Ancient Literature for week of Jan. 16 to Jan. 20

Only questions on House of Atreus
First read pages 345 through the first two lines on 362 in Hamilton’s Mythology and answer the following questions.

1. Who was the father of Tantalus?
2. What was Tantalus’s great sin?
3. Why did he do such a thing?
4. Did he succeed?
5. What punishment did the gods inflict on Tantalus?
6. Pelops was brought back to life by the gods and was happy in his marriage to Princess Hippodamia. How did he earn the right to marry her?
7. What two possibilities are given as the reason for the misfortune of the house of Atreus and which is more likely?
8. What was the great sin of Niobe (Tantalus’s daughter and Pelops’s sister)?
9. What was her punishment?
10. Who were Pelops’s two sons?
11. Thyestes made Atreus’s wife an adulteress. What did Atreus do to retaliate?
12. Homer in the Odyssey and Aeschylus in Agamemnon give different murderers and different motives for the murder of Agamemnon. Who were these murderers and what were their motives?