Instructions: Quiz 1
This quiz counts for 10% of the course grade. It will cover the readings of class meetings #1-10 and will take place in the X-hour on Tuesday, 26 January. The quiz will consist of a short essay based on your choice of one question from two or three of the series of ca. 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, see the listings on Best Answers.
Quiz Questions
Class #1 [1/4]
1. What is meant by the Greek term polis (loosely translated in English as "city-state") and how does it differ from such other Greek terms as asty, akropolis, kome, chorion, and demos?
2. What is meant by the archaeological use of the term "Classical" when applied to Greek archaeology in particular? What, for example, is the difference between "Classical archaeology", the "Classical period of Greek archaeology", and a "classical moment" in the history of Greek material culture?
Class #2 [1/6]
1. Why are the capture and sacks of Athens in 480 and 479 B.C. of such great importance archaeologically that they are taken to define the borderline between the Archaic and Classical periods?
2. What was the Oath of Plataea, why is it important for Greek archaeology, and why is its existence so hotly debated?
Class #3 [1/8]
1. What are the principal differences between Greek sculpture of the Late Archaic (ca. 525-480 B.C.) and Early Classical, or Severe (ca. 480-450 B.C.), styles?
2. What, if anything, is significant about the manner in which the Athenians went about rebuilding their city in the first generation after the Persian sack (479 - ca. 450 B.C.)?
Class #4 [1/11]
1. What are the terms for all the basic elements, in both plan and elevation, of a Greek temple constructed in the Doric order?
2. What are the more or less standard features of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia as a Doric building dating to just before the middle of the fifth century B.C.? What are features of this temple that are peculiar to its location, its period, or its religious function?
Class #5 [1/13]
1. What are the chief problems to be confronted in the restoration to their proper places of individual figures in the east and west pediments, and of individual metopes in the Doric friezes over the two porches, on the Temple of Zeus at Olympia? That is, what are our chief sources of evidence for this task of restoration and how do they seem to conflict?
2. What kinds of considerations do you think should be running through the minds of art historians and archaeologists as they seek to reconstruct the chief sculptor's aims in designing and supervising the architectural sculpture for the Temple of Zeus at Olympia as he did?
Class #6 [1/15]
1. What are the principal sources of evidence for the reconstruction of the most famous Greek wall paintings of the early Classical era, those executed by Polygnotos of Thasos, Mikon of Athens, and their associates? What particular problems do the natures of these sources of evidence pose?
2. What do ethos and pathos mean as applied to Greek representational art, and were some of the methods whereby such intangibles were communicated by painters and sculptors during the first generation after the Persian Wars?
Class #7 [1/19]
1. What functions did the various governmental buildings located immediately around (though not actually in) the Athenian Agora during the 5th century B.C. serve? What important governmental functions and structures were located well outside of the Agora? Can you suggest reasons why the latter structures should have been located where they were, outside of the civic center?
2. In what basic ways does J. Ober differentiate the political organization of the Athenian radical democracy of the later 5th century B.C. from that of a modern democracy such as the American one?
Class #8 [1/20]
1. What need did the ordinary Athenian have of literacy in order to fulfill his responsibilities as a citizen? If Classical Athens could be argued to have had anything that can be termed a "public education", of what did such an education consist?
2. How do we go about dating inscriptions? Briefly discuss a half-dozen or so different ways in which the content, form, or context of an inscription can be used to provide a date for it.
Class #9 [1/22]
1. In what kinds of buildings, or environmental settings, were commercial activities conducted in Classical Greece? How can these, in fact, be positively identified as the sites of commercial activity?
2. In Athens in particular, does the city, or some area within it, feature a specifically "commercial" sector? With respect to the Agora in particular, are commercial as opposed to political (including juridical) activities spatially segregated to any significant degree?
Copyright 1998, Trustees of Dartmouth College
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Last updated 07 Jan 1999