Dr. Perdigao

HUM 2051: Civilization I

Fall 2014

MIDTERM EXAM EXTRA CREDIT

due Friday, November 21

in hard copy and to turnitin.com

You may choose oneof the passages from the midterm exam and write a two-page response on it.Identify the significance of the passage, its context within the text and how it reflects text’s major theme(s). Turn in your midterm along with the response.

  1. On it he made the earth, the sky, the sea, / The unwearied sun, and the moon near full, / And all the signs that garland the sky, / . . . On it he made two cities, peopled / And beautiful. Weddings in one, festivals, / Brides led from their rooms by torchlight / Up through the town, bridal song rising, / Young men reeling in dance to the tune / Of lyres and flutes, and the women / Standing in the doorways admiring them. / There was a crowd in the market-place / And a quarrel arising between two men / over blood money for a murder, / One claiming the right to make restitution, / The other refusing to accept any terms. / They were headed for an arbitrator / And the people were shouting, taking sides, / But heralds restrained them. The elders sat / On polished stone seats in the sacred circle / And held in their hands the staves of heralds. / The pair rushed up and pleaded their cases… Around the other city two armies / Of glittering soldiery were encamped. (The Iliad)
  1. “Soon as you see him bedded down, / muster your heart and strength and hold him fast, / wildly as he writhes and fights you to escape. / He’ll try all kinds of escape—twist and turn / into every beast that moves across the earth, / transforming himself into water, superhuman fire, / but you hold on for dear life, hug him all the harder! / And when, at last, he begins to ask you questions— / back in the shape you saw him sleep at first— / relax your grip and set the old god free / and ask him outright, hero, / which of the gods is up in arms against you? / How can you cross the swarming sea and reach home at last?” (The Odyssey)
  1. Chorus: “Agamemnon! / Still it’s chanting, beating deep so deep in the heart, / this dirge of the Furies, oh dear god, / not fit for the lyre, its own master / it kills our spirits / kills our hopes / and it’s real, true, no fantasy— / stark terror whirls the brain / and the end is coming / Justice comes to birth.” (Agamemnon)
  1. Chorus-Leader: “Hail, manliest of all women! Now is your time: be forceful and flexible, high-class and vulgar, haughty and sweet, a woman for all seasons; because the head men of Greece, caught by your charms, have gathered together with all their mutual complaints and are turning them over to you for settlement.” (Lysistrata)
  2. And the LORD said, “As one people with one language, for all, if this is what they have begun to do, nothing they plot will elude them. Come, let us go down and baffle their language there so that they will not understand each other’s language.” And the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth and they left off building the city. Therefore it is called Babel, for there the LORD made the language of all the earth babble. And from there the LORD scattered them over all the earth. (Hebrew Bible)
  1. “And suppose he had to go back to distinguishing the shadows, in competition with those who had never stopped being prisoners. Before his eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, while he still couldn’t see properly—and this period of acclimatization would be anything but short—wouldn’t he be a laughing-stock? Wouldn’t it be said of him that he had come back from his journey to the upper world with his eyesight destroyed, and that it wasn’t worth even trying to go up there? As for anyone who tried to set them free, and take them up there, if they could somehow get their hands on him and kill him, wouldn’t they do just that?” (The Republic)