in Freeman and Pollitt, and at:

http://academic.reed.edu/humanities/110Tech/Bodylanguage/htm

l/kleobisbiton1.html or

http://academic.reed.edu/humanities/110Tech/kouroi.html)