Paper Topics | Fall 2019 | Paper 4
Due Saturday, December 7, 5:00 p.m., in your conference leader’s Eliot Hall mailbox.
Target length: 1,800-2,000 words
- In Plato’s Symposium, Socrates’ views are expressed not through Socrates himself but through a reported dialogue between Socrates and Diotima, a female philosopher almost certainly invented for the purposes of this work. Why are Socrates’ ideas about love presented in the voice of a woman at an event that would have been restricted solely to men? You may want to consider the substance of Diotima’s argument in relation to the preceding speeches and/or the effect of having Alcibiades’ speech immediately follow
- Given that the construction of the Parthenon and the reconstruction of the Athenian Acropolis more generally was funded with the “contributions” (i.e. tribute) of the members of the Delian League, we can consider the Parthenon to be an imperial monument. What is the particular vision of Athenian empire and society expressed in the Parthenon and the wider Acropolis complex? Your paper may deal exclusively with the Athenian site, or you may choose to focus on how its vision of empire/society compares to that expressed in the great temple of Amun at Karnak. In either case, you may want to consider the decorative program, architectural layout, and/or issues of access.
- In Book One (22-25) of his Histories, Herodotus relates the story of Candaules and Gyges. When viewed in the light of the many other stories that Herodotus provides, what does this particular narrative – coming as it does toward the very beginning of the work – tell us about Herodotus the historian? An answer to this question might focus on important themes that Herodotus pursues in his history, on his implicit conception of what it means to be a historian, or on his notion of the nature of truth and evidence. What, in short, is the function of the story of Candaules and Gyges within the framework of the history as a whole?
- According to Thucydides, what factors – long-term and/or short-term – best explain Athens’s disastrous expedition to Sicily? To what extent does his account imply a broader theory of history and/or of historical analysis? You might consider whether the account succeeds in distinguishing his project from that of the poets, as he claims to do in Book One (21ff.).
- At the close of The Libation Bearers, Orestes is beset by a vision of “the hounds of [his] mother’s hate,” and he cries out, “You can’t see them / I can, they drive me on! I must move on” (l. 1053–54, 1060–1). To what extent do the characters in The Oresteia struggle as much with invisible entities as with visible ones, and how do these conflicts inform the conceptions of guilt and justice that emerge in the trilogy? You may want to discuss scenes in which there is a sharp distinction between what various characters claim to be able to see and what the audience and other characters actually see. You could also analyze passages in which something spectral becomes all too real (or vice versa). Consider, for instance, the speech of the priestess of Apollo at the start of The Eumenides (l. 50–55), the appearance of the ghost of Clytaemnestra (The Eumenides, l. 97–129), or the fact that the chorus of the last play of the trilogy is made up of the very Furies who have already started to plague Orestes at the close of the previous play.
- What do the choruses in Lysistrata reveal about the relative strengths and weaknesses of individual versus collective agency? Does the text make an argument for the superiority of group action, or is there a suggestion that all political action has an inherently farcical side?
- Using the Protagoras as a source for criteria with which to distinguish philosophy from sophistry, evaluate Socrates in either the Euthyphro or Apology. By the lights of the Protagoras, is Socrates a philosopher, a sophist, both, or neither in your chosen text?