1. Analyze the related themes of food and hunger as they are developed in Seneca’s Thyestes. How do these themes contribute to an understanding of the play’s larger effects and meaning(s)?
2. Analyze the theme of hunting in Seneca’s Phaedra. How does this theme contribute to an understanding of the play’s larger effects and meaning(s)?
3. Closely examine the role of the chorus in any play of Seneca’s that we are reading for this course. What role(s) does this chorus assume in the play? What effect(s) does the chorus have on the play’s (assumed) performance, and how does it figure into the play’s overall theme(s) and meaning(s)?
4. Compare and contrast either (A) Seneca’s and Euripides’ Medea or (B) Seneca’s and Sophocles’ Oedipus. In what significant ways does Seneca alter these famous Greek tragedies? What are the larger effects of the departures Seneca makes from his predecessors’ tragedies?
5. Examine the prostitutes we have encountered in the comedies of Plautus and Terence. Briefly identify the typical stereotypes that emerge from your analysis of these comic prostitutes. Which prostitutes exhibit unexpected or psychologically more complex characteristics?