内容预览
第一部分 课后练习
第1章 希腊罗马文化
Greek Culture
Questions for Revision:
1. What are the majorelements in European culture?
Key: There are two main elements—the Greco-Roman element and theJudeo-Christian element.
2.What were the main features of ancient Greek society?
Key: In Greek society, only adult male citizen had real power and thecitizenship was a set of rights which a man inherited from his father. Theeconomy of Athens rested on an immense amount of slave labor. Slaves worked fortheir masters. The exploitation was a serious social problem. The Greeks lovedsports. They often took part in the contests of sports in Olympus Mount, thusOlympic Games came into being.
3. What did Homer do? Why is he important in the history ofEuropean literature?
Key: He depicted the great Greek men who lived in the period1200-1100B.C. and wars happening at that time. As an author of epics, heemployed fine literary language to describe wars and men, even though they weredull. He stood in the peek of Greek literature and exerted a great influence onhis followers.
4. Who were the outstanding dramatists of ancient Greece? Whatimportant plays did each of them write?
Key: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were three outstanding dramatistsof ancient Greece.
Aeschylus:Prometheus Bound, Persians, Agamemnon.
Sophocles:Oedipus the King, Electra, Antigone.
Euripides:Andromache, Medea, Trojan Women.
5. Were there historians then? Who were they? What did each of themwrite about?
Key: Yes, there are. They were Herodotus and Thucydides. Herodotus wroteabout the wars between Greeks and Persians. Thucydides wrote about the warbetween Athens and Sparta and between Athens and Syracuse.
6. Would you say that philosophy was highly developed then? Whowere the major philosophers?
Key: No, I wouldn’t. Because those philosophical ideas were only idealismor simple materialism or metaphysics. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were themajor philosophers at that time.
7. Did Socrates write any book? How then do we know about him? Whatdistinguished his philosophy?
Key: No, he didn’t. We know Socrates chiefly through what Plato recordedof him in the famous Dialogues written by Plato. He considered that philosophyrested with the dissect of oneself and virtue was high worth of life. Hismethod of argument, by questions and answers, was known as the dialecticalmethod.
8.Tell some of Plato’s ideas. Why do people call him an idealist?
Key: (1) Men have knowledge because of the existence of certain general“ideas”, like beauty, truth, and goodness.
(2) We shouldnot look at the things which are not seen: for the things which are not seeneternal. Because he emphasized the importance of “ideas” and believed that“thought” had created the world, people call him an idealist.
9. In whatimportant ways was Aristotle different from Plato? What are some of Aristotle’sworks that are still influential today?
Key: (1) Aristotle emphasized direct observation of nature and insistedthat theory should follow fact. This is different from Plato’s reliance onsubjective thinking.
(2) He thoughtthat “idea” and matter together made concrete individual realities in which hediffered from Plato who held that ideas had higher reality than the politicalworld. His significant works includes: Ethics, Politics and Rhetoric.
10. Whowere some of the other philosophers active in that period? Does the word“Epicurean” in its modern sense convey the true meaning of the philosophy ofthe ancient Epicureans? Whatwere their views on pleasure?
Key: (1) They were Heracleitue, Democritus, Diogenes, Pyrrhon, Epicurusand Zeno.
(2) No, itdoesn’t. The ancient Epicureans believed pleasure to be the highest worth oflife, but by pleasure they meant, not sensual enjoyment but that attained bythe practice of virtue. But this idea was misled by modern people, in theirsense, the word “Epicurean” has come to mean indulgence in luxurious living.
11. Saysomething about Greek sculpture, pottery and architecture. What was the mostfamous Greek temple? Is it still there?
Key: (1) Along with the formation of Greek civilization, Greek sculpture,pottery and architecture got many great achievements. Greeks put into works ofart the things they admired and worshiped, the scientific rules theydiscovered. Greek art evolved from the archaic period to the classical periodwhich marked its maturity.
(2) The mostfamous temple was the Acropolis at Athens.
(3) Yes, it isstill there.
12. Give some examples to show the enormous influence of Greekculture on English literature.
Key: (1) A Freudian term “Oedipus Complex” of 19th century originatingfrom a Greek tragedy in which king Oedipus unknowingly killed his father andmarried his mother.
