CLAS 353
Fall 2024
Exam #2 Key

I. Matching: 4 pts. each, 80 total

1. D
2. T
3. J
4. R
5. G
6. S
7. O
8. N
9. F
10. P
11. M
12. I
13. L
14. E
15. A
16. Q
17. B
18. K
19. H
20. C

2. Commentary: 22 pts each, 88 total
For each commentary:
(1)-(4) 2pts. each
(5) 14 pts. each

1. [Statius, Thebaid 1.144ff.]
(1) Statius
(2) Thebaid
(3) Statius/narrator
(4) the narrator comments on the brothers’ failure to share power near the beginning of the epic
(5) some possible talking points for elaboration:

• the passage pointedly Romanizes Theban myth (cf. the description of clients, imperial guard, palace, etc.) for Statius’s readers during the (autocratic) empire generally, as well as the current reign of Domitian
• the epic's central theme of “raw power” (nuda potestas) is established here; neither brother can claim a just cause for war or for retaining rule at Thebes
• oblique reflection on imperial Rome and its succession of power, where so much more is at stake in terms of power, wealth, etc., than in mythic Thebes, and so the suggestion that Roman civil strife springs from similar elemental desires/ambitions as Theban sibling rivalry, upon which it expands enormously in current cultural conditions

2. [Lucan, Civil War 3.19ff.]

(1) Lucan
(2) Civil War
(3) Julia
(4) as Pompey leaves Italy for the last time, Julia appears to him in a dream
(5) some possible talking points for elaboration:

• Julia here becomes one of the epic’s grim, necromantic forces, released from the underworld to torment her ex-husband on this special occasion (cf. Lucan's general love of horror)
• in direct contrast to Aeneas’s benevolent and supportive ghost-wife Creusa (cf. her dream at the end of Aeneid 2), Julia stands in violent opposition to Pompey’s mission and hopes for the future
• in her unrelenting hatred and jealously toward her reputed rival Cornelia, and through her pointed mention of Pompey’s and Caesar’s former familial relationship, Julia serves as a yet another supernatural embodiment of the divisive and vengeful nature of civil war, not unlike a Fury

3. [Statius, Thebaid 12.429ff.]

(1) Statius
(2) Thebaid
(3) Statius/narrator
(4) Argia and Antigone violate Creon's decree against burial and unknowingly place the body of Polynices on Eteocles's pyre
(5) some possible talking points for elaboration:

• the brothers' enmity persists in the supernatural as well as human realm – they become Furies in death – a running motif in Statius's horrific epic
  
• the unexpected renewal of enmity between the brothers starkly undermines the brief collaboration and familial solidarity of the two sisters-in-law, shortly to be shattered altogether when the they are captured and erupt in mutual recriminations
• suggestion (as in the epic as a whole) that such competitive and destructive enmity is not just a Theban problem, but extends (at least) into 1st century CE Roman imperial Rome

4. [Statius, Achilleid 1.1040ff.]

(1) Statius
(2) Achilleid
(3) Deidamia
(4) Deidamia expresses her concerns to Achilles on their wedding night (and the eve of his departure to Troy)
(5) some possible talking points for elaboration:

• the unusual nature of such a scene in epic (i.e. Achilles's and Deidamia's pillow talk), in keeping with Statius's innovative programmatic aim to represent "the entire hero" rather than only the more traditional treatment of the hero's deeds in battle; Statius here also presents a female character with some complexity
• the pathos and irony of Deidamia's speech, especially as Statius's audience is expected to know the Iliad (and so that Achilles will have other woman in his life, will not return to Greece, etc.)
• Deidamia's characterization of Achilles's time on Scyros as "a story / you tell your slaves, about a boy's first peccadillo" highlights Statius's extensive use of common plot elements from Roman comedy (i.e. a concealed rape, delayed confession of the rapist to victim's guardian, marriage) to frame this part of his unusual epic

5. [Lucan, Civil War, 1.1ff.]

