Greek Literature and Cultural Background
The literature and cultural background section tests knowledge of Greek authors, genres, and the institutions that produced the texts. Questions are usually short answer: identify a genre, explain a custom, or place a passage in context.
Genres and authors
Know epic (Homer, Iliad and Odyssey), tragedy (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides), comedy (Aristophanes), historiography (Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon), philosophy (Plato, Aristotle), and oratory (Lysias, Demosthenes). For each, know performance context: tragedy at the City Dionysia, comedy at the Lenaia and Dionysia, epic recited at festivals.
Civic and social background
Athenian democracy: ekklesia (assembly), boule (council of 500), strategoi, ostracism, liturgies. Citizenship excluded women, slaves, and metics. Sparta: dual kingship, agoge, syssitia. Panhellenic sanctuaries: Olympia, Delphi. Religion: sacrifice, libation, asylum, Eleusinian Mysteries.
Worked example
Passage: οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι, ἐπειδὴ οἱ Πέρσαι εἰς Μαραθῶνα ἀπέβησαν, ἐστράτευσαν πανδημεὶ καὶ ἐνίκησαν. Translation: 'The Athenians, when the Persians disembarked at Marathon, marched out with their whole levy and won.' Reasoning: the aorist participle phrase ἐπειδή...ἀπέβησαν sets the time; πανδημεὶ means 'with the entire people', i.e. the full citizen levy, not a small force; the victory is Marathon (490 BCE), traditionally credited to Miltiades. For a background question, connect the sentence to Athenian self-image and the Persian Wars sequence: Marathon 490, Thermopylae and Salamis 480, Plataea 479.
Traps
- Mixing the Persian War dates and battles.
- Calling Thucydides a poet or Euripides a historian.
- Assuming Athenian 'democracy' included all residents.
- Treating one author's hostile portrayal (e.g. of Cleon) as neutral fact.
- Confusing Greek institutions with Roman ones of similar name.
- Answering a stylistic question from an English translation as though it were the Greek.