NZ Scholarship Classical Studies flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Polis

The ancient Greek city-state: an urban centre with its surrounding territory and a citizen body sharing cult, law, and political institutions. Athens and Sparta are contrasting examples of polis organisation.

Athenian ekklesia

The Athenian assembly of adult male citizens, which met on the Pnyx to vote on decrees, war, and treaties. It embodied direct democracy, though speakers from elite families often dominated debate.

Metic

A resident foreigner in Athens who was free and often prosperous but lacked citizenship rights and paid a special tax. Metics served in the military and shaped the economy without political voice.

Thucydides' speeches

Speeches in Thucydides' history are literary compositions, often written from his sense of what was fitting, not verbatim records. They must be read as authorial interpretation of motive and policy.

Herodotus' method

Herodotus presents enquiry (historia) by reporting multiple accounts and sometimes declining to decide between them. His ethnography and religious framing shape how events are explained and evaluated.

Tragic festival context

Attic tragedies were performed at the City Dionysia before a civic audience, funded by liturgies. The festival setting makes the plays interventions in public debate about justice, power, and the household.

Sophoclean irony

In Sophocles, characters speak with limited knowledge while the audience grasps the fuller meaning, as with Oedipus' pronouncements. The technique exposes the gap between human certainty and divine knowledge.

Euripidean problem play

Euripides often exposes the costs of social norms, as in Medea's treatment as a foreign wife. His plays interrogate rather than confirm civic ideology, complicating simple moral readings.

Aristophanic comedy

Old Comedy combines obscenity, fantasy, and direct political satire, naming living politicians. Its festival licence allows critique of war, courts, and demagogues that other genres could not voice openly.

Homeric kleos

Kleos is the imperishable fame won through heroic action and preserved in epic song. It explains Achilles' choice of a short glorious life and epic's role in conferring lasting memory.

Homeric xenia

Xenia is the institution of guest-friendship with obligations of hospitality and gift-exchange. Its violation, as by the suitors or Paris, drives conflict and marks the boundary between civilised and savage behaviour.

Aeneid and Augustan ideology

Virgil's Aeneid links Rome's origins to Trojan survival and to Augustan claims of peace and duty. It celebrates imperial mission while also exposing the human cost of pietas and conquest.

Res publica

The Roman 'public thing' or commonwealth, denoting the state and its shared affairs. Its meaning shifted as the Republic's institutions were monopolised by individuals under the Principate.

Roman imperium

Imperium was the formal power of command held by magistrates and later the emperor, including military authority. It was distinct from auctoritas, the informal prestige that made Augustus' position workable.

Auctoritas

Auctoritas is informal authority or prestige, as in Augustus' claim to excel all in authority while holding no extraordinary office. It explains how the Principate disguised monarchy as restored Republic.

Clientela and patronage

Patronage bound patrons and clients through reciprocal obligations of protection, gifts, and political support. It structured Roman social and electoral life and shaped how freedmen and dependants were represented.

Pontifex maximus

The chief priest of Roman state religion, responsible for the calendar and sacred law, a role later assumed by emperors. Control of priesthood fused religious and political authority in one figure.

Imperial cult

The worship of emperors or their genius across the empire, varying by region and audience. It functioned as a loyalty mechanism and a language of hierarchy rather than a uniform personal belief.

Eleusinian Mysteries

Secret initiation rites at Eleusis honouring Demeter and Persephone, promising a better lot in the afterlife. Their secrecy means our knowledge comes from outsiders' comments and archaeological remains.

Kouros and kore

Archaic free-standing statues of nude youths and clothed maidens, used as dedications and grave markers. Their conventional posture and idealised anatomy express aristocratic values and ritual function.

Parthenon sculptural programme

The Parthenon's pediments, metopes, and frieze articulate Athenian civic myth and claims to divine favour. The frieze's procession is debated as either civic self-representation or a mythological scene.

Ara Pacis Augustae

The Altar of Augustan Peace in Rome, decorated with procession and fertility reliefs. Its imagery promotes peace, prosperity, and dynastic continuity as the justification for Augustus' rule.

Roman veristic portraiture

Republican portraiture emphasises age, wrinkles, and stern expression as signs of gravitas and public service. The style is a constructed moral image, not a neutral record of appearance.

Pompeian wall painting

Domestic wall decoration at Pompeii, categorised into four styles, creates illusionistic architecture and mythological scenes. Its placement reveals how patrons displayed taste, wealth, and cultural knowledge.

Primary versus secondary evidence

Primary evidence is contemporary with the ancient world (texts, inscriptions, objects, sites); secondary evidence is modern interpretation. Scholarship answers analyse primary evidence and evaluate secondary readings critically.

Source criticism

Assessing a source's authorship, date, genre, audience, and purpose to judge what it can support. It converts a quotation from decoration into evidence for a specific historical claim.

Argument from silence

An inference drawn from the absence of evidence, which is weak unless survival conditions predict that evidence. It must be stated as a limitation, not as proof of non-occurrence.

Anachronism

Applying modern concepts, such as individual rights or a nation-state, to ancient societies without justification. It distorts analysis and is penalised where the categories did not exist.

Reception of antiquity

The study of how later periods reinterpret classical texts, images, and ideas. It treats modern uses, from cinema to political rhetoric, as evidence about modern concerns rather than about antiquity.

Counter-argument in essays

Stating the strongest opposing reading and then rebutting or accommodating it with evidence. This demonstrates evaluative judgement and typically distinguishes Scholarship-level responses.

Thesis statement

A contestable claim that governs the whole response and is revisited in the conclusion. It must answer the question's command words and be supported by analysed evidence, not narrative summary.

Comparative analysis

Analysing two cases against shared criteria to reveal similarity, difference, and significance. Mere juxtaposition is insufficient; the comparison must be explicitly linked to the argument.