Humanities 110

Paper Topic # 2

Length 1500 words

 

Due Saturday, October 9th, 5 P.M. in your conference leader's Eliot Hall mailbox.

 

Choose one of the following:

 

1.  Readings (Hurwit, Hallett) and lectures have considered the thesis that the archaic period in Greece saw the "birth of the 'individual.'"  Choose a lyric poem or work of archaic Greek art and assess the extent to which it does or does not support this thesis. 

 

2.  According to Hurwit, "The impression is that they [the Greeks] borrowed so much so eagerly from Egypt and the Near East that their very Greekness was in peril, that the culture of Orientalizing Greece was derivative, that the Greeks could think of nothing for themselves.  The impression, of course, is absolutely false.  Weak cultures imitate, strong cultures steal, and like most clichés, the old adage that the Greeks always transformed what they took holds true" (132).

 

Using specific examples, consider whether Herodotus would have agreed with Hurwit.  Be sure to consider not only what these authors explicitly say but also the assumptions underlying what they say.