Humanities 110
Paper Topic # 3
Length 1500 words (5-6 pages)
Due Saturday, November 12th, 5 P.M. in your conference leader's Eliot Hall mailbox.
Choose one of the following:
Using either the Mytilenean Debate (III.36-50) OR the Sicilian Debate (VI.8-26) in the History of the Peloponnesian War, evaluate how Thucydides would respond to Herodotus’s praise for Athenian democracy at V.78 of the Histories.
What claims do the oikos and polis make in Antigone? Does Sophocles resolve the tension between the oikos and the polis in this play?
In Art and Illusion, art historian E.H. Gombrich argues that imitation of observed reality is only one of the goals of ancient Greek art, and that the making or designing of artistic form is a process that is quite separate from, and even opposed to imitation. This opposition he refers to as making versus matching: "making comes before matching. Before the artist ever wanted to match the signs of the visible world he wanted to create things in their own right. (116).
Test the usefulness of Gombrich's theory in a detailed visual analysis of the two metopes from the 440s BCE of Lapiths battling with the centaurs (figures 105 and 106, p.178, of Robin Osborne's Archaic Classical Greek Art).
In consultation with your instructor, devise a topic of your own.
Free tutoring! Reed College Writing Center, ETC 112. Hours: Sunday-Thursday 7-9 pm. Extended Hours: Thursday & Friday 7-10 pm before Hum 110 Papers are due.