Greek Literature and Set Texts
What the domain tests
The literature and set-texts domain tests close reading in Greek, not plot recall. You must show how language, metre, structure and genre produce meaning, and place a passage in its literary and historical context. Answers should quote Greek where it earns the point.
Core rules
- Genre conventions: Homeric epic uses formulaic epithets, type-scenes and extended similes; tragedy moves through prologue, parodos, episodes, stasima and exodos, often with messenger speech and stichomythia; Thucydides composes speeches that explore causation and power; Plato dramatises Socratic elenchus.
- Metre: dactylic hexameter for Homer; iambic trimeter for tragic dialogue. Metre is not decoration: enjambment, caesura and resolution shape emphasis.
- Context: know the dramatic festivals, the Athenian audience, and the political background of the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars. Set-text questions often ask how context illuminates a passage.
Worked example
A Homeric simile compares a warrior to a lion descending on flocks. The tenor is the warrior's charge; the vehicle is the lion's hunger and the herdsmen's fear. The simile slows narrative time, magnifies the hero, and can foreshadow doom. A strong answer names the grammatical details (ὡς δ' ὅτε...) and explains the effect on the audience, rather than saying only "it is a vivid comparison".
Traps
Retelling the plot; treating a character's speech as the author's own view; ignoring Greek word order when discussing emphasis; using modern terms such as "protagonist" without explaining the ancient convention; quoting long passages without analysis.