CLAS 355
Spring 2023
Examination #2 Key
I. Matching: 4 pts. each, 80 total
1. R
2. P
3. D
4. A
5. T
6. E
7. Q
8. B
9. H
10. N
11. M
12. S
13. C
14. F
15. I
16. J
17. K
18. O
19. G
20. L
II. Passages for Commentary: 22 pts. each, 88 total
For each commentary:
(1)-(4) 2 pts. each
(5) 14 pts. each
1. [Suetonius, Nero 23]
(1) Suetonius
(2) Nero
(3) Suetonius/biographer
(4) Suetonius describes Nero's musical performances
(5) some possible talking points for elaboration:
a) the extent of Nero's absolute and whimsical power (and narcissism) in forcing people to watch his performances against their will;
b) how Nero's autocratic domination utterly corrupts what should be a fair competition between musicians;
c) in Nero's autocratic Rome, all the world's a stage, i.e. the emperor's subjects are compelled to perform along with him in an elaborate social drama.
2. [Lucan, Civil War 1.1ff.]
(1) Lucan
(2) Civil War
(3) Lucan/narrator
(4) (programmatic) opening of the epic
(5) some possible talking points for elaboration:
a) “Wars worse than civil” as a hyperbolic attempt to capture the horror & absurdity of a quasi-apocalyptic, irrational civil war lacking any just cause;
b) the epic’s violent theme of “disemboweling” (cf. mutilation and fragmentation of the body politic) is introduced;
c) the absence of Muses or any of the traditional gods of epic in this most unheroic of wars, a war between citizens and family members that results only in HTVT.
3. [Suetonius, Caligula 36]
(1) Suetonius
(2) Caligula
(3 Suetonius/biographer
(4) description of Caligula’s tyrannical behavior among his elite peers
(5) some possible talking points for elaboration:
a) as an autocrat, Caligula extravagantly terrorizes his subjects, even arbitrarily seizing absolute control of the institution of marriage and his subjects' sexuality;
b) Caligula's horrific and traumatizing treatment of the women as described (rape, public shaming, etc.);
c)
Caligula's treatment of the women and their husbands as slaves emblematizes the relationship he cultivates with the entire Roman populace, i.e. that of an exceptionally cruel slaveholder who revels in subjecting HTVT on his dehumanized slaves, deprived of personal agency and bodily autonomy.
4. [Suetonius, Nero 38]
(1) Suetonius
(2) Nero
(3) Suetonius/biographer
(4) description of the Great Fire in Rome
(5) some possible talking points for elaboration:
a) the horrific effects of Nero’s monstrous egotism/autocracy on a most vulnerable urban (and poor) populace;
b) Nero’s narcissistic appropriation of public land for his private pleasure, i.e. construction of his lavish Golden House;
c) Nero’s uncanny ability to transform even the fire into a theatrical performance, if Suetonius's account of his behavior can be believed.
5. [Lucan, Civil War 7.687ff.]
(1) Lucan
(2) Civil War
(3) Lucan/narrator
(4) As the decisive battle comes to its climax, the narrator shrinks from his horrific task
(5) some possible talking points for elaboration:
a)
the narrator’s impassioned view of the Roman civil war as quasi-apocalypse ("the whole world is dying"), i.e. civil war is the end of civilization;
b)
Lucan’s unwillingness to grant individuals fighting a civil war heroism by refusing to relate the particulars here, in stark contrast to the epic tradition, which normally memorializes glorious death in battle via details (names, wounds, taunts, etc.)
c)
the poem’s conceptualization of the civil war as the enslavement of the Roman & larger Mediterranean world under the emperors ("the entire world was made prostrate forever")
6. [Lucan, Civil War 8.711ff.]
(1) Lucan
(2) Civil War
(3) Lucan/narrator
(4) Lucan describes Pompey's death upon landing in Egypt
(5) some possible talking points for elaboration:
a) the descriptive horror of the scene (esp. beheading of a calmly Stoic Pompey, whose character is rehabililated in death by Lucan);
b) the passage's nod to the subsequent horror of Julio-Claudian autocrats like Nero ("To spin heads quickly / Was not yet an art");
c)
the culmination of the epic's theme of fragmenting and severing the body politic is made poignantly concrete here.
7. [Lucan, Civil War 7.881ff.]
(1) Lucan
(2) Civil War
(3) Lucan/narrator
(4) Caesar surveys the carnage the morning after the battle at Pharsalus
(5) some possible talking points for elaboration:
a) culmination of Lucan’s characterization of Caesar as an inhuman monster in his horrific breakfast of champions, and still apparently unsated by blood and the desire for revenge (note his tyrannical refusal of burial);
b) theme of mutilation, fragmentation, and now putrefaction of the body politic (here hyperbolically reshaping the landscape of Pharsalia);
c) the cycle of (civil) revenge seems non-ending, with the possible suggestion that the war is not really over (further phases of civil war will follow).
III. Essay: 80 pts. total: essays were evaluated for their comprehensiveness and accuracy in responding to the prompts, their use of detailed evidence in formulating generalizations, and their overall presentation. Using the reigns of Nero and Caligula as prime examples, there is an abundance of specific examples of HTVT to draw from in our course readings, including the emperors' viciously autocratic treatment of individuals in their immediate orbit (see, for example, Passages 1 and 3 in Part II) as well as sometimes the populace at large, for example, in the great fire (described in Passage 4 in Part II) that displaced thousands and caused intergenerational and even cultural trauma, both in its destruction of public monuments and its likely impoverishment of many families. Many of you pointed out, with various specific examples, how the emperors' rule over their subjects could resemble slavery, with these subjects suffering loss of autonomy, bodily integrity, and personal freedom generally as they were forced to accommodate the autocrats' cruel whims and demonstrations of unrestricted power.
Exam total 248 pts. (points and grading are based on a standard percentage scale)