(1) Lucan
(2) Civil War
(3) Lucan/narrator
(4) programmatic opening of the epic (proem)
(5) some possible talking points for elaboration:

• “Wars worse than civil” captures the horror & absurdity of strife not just between citizens, but also blood relatives (“fathers and sons”)
• Lucan dramatically frontloads the epic’s main theme of Rome's self-destructive “disembowelment” (= mutilation and fragmentation of the body politic)
• the absence of Muses or any of the traditional gods of epic in this most unheroic of wars and epic poems is notable in this position, as also Lucan’s first of so many vivid and highly emotional apostrophes (here to his fellow citizens)

6. [Lucan, Civil War 7.687ff.]

(1) Lucan
(2) Civil War
(3) Lucan/narrator
(4) As the decisive battle at Phrasalus comes to its climax, the narrator recoils from his horrifying task
(5) some possible talking points for elaboration:

• the narrator’s impassioned view of the Roman civil war as quasi-apocalypse ("the whole world is dying"), a powerful example of Lucan’s fondness for hyperbole
• Lucan’s unwillingness to grant individuals fighting a civil war heroism (cf. epic's aristeia) by refusing to relate the particulars here, in stark contrast to the epic tradition, which normally memorializes glorious death in battle via details (recording of names, wounds, taunts, personal history, etc.), and so a subversion of traditional epic (such as Vergil's Aeneid)
• the poem’s central theme of the civil war as the enslavement of the Roman & larger Mediterranean world under the emperors/autocracy ("the entire world was made prostrate forever")

Part III. Essay: 60 pts. total 

Some possible talking points for elaboration:

• Civil War lacks a central hero (both Julius Caesar and Pompey are deeply flawed) such as Vergil’s Aeneas, though Cato may possibly be seen as an idiosyncratically “uncentered hero” (the lost ending?); Caesar, as the war's successul protagonist, contrasts sharply with Aeneas, who is a model of pietas, whereas Caesar often acts in direct defiance of gods and the values Aeneas embodies
• Vergil often heralds an Augustan teleology, as the purported highpoint/Golden Age of Roman and world history, as also the restoration of peace and order with the autocratic rule of Augustus, whereas Lucan depicts an earlier phase of Octavian’s civil war as the beginning/cause of Rome’s enslavement to tyranny (cf. the two poems’ contrasting opening lines, with Vergil's optimistically looking forward to the rise of an Augustan Rome, Lucan's mired in Rome's past self-destruction)
• contrasted events and intertexts, in addition to the poems' openings, include Vergil’s katabasis (Aeneas meets Anchises with Sibyl) vs. Lucan’s gothic necromancy (Sextus & Erichtho), both at their epic’s midpoints (end of Book 6); see also the very differently minded ghosts of Julia (Lucan, as Pompey leaves Italy), and Creusa (Vergil, as Aeneas leaves Troy), and Cleopatra and Caesar as a parody of Dido and Aeneas (in Civil War 10)
• warfare overwhelmingly is glorious and heroic in Vergil, while Lucan highlights civil war’s fundamental horror and grotesque qualities as the fragmentation of the individual and citizen body (body politic)
• Vergil’s narrative generally prefers action, Lucan’s delay (ekphrases, learned digressions, gothic excursuses, narrative exclamations and commentary, etc.)
• Vergil maintains epic’s traditional gods to support the idea of Roman historical destiny (esp. Jupiter, Venus), while Lucan’s epic is virtually devoid of Olympian or any divinity (save for Fortune and Fate, and Roma in book 1) and instead features powerful, dark, and destructive underworld forces such as Erichtho and Tisiphone
• Vergil’s healing and reconstructive epic overall optimistically forecasts the re-unification of Rome’s social fabric following civil war, whereas Lucan’s relentlessly depicts the body politic as forever fragmented, freedom as shattered, and Rome's civil war wounds as still festering in Lucan’s/Nero’s world decades later; Vergil generally looks forward to glorious imperial rule (with the acendancy of Augustus), Lucan's poem laments a forever lost glorious past of the Roman Republic and an enslaved present in the empire
  
  
  
  EXAM TOTAL = 228 pts. (points and grading are based on a standard percentage scale)