Greek and Roman Literature and Drama
This domain tests close reading. You must know the texts, but marks come from analysis: how genre, structure, characterisation and language produce meaning, and how a passage fits the whole work.
Epic
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and Vergil's Aeneid are hexameter poems shaped by oral tradition (formulae, type-scenes, similes). Iliad: the wrath of Achilles, withdrawal, Patroklos' death, reconciliation with Priam. Aeneid: in medias res, the Roman mission (parcere subiectis et debellare superbos), Juno's opposition, pietas against furor.
Drama
Tragedy's components: prologos, parodos, episodes, stasima, exodos; three actors, masks, chorus. Aeschylus' Oresteia (458 BC), Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus and Antigone, Euripides' Medea (431 BC). Old Comedy: Aristophanes' Clouds and Lysistrata - political satire, parabasis, fantasy. Roman comedy: Plautus and Terence.
Prose
Herodotus' enquiry (historia); Thucydides' claim to a 'possession for all time', composed speeches, and the Melian Dialogue on power and justice; Livy's moralising history; Tacitus' compressed, hostile narrative.
Worked example
A messenger reports Medea's killings. Reasoning: note the convention - violence happens offstage and is narrated, so the audience must imagine it; the messenger's language moves from horror to triumph. Ask what the report does structurally (confirms the plot, releases tension) and thematically (Jason's ruin, the cost of revenge). Quote two or three words, not blocks.
Traps
Retelling plot instead of analysing; ignoring the chorus and stage convention; treating a character's speech as the author's own view.