Greek Science, Arts and Culture

Ancient Epic, Poetry and Historiography

15 practice questions, each with the answer and an explanation.

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Random questions from this topic, one at a time. You see the answer and the explanation straight after each one.

All 15 questions

  1. In the Iliad, a central quarrel occurs between King Agamemnon and which warrior during the Trojan War?
  2. The Odyssey chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus, king of which year, back to his home after the fall of Troy?
  3. One modern scholar surmises that who may have learned about world geography, especially the catalogue of rivers in Theogony (337–45), listening to his father's accounts of his own sea voyages as a mer…
  4. Among these are Theogony, which tells the origins of the gods, their lineages, and the events that led to Zeus 's rise to power, and Works and Days, a poem that describes the five Ages of Man, offers…
  5. The word lesbian is an allusion to which archaic poet, originating from the name of the island of Lesbos where she was born?
  6. In his first Pythian ode, composed in 470 BC in honour of the Sicilian tyrant Hieron, who celebrated a series of victories by Greeks against foreign invaders: Athenian and Spartan-led victories agains…
  7. Which playwright did Eugene O'Neill note had changed the tragic stage so fundamentally as to be regarded as the founder of Tragedy?
  8. In the tragic trilogy known as The Oresteia by Aeschylus, which play is listed first alongside The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides?
  9. In 480 BC, Aeschylus and his brother Ameinias performed military service against Xerxes I's invading forces at which famous battle?
  10. Which dramatist influenced the development of drama by adding a third actor, thereby reducing the importance of the chorus in presenting the plot?
  11. Antigone is a tragedy written in or before 441 BC by which playwright?
  12. Medea is an ancient Greek tragedy first produced in 431 BC by which playwright?
  13. In the Bacchae, what king's first threat to the god Dionysus ends with him beheaded at the end of the play?
  14. What was part of this transformation and he shared in the intellectual fashions of the period—the structure of his plays evolves from Old Comedy until, in his last surviving play, Wealth II, it more c…
  15. Which comic dramatists and tragedians were satirized by Aristophanes alongside Euripides?

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