Paper Topics | Fall 2020 | Paper 3
Due Saturday, November 14, 5:00 p.m., in your conference leader’s Eliot Hall mailbox.
Target length: 1,500 words
1. In Book One (23-24) of his Histories, Herodotus relates the story of Arion and the dolphin. 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’ notion of what it means to be a historian? An answer might focus on important themes that Herodotus pursues elsewhere in his history, on his implicit conception of storytelling, on the ways in which he uses various kinds of sources, and/or on his views concerning the nature of truth and evidence with respect to historical analysis. What, in short, is the function of the story of Arion within the argumentative, rhetorical or methodological framework of the history as a whole?
2. The metopes of the south side of the Parthenon depict the mythical battle between the Lapiths and Centaurs, which many scholars understand to represent a conflict between order and chaos. Through a formal analysis of two of these metopes, explain how this tension and other related oppositions are conveyed. Are the tensions resolved? What aspects of the metopes are similar and different? You may find this introduction to formal analysis and comparison in art history useful. Parthenon South Metopes Gallery
3. Compare and contrast the interactions that Clytemnestra and Cassandra have with the Chorus in Agamemnon. What, if anything, does each character want from the Chorus of old men? Consider gender, status, power, and language in your analysis.
4. Richard Neer argues that pictorial ambiguity in late Archaic vase painting, “ironic, playful, and richly ambiguous mode of picture-making” is “good to think with.” The Plousios amphora was made in Athens ca. 500 BCE. One side shows a woman being fitted by shoemakers; the other depicts a blacksmiths forging a bar of metal. How is this vase pictorially ambiguous? How does it help one think about artisans and craft (techne)? What else does it help one think about, and how? In your analysis, consider both the form and content of the vase, and the relation between the two.
5. What role does the persona of Hesiod play in his poems? Focus on either Theogony or Works & Days and analyze how the poem constructs the identity of the poet and how this identity contributes to the instructive content of the poem.
6. Tyrtaeus’s Fr. 12 and Sappho’s Fr. 16 both open with the rhetorical device known to modern scholars as the priamel, which lists a series of alternatives to introduce the true subject of the poem. How do the poems make use of this device to assert divergent values of excellence and beauty? Compare the poems paying close attention to their diction, imagery, use of tropes, and points of view. Consider how the differences in values, form, and techniques account for the gender dynamics, the nature of desire and memory, or the relationship between the self and the other, the private and the public.
7. Compare Herodotus’s account of Cyrus’s origins and rise to power (1.107-1.140) to Cyrus’s self-portrayal in the Cyrus Cylinder. How do the differences reflect the divergent agendas of the authors? Keep in mind the context, form, and genre of the texts. Herodotus is a historian writing about the Persian Wars from the Greek perspective. The text of the Cyrus Cylinder was an imperial declaration made in the name of the Persian King Cyrus II. It was inscribed in a clay cylinder intentionally buried in the foundations of the city wall of Babylon after the city was captured, and the text was circulated broadly across the Persian Empire.