The exam will consist of:

• 25 short answer questions from the text and class lectures: Introduction through Chapter 14.
• 10 identification of images from vase paintings, sculpture, artifacts, and architecture.

Because there is so much material, you should try to categorize and condense information, and try to compare as many things as possible. Think historically. Try to visualize the images of mythological figures to help you remember details, and how we know what those figures are. The Summaries and Commentaries from the companion website to your textbook should also be helpful.

From Classical Mythology:

Introduction: Definitions and Interpretations of Myth:

• Know the definition of myth, and the difference between true myth, saga or legend, and folktale.
• The most important approaches to the study of mythology are the following: Comparative with primitive societies; Religious; Social (Bronislav Malinowski and the connection between myths and social institutions); Ritual (Robert Graves's definition of true myth); Rationalistic (Euhemerus); Etiological myths (from aitia or cause); Metaphorical or Symbolic (Freud, "Mythological tales are imaginative palliative and directive formulations, created to make existence in this world tolerable." Oedipal complex. Jung, the collective unconscious and archetypes); Structuralist (Levi-Strauss and binary oppositions. What are they and how do they work. Propp and motifemes in folktales, quest stories); Structuralist-Historical (Walter Burkert); Feminist; Comparative Greek and Near Eastern.
• Know how to apply some of these methods to the myths you have read.
• Concluding definition of classical myth.

Historical Background

• Know the specific differences between:
  • Minoan pre-Greek civilization and culture on Crete: Dates, places, character, basis of power, excavations and by whom, artifacts
  • Greek Mycenaean civilization culture on the mainland: Dates, places, character, basis of power, excavations and by whom, artifacts, Linear B.

Chapter 1: Myths of Creation.

• Know the general outlines of the creation story according to Hesiod (and who he is). The principal characters are Chaos, Gaia or Ge, Uranos, the Titans, the Olympians, Prometheus. Know the various sets of sky-gods and earth-goddesses; the conspiracy of the earth goddesses and their younger sons to overthrow the fathers. Know the important Titans and their children; the birth of Aphrodite; Phaethon story.
• Why, in Greek and in Near Eastern theogonies, do the genesis themes remain integrated with a vast royal epic that depicts the clash of generations of gods and who remains supreme? Why are the institution of sovereign power and the establishment of order inseparable? How do the Greek theogonies shape the Greeks' image of the world?

• Know how Zeus defeats his enemies: the Titanomachy and Gigantomachy. The five ages according to Hesiod. In what ways is Prometheus a culture hero for humans? What is his quarrel with Zeus? What punishment is devised for him and for humans by Zeus? How is the myth of Prometheus analyzed?
• Know the details of the flood story and how the earth is repopulated.
• How is the killing of Typhoeus like the myths of other dragonslayers and why is it "one of the most powerful and symbolic of all divine and heroic achievements?

Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound:

• Know the background of Aeschylus and Athenian theater in general. Know the play's characters and their functions: Power and Violence, Hephaistos, Prometheus, Io, Chorus, Hermes, and especially, the conception of Zeus. What is the nature of Prometheus' crime; what is the relationship between power and knowledge, between technology and politics? What does the play have to say about Necessity and human suffering?

Chapter 3: The Twelve Olympians: Zeus, Hera, and their Children

• Know the Olympian deities who rule after the Titans.
• Know the character of Zeus; his attributes; what his name means. what do the major sanctuaries and oracles of Zeus tells us about how he was perceived and worshipped?
• Know the children of Zeus and Hera, especially Hephaestus and Ares. Why is Hephaestus, the divine artist, lame but married to Aphrodite? Know the story of Hephaestus, Ares, and Aphrodite from Book 8 of the Odyssey. Ares as a Thracian god, what Zeus says about him in the Iliad. Know the role in general of the Muses and the Fates.

Chapter 4: Anthropomorphism

• What does "anthropomorphic" mean? What are the similarities and differences between human beings and gods? What are the differences among gods, monsters, nymphs, demigods, and heroes? What are chthonic or chthonian deities?
• In what ways is Zeus both a human figure and an abstract philosophical figure of supreme power, in every case reflecting the social and cultural makeup of the time and region that worship him, and what important Greek values does he protect?
• How are mythology, philosophy, and religion inextricably entwined?
• Who is Herodotos and what is his story of Solon, Croesus, and Cyrus? What is its conception of Fate and of the gods?

