Classics 301B (Spring 2025)
Study Guide for Final Examination
(Monday, May 12, 3:30-5:30pm
)

Format: the exam will consist of 3 sections, i.e. (1) Matching; (2) short Identifications; and (3) Commentaries on specific passages from your assigned reading.

Part I, matching: you will be asked to match items listed with a brief description of them. [ca. 25% of total exam points]

A. List of possible items for Matching:

Conspiracy of Piso (65 CE)
panegyric 
sententia
Rubicon
"First Triumvirate"
Pharsalus/Pharsalia
libertas
Julia
Erichtho
necromancy
Sextus
Cornelia
Ptolemy
Septimius
Tantalus
Pelops
Thyestes
Jason
Colchis
Creon
indifferents (Stoicism)
Priapus
Encolpius
Habinnas
Fortunata
elegantiae arbiter
Lucilius (satirist)
Lucilius (Seneca's Letters)
Pax Romana
indignatio

Umbricius

Part II, short identifications: you will be asked to identify items listed – as they relate to CLAS 301B – with a few informative sentences [you will have choices]. [ca. 25% of total exam points]

B. List of possible items for Identification:
Nero (emperor 54-68 CE)
apostrophe (Lucan)
anti-Aeneid (Lucan)
Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE)
Pompey (106-48 BCE)
Cato the Younger
Caesarism
horror (Neronian literature)
Scaeva
Medea
Atreus
slavery (Seneca)
Satyricon
Trimalchio
Trimalchio's tomb
Stoicism
satura


Part III, commentary: you will be asked to comment on selected passages [you will have choices]. The directions will read as follows [ca. 50% of total exam points]:

(1) identify the author;
(2) identify the work from which the passage is taken;
(3) identify the speaker(s) of the passage;
(4) briefly describe the context in which the passage occurs;
(5) write a carefully organized essay/short answer commenting on the larger significance of the passage in light of the work’s main themes, its characters, its historical, social-historical, or literary-historical significance, literary qualities, style and techniques, ideas, etc. [note that (5) is worth the majority of each commentary's points]

C. List of authors and works for Commentary [note that passages on the exam are likely to be those we discussed in class: see the course Outlines for these]:

Lucan, Civil War (Pharsalia) 1.1-291, 2.1-430, 3.1-48, 6.1-346, 431-883, 7, 8.500-935, 9
Seneca, Thyestes, Medea
Seneca, Letters 7, 18, 21, 47, 54, 56
Juvenal, Satires 1, 3
Petronius,  Satyricon 26-52, 64-78


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