(2) In the earlypart of the 19th century, in Englandalone, three young Romantic poets expressed their admiration of Greek culturein works which have themselves become classics: Byron’s Isle of Greece,Shelley’s Hellas and Prometheus Unbound andKeats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn.
(3) In the 20thcentury, there are Homeric parallels in the Irishman James Joyce’s modernistmasterpiece Ulysses.
Roman Culture
1. What did the Romans have in common with the Greeks? And what wasthe chief difference between them?
Key: (1) The Romans had a lot incommon with the Greeks. Both peoples had traditions rooted in the idea of thecitizen-assembly, hostile to monarchy and to servility. Their religions werealike enough for most of their deities to be readily identified—Greek Zeus withRoman Jupiter, Greek Aphrodite with Roman Venus, and so on—and their myths tobe fused. Their languages worked in similar ways and were ultimately related,both being members of the Indo-European language family which stretches fromBangladesh to Iceland.
(2) There was one big difference. The Romansbuilt up a vast empire. The Greeks didn’t, excepted for the brief moment ofAlexander’s conquests, which soon disintegrated.
2.Explain Pax Romana.
Key: In the year 27 B.C., Octavius tooksupreme power as emperor with the title of Augustus. Two centuries later, theRoman empire reached its greatest extent in the North and East. The emperorsmainly relied on a strong army—the famous Roman Legions and an influentialbureaucracy to exert their rules. Thus the Romans enjoyed a long period ofpeace lasting 200 years. This remarkable phenomenon in the history is known asPax Romana.
3.What contribution did the Romans make to the rule of law?
Key: In Roman’s earliest stage, only anumber of patricians knew the customary legal procedure when the rules were putinto writing in the middle of the third century B.C. It marked a victory forthe plebeians. There was further development of law under the emperors until itwas codified, eventually to become the core of modern civil and commercial lawin many Western countries.
4. Who werethe important prose writers in ancient Rome? What does “Ciceronian” mean? Did Cicero write that kind ofrhetorical prose all the time?
Key: (1) Marcus Tullius Cicero andJulius Caesar were two important prose writers.
(2) Ciceronian means Cicero’s eloquent oratorical manner ofwriting, Which has had an enormous influence on the development of Europeanprose.
(3) No, he didn’t. Because Cicero appears asa different man with a different style, far less rhetorical, but colloquial andintimate.
5.Give an example of the terse style of Julius Caesar’s prose.
Key: An example: I came, I saw, Iconquered (models of succinct Latin).
6.Who was Lucretius? What did he do?
Key: (1) Lucretius was a poet ofancient Rome.
(2) He wrote the philosophical poem On theNature of Thing to expound the ideas of Epicurus the Greek atomist.
7. What isthe book for which Virgil has been famous throughout the centuries? In whatways in the book linked with the Greek past?
Key: (1) The book was Aeneid.
(2) The story was about Aeneas, one of theprinces of Troy, who escaped from that burningcity when it fell to the Greeks, to carry on the Trojan cause in a new place, Rome. He didn’t go alone,but carrying his father on his shoulders and leading his little son by thehand, a family group of three generations moved together. Thus in this way thebook is linked with the Greek past.
8.Why do we say Aeneas is a truly tragic hero?
Key: Because Aeneas had to betray thegreat passion of his life, his love for Dido, queen of Carthage, so that he could fulfill hishistoric mission.
9. What is the chief Roman achievement in architecture? Give someexamples.
Key: (1) The Romans were greatengineers. They covered their world from one end to the other with roads,bridges, aqueducts, theatres and arenas.
(2) Some examples:
A. The Pantheon:the greatest the best preserved Roman temple built in 27 B.C.
B. Pont du Gard: it is an exceptionallywell-preserved aqueduct that spans a wide valley in southern France.
10. Why are the wall-paintings of the ancient Romans stillsignificant to us today?
Key: Roman painting was stronglyinfluenced by the art of Greece.And it also had pecularities of its own. Unfortunately much of the painting nolonger exists. There are, however, some wall-paintings from Pompeii and othertowns near Naples. These wall-paintings include still lives, landscapepaintings and figure paintings. Among them were Lady Musician and Young Girl,the Maiden Gathering Flowers and the Landscape.