Chapter 5: Poseidon, Sea Deities, Group Divinities, and Monsters

• What are the general characteristics of sea divinities?
• What are the attributes and epithets of Poseidon and what are the arguments for seeing him as a fertility god and as a sky god? What does that duality imply?
• Who or what are the monsters the harpies, Graeae, Gorgons, etc., and why are they all in some way connected to the sea?

Chapter 6: Athena

• What is the story of Athena's birth and why is it important? Who is her "mother" and how does this help prevent the fate of Zeus' father and grandfather from happening to him? What qualities are associated with Athena and in what ways is she the female Zeus figure?
• What is the contest of Athena and Poseidon for the patronage of Athens?
• What monuments on the Athenian acropolis are associated with Athena and Poseidon?
• How is Athena the patroness of arts and crafts? Who is Ovid and what is the Arachne story?
• What are the attributes of Athena and how is she depicted in art? How can she be considered a fertility goddess? How does she represent a new order of divinity? Why is she important in the Odyssey.

Chapter 7: Aphrodite and Eros

• What is the difference between Aphrodite Urania and Aphrodite Pandemos? What is the story of her birth? What are her attributes? What is the Adonis story and is significance? What are her origins as an Eastern goddess? What is the Anchises story and its significance?
• What is the story of Eros told by Aristophanes in the Symposium? What is the story of Socrates? Know the definition of Platonic Eros on p. 135.
• What is the story of Cupid and Psyche as told by Apuleius?

Chapter 8: Artemis

• What is the birth story of Artemis and Apollo? What are the attributes of Artemis? What is the Niobe story and the Actaeon story? How do we know the Actaeon story is old, much older than its retelling in Ovid? What are the origins of Artemis and what is her association with Selene and Hecate? What is the story of Hippolytus and how does it pit Aphrodite and Artemis as opposing and vindictive goddesses?

Chapter 9: Apollo

• Again, the birth story of Apollo and Artemis. Know Apollo's various attributes, names and epithets: Pythian, Delphinius, Apollo the sharp- or far-shooter, his association with prophecy, hunting, music, medicine, logic, light, and destruction. What does this contradictory character imply? How are the stories of Apollo and his loves alike? Why is Apollo "the most characteristically Greek god in the whole pantheon," "the essential nature of the Greek spirit"?
• What is the Delphic Oracle and its history, what types of questions and replies were given? What is a Sibyl, a Pythia?
• Be able to compare Apollo to his supposed opposite, Dionysos.

Chapter 10: Hermes

• What is the story of Hermes and his birth, and what sort of god is he? What are his attributes? How and why is he associated with Apollo? How is he a god of "boundaries"? What are his epithets, such as Argeiophontes? Why is he so ubiquitous in Greek art? Where are his origins?

Chapter 11: Dionysos, Pan, Echo, and Narcissus

• Why is Dionysos an important god for the Greeks? What are the various stories of his borth and exploits and what functions do they serve for the Greeks? What are his attributes and how is he depicted in art? Why does he seem opposed to Apollo? What is Dionysos Zagreus and what does that epithet of the god imply about sacrifice? What does the priest of Dionysos do? What is omophagy and what does it suggest about the method of going beyond the nature of humanity to the beasts and then the gods?
• Know the story of Euripides' Bacchae and what you think it means.
• What is the connection of Dionysos with the theatre, especially in Athens?

Chapter 12: Demeter and the Eleusinian Mysteries

• What are the different parts of the Demeter story? How is it interpreted? It is a vegetation myth but not necessarily for the Mediterranean, and what does that imply? What are the Eleusinian mysteries, what function did they serve, and how long were the rites of Eleusis held? What do all the mystery religions have in common?

Chapter 13: Views of the Afterlife

• What is the difference between Homer's vision of the afterlife in Book 11 of the Odyssey, and Plato's in the Myth of Er? What principles govern each writer's vision and how do the historical circumstances change them? How does the Roman story of Virgil's Aeneid differ from the Greek ideas of the afterlife? In what ways are the landscapes and personages similar? How have these visions affected later visions of the afterlife in the West?

Chapter 14: Orpheus and Orphism

• What is the story of Orpheus and Eurydice? What is Orphic religion and its general outlines? In what ways is it dualistic? How is Orphism involved with the worship of Dionysos? How does Orphism influence Plato's Myth of Er? What is Mithraism and again, what do mystery religions have in common?

Know these historical figures from the ancient world:

• Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Ovid, Vergil.

  Good Luck