For Thursday . .

You'll want to read books X and XII of the Odyssey for Thursday, March 1.

For Thursday, Feb. 22

Around line 370, the Chorus in Antigone declaims one of the most famous stasimons known in Classical Greek Drama:



Chor. Many the forms of life, 368
Fearful and strange to see,
But man supreme stands out,
For strangeness and for fear.
He, with the wintry gales, 372
O’er the foam-crested sea,
’Mid billows surging round,
Tracketh his way across:
Earth, of all Gods, from ancient days, the first, 376
Mightiest and undecayed,
He, with his circling plough,
Wears ever year by year.

ANTISTROPH. I


The thoughtless tribe of birds, 380
The beasts that roam the fields,
The finny brood of ocean’s depths,
He takes them all in nets of knotted mesh,
Man, wonderful in skill. 384
And by his arts he holds in sway
The wild beasts on the mountain’s height;
And brings the neck-encircling yoke
On horse with shaggy mane, 388
Or bull that walks untamed upon the hills.

STROPH. II


And speech, and thought as swift as wind,
And tempered mood for higher life of states,
These he has learnt, and how to flee 392
The stormy sleet of frost unkind,
The tempest thunderbolts of Zeus.
So all-preparing, unprepared
He meeteth naught the coming days may bring; 396
Only from Hades, still
He fails to find a refuge at the last,
Though skill of art may teach him to escape
From depths of fell disease incurable. 400

ANTISTROPH. II


So, gifted with a wondrous might,
Above all fancy’s dreams, with skill to plan,
Now unto evil, now to good,
He wends his way. Now holding fast the laws, 404
His country’s sacred rights,
That rest upon the oath of Gods on high,
High in the state he stands.
An outlaw and an exile he who loves 408
The thing that is not good,
In wilful pride of soul:
Ne’er may he sit beside my hearth,
Ne’er may my thoughts be like to his, 412
Who worketh deeds like this.

The questions I want you to answer for Thursday are:

- - according to the Chorus, what makes Man (or humans) so great?

- - does the chorus recognize any limits to Man's (or humans') greatness?

You shouldn't take more than one or two typed pages to answer these questions. Think about the Chorus's exclamations here in relation to the whole of Antigone.

Enjoy!

Prof. H.

Beginning Homer . . .

For Thursday, Feb. 22, you should read the first four books of the Odyssey. One of the big questions to think about is why Homer doesn't start the Odyssey with Odysseus.

Starting Antigone . . .

For Tuesday, Feb 13, you want to start Antigone by reading the first 1000 or so lines . . .enjoy!

New links to Oedipus

NEWS NEWS NEWS


Links to online texts can now be found in the Course Information list, under the link to the syllabus. I've tested and re-tested these links - - and all will deliver the online texts.

(Ignore the links in the syllabus - - for some reason Google Docs won't let me save changes to the syllabus.)

On Thursday, we decided that the oldest Greek statue of these three was the one with the big head and tiny arms, and that the most recent statue was the one with figure walking forward with his hand raised. Logically, the third statue - - the figure with the long hair and arms at his sides - - must be dated to some point in between these two statues.

The question you need to answer is: why does this statue appear to be intermediary - - created sometime between the pre-historic statue and the Classical era statue? Think about our discussion on Thursday and the kind of criteria we discussed - - details, particularity, proportionality, pose, symmetry, movement, symbolic, mimetic. Use the terms we used on Thursday to describe the differences between statues to explain why you think this statue is midway between the other two.