PAU Llengua i Cultura Gregues II (Catalunya) key terms

Noun meaning word, speech, account, or reason; in Attic prose it often introduces a reported argument or a reasoned explanation. Recognize its third-declension endings and its many context-dependent translations.

City-state, the basic political community of Greece; also the town itself and its citizen body. Its stem πολι- produces πολίτης (citizen) and πολιτεία (constitution), and it declines with -εως in the genitive.

Citizen, a member of the πόλις with political rights; contrasted with μέτοικος (resident foreigner) and δοῦλος (slave). First-declension masculine noun in -ης, genitive -ου.

Democracy, rule by the dēmos; in Athens the system of the assembly, council, and popular courts developed after Cleisthenes and Ephialtes. First-declension feminine noun; opposite of ὀλιγαρχία and τυραννίς.

The assembly of citizens, the sovereign decision-making body in democratic Athens; also used for a convened meeting in other states. First-declension feminine noun in -ας, genitive -ας.

Council; in Athens the Council of Five Hundred chosen by lot, which prepared the assembly's agenda. First-declension feminine noun in -ῆς, genitive -ῆς.

General, commander of the army; in Athens one of ten annually elected generals with both military and political influence. Second-declension masculine noun in -ός.

Heavily armed infantryman fighting in the phalanx with spear, shield, and body armour. First-declension masculine noun in -ου; central to the citizen army of the classical πόλις.

Resident foreigner in Athens, free but without citizen rights; liable for military service and a special tax. Second-declension masculine noun in -ου.

Slave, an unfree person owned by another; common in Athenian households, mines, and agriculture. Second-declension masculine adjective/noun in -ου; feminine δούλη.

Sacrifice, the central act of Greek cult, usually the slaughter and burning of an animal for a god. First-declension feminine noun in -ας, genitive -ας.

Altar, the raised stone structure where offerings and sacrifices were made, standing outside the temple in the sanctuary. Second-declension masculine noun in -οῦ.

Sanctuary, sacred precinct, including temple, altar, and temenos; also used as adjective meaning sacred. Second-declension neuter noun in -οῦ.

Excellence, virtue, the quality of being good at being what one is; for a citizen, courage and civic responsibility. First-declension feminine noun in -ῆς.

Character, habitual disposition, custom; in rhetoric it names the speaker's projected character as a means of persuasion. Third-declension neuter noun in -ους, genitive -ους.

Suffering, emotion, or experience; in rhetoric, the appeal to the audience's feelings. Third-declension neuter noun in -ους, genitive -ους.

The art of public speaking, a fifth-century-BCE Greek invention; taught by sophists and systematized in Aristotle's Rhetoric. First-declension feminine adjective used as noun.

Sophist, an itinerant professional teacher of rhetoric and argument in the fifth century BCE, often portrayed critically by Plato. First-declension masculine noun in -οῦ.

Inquiry, investigation, and hence written history; the word Herodotus uses to open his work. First-declension feminine noun in -ας.

Tragedy, the Athenian dramatic genre performed at the City Dionysia; its best-known authors are Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. First-declension feminine noun in -ας.

Comedy, staged at the Athenian festivals of Dionysus; Aristophanes is the main surviving author of Old Comedy. First-declension feminine noun in -ας.

Elegy, a poem in elegiac couplets (hexameter plus pentameter), used for lament, exhortation, and reflection; Callinus, Tyrtaeus, and Solon wrote in it. First-declension feminine noun.

Epic poem or hexameter verse; in the plural ἔπη means epic poetry, above all Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Third-declension neuter noun in -ους.

Measure, metre; in analysis it names the quantitative pattern of long and short syllables, such as dactylic hexameter or iambic trimeter. Second-declension neuter noun in -ου.

Part, element; in grammar and morphology it refers to a part of speech or an analyzable component of a word. Second-declension neuter noun in -ου, diminutive of μόρος.

Verb; also a spoken word or statement, opposed in grammar to ὄνομα (noun). Third-declension neuter noun in -ατος.

Case, literally a 'falling' of a noun or adjective; Greek grammarians distinguished nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and vocative. Third-declension feminine noun in -εως.

Aorist, the tense marking a simple past event without reference to duration; its stem, endings, and augment must be recognized for translation. Second-declension adjective used as noun.

Imperfect tense, expressing past action in progress or repeated; formed from the present stem with augment and secondary endings. Second-declension adjective used as noun.

To inflect a verb, to give it mood and voice; the passive ἐγκλίνομαι means 'to be inflected'. Compound of ἐν and κλίνω; its aorist is ἐνεκλινάμην.

Participle, a verbal adjective sharing tense and voice with verbs and case, number, and gender with nouns. First-declension feminine noun in -ῆς; genitive absolute is a common construction.

Infinitive, the uninflected verbal form used for complementation, purpose, and indirect statement. Second-declension adjective used as noun, literally 'not indicating person'.

Subjunctive mood, used in exhortations, deliberative questions, and subordinate clauses with ἄν or ἵνα. First-declension feminine adjective used as noun.

Optative mood, expressing wish or potentiality and used in indirect statement after a past-tense main verb. First-declension feminine adjective used as noun.

Herodotus of Halicarnassus, fifth-century-BCE author of the Histories on the Persian Wars, often called the father of history. Second-declension masculine proper name.

Thucydides, Athenian historian of the Peloponnesian War, known for his analytical method and speeches. First-declension masculine proper name in -ου.

Festival of Dionysus at Athens, especially the City Dionysia where tragedies and comedies were performed competitively. Second-declension neuter plural noun.