About the Course Course Texts Syllabus Course Images Course Links Forum: Quiz 1 Forum: Quiz 2    Instructions    Discussion    Best Answers Forum: Paper 1 Forum: Paper 2 Discussions Email Professor Rutter		Instructions: Quiz 2 This quiz counts for 10% of the course grade. It will cover the readings of class meetings #11-19 and will take place in the X-hour on Tuesday, 20 February. The quiz will consist of a short essay based on your choice of one question from two or three of the series of ca. 15-20 "readings topics/questions" posted by the instructor at the bottom of this page at the rate of two per class meeting. Your essay will be evaluated by the relevance of your argumentation and by the quantity, reliability, and pertinence of the factual information you cite. You are strongly encouraged to discuss outside of class the topics/questions being covered by this quiz with your classmates. These discussions (whether strictly of question-and-answer form or genuine debates of the issues) will be monitored by the instructor, but he will not participate in them, either as "player" or "referee". To gain access to the actual discussion forum for this quiz, enter Discussion. For a selection of responses that the instructor found particularly praiseworthy while evaluating this year's quiz, see the listings on Best Answers. Quiz Questions Class #11 [1/31] 1. From a purely architectural point of view, and taking into account such variables as construction materials and time as well as the building's design and level of actual execution, what would you say makes the Parthenon such a special building, not only for its time but for Greco-Roman architecture of any period? 2. One of the more distinctive features of the Parthenon is the extent to which it incorporates elements of the Doric and Ionic orders within a single building. But the list of "Ionicisms" on this essentially Doric building is rather different, depending on which architectural historian one reads. The interpretation of the Parthenon's novel combination of Doric and Ionic features can be equally varied. Compile and justify your own list of Parthenonian Ionicisms and suggest either individual ratiolnales or one comprehensive explanation for them. Class #12 [2/2] 1. What are the numbers, themes, and placements of the various kinds of architectural sculpture (acroterial, pedimental, metopal, and frieze) that decorate the Parthenon? In what sequence do we think that these were carved, and what is our evidence for that sequence? 2. What are the various factors that contribute to make the specific theme of the Parthenon frieze so difficult to determine, even though the overall state of preservation of this remarkable assemblage of relief sculpture is unusually good? Class #13 [2/5] 1. What about the peplos presented to their patron goddess every year by the Athenians suggests that this garment was a major work of art? 2. What are the various sources of evidence for the nature, importance, and organization of weaving as an activity, or even industry, in Archaic and Classical Greece? Class #14 [2/6] 1. How does Pheidias' statue of Athena that we know as the Parthenos recapitulate the architectural sculpture of the magnificent building that housed it, yet at the same time succeed in presenting these familiar themes in fundamentally different ways? 2. What kinds of evidence do we have for reconstructing Pheidias' monumental chryselephantine images of Zeus at Olympia and of Athena in the Parthenon? How does this evidence by its very nature limit the extent to which the two statues can be compared? Why, in your opinion, did the Zeus become one of the "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World", while the Athena failed to be included in this famous list, itself a creation probably of the third quarter of the third century B.C.? Class #15 [2/7] 1. How does the design of the Propylaia (438-432 B.C.) echo or complement that of the earlier Parthenon (447-438 B.C.)? In what ways is the Propylaia sufficiently remarkable and novel in its own right evidently to have caused some Athenian orators of the fourth century B.C. to have taken greater pride in it than in its immediate predecessor in the Periklean building program? 2. In what senses was the Erechtheion "a composition of shrines, a sanctuary within a sanctuary"? Class #16 [2/12] 1. What make Pheidias and Polykleitos distinctive and readily distinguishable as master sculptors of the High Classical era? 2. Like the Parthenon, the Hephaisteion was constructed almost entirely of marble (of two kinds, yet!) and was abundantly decorated with frieze, metopal, pedimental, and acroterial sculpture, as well as with handsomely coffered ceilings. If it is in addition the best preserved of all the Classical temples on the Greek Mainland, why does it nevertheless fail to attract anywhere near as much attention as its near-contemporary, the Parthenon, or even as much as the smaller, later, and less lavishly ornamented Erechtheion? Class #17 [2/13] 1. What makes the Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassai such an oddity in the annals of Doric temple architecture, particularly in view of its location in western Arcadia, in the west-central Peloponnese? 2. A number of quite different considerations have been invoked to account for the features of the Bassai temple that make it so bizarre for its place and time. What are the considerations in question, and to which of each of them would you attribute the specific peculiarities that make this temple such a fascinating structure? Class #18 [2/14] 1. What are the features which differentiate the "civic athletics" of the Panathenaic festival in Classical Athens from the "sacred athletics" of contemporary competitions in the Pythian Games at Delphi? 2. What forms seem to be the most popular for votive dedications to Apollo set up along the "Sacred Way" leading through the temenos (sanctuary) up to his temple at Delphi? What are the preferred materials for these gifts and why? How is the Greek spirit of competition - the culture's apparently ceaseless quest for agonistic activities - manifested in the combination of the form, material, and placement of such monuments? Class #19 [2/16] 1. In what fundamental ways did Greek urban dwellings - single family residences - differ from modern American urban and suburban housing? Omitting consideration of changes due purely to and simply to technology (e.g. the advent of electricity, central heating, etc.), choose four or five of the most basic differences to highlight how different the Classical Greek residential experience at sites such as Athens and Olynthos was from that to which you yourself have been exposed. [NB: This question concerns life at home, not necessarily life in a big city; the focus should be on private, not public architecture.] 2. If you were excavating a Classical Greek house, approximately how many rooms would you expect to find (suggest a range)? For which discrete activities would you expect to find well-preserved, physical evidence? To what kinds of evidence would you pay particular attention in order to make plausible suggestions for the functions of particular spaces?
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