Key to Sample Questions

The following "key" for the sample questions is intended to indicate the general sort of approach which you should take in the test. Overall, it represents minimally acceptable answers; you are encouraged to write a bit more extensively than is indicated here.

[Note that material in brackets and regular type would certainly be useful to include, but is not essential for a minimally acceptable answer.]

{On the other hand, material in pointed brackets and italic type is supplementary information; it is not the sort of thing which you should include in your actual answers.}

1. Homer, Odyssey. [Book 5]. Kalypso speaking to Odysseus.

Odysseus' boat will be wrecked by Poseidon, but otherwise no "adversities at sea" will face Odysseus. The various well-known adventures of Odysseus, such as Skylla and Kharybdis and the Clashing Rocks, although described later in the Odyssey, have actually already taken place.

Penelope

Kalypso assumes that divinities and humans are entirely different - a view which is included at the beginning of Nemean 6. On the other hand, Pindar states that we can somehow come near to the gods through athletic accomplishments; although in a different way, Odysseus would also seem to be acting on the assumption that humans can somehow approach the level of the gods.

2. Homer, Odyssey [Book 8]. [Report of what Demodokos sings in response to Odysseus' request to sing about the wooden horse by which Troy was captured.] {There is no specific speaker or addressee - unless one chooses to view almost the entire poem as sung in the Muse's persona, following the initial invocation to a "goddess" in the proem.}

Basically, "Akhaians" and "Argive" [along with the term "Danaan"] refer to the Greeks fighting at Troy. {It is more or less the standard Oralist view, briefly sketched by H & P, p. 363 "The Question of Authorship", that "Akhaians", "Argives", and "Danaans" are simply metrical variants, convenient for an oral performer; this point, along with variations on it, will be discussed more fully after the Oct. 6 test.}

3. Homer, Odyssey. This is sung by the bard Demodokos to the Phaiakes and Odysseus.

Hephaistos.

Ares.

4. Hesiod, Theogony.

At least in lines 8-9, Hesiod simply says, without qualification, that "it was predestined that very wise children would be born from Metis". Hesiod's overall presentation, though, is that one child, Athena, is born, but no son who would overthrow Zeus.

5. Homer, Iliad. [end of Book 1.] {There is no specific speaker or addressee - unless one chooses to view almost the entire poem as sung in the Muse's persona, following the initial invocation to a "goddess" in the proem.}

The specific reference to Hera and Zeus going to bed together is not, perhaps, directly relevant to Xenophanes' criticism of Homer's gods as being immoral. However, the broader context - Zeus's more or less secret meeting with Thetis, Hera's complaint about this, and Zeus's arrogant retort to Hera - well illustrate the relatively undesirable human traits which Homer ascribes to divinities in the Iliad. Overall, this could be said to be exactly the sort of thing to which Xenophanes objected in Homer's (and Hesiod's) portrayal of gods and goddesses.

6. No. "3" also refers to the craft of Hephaistos.

The specific craft which is referred to in "2" is the invisible net which Hephaistos designs to catch and hold Ares and Aphrodite in bed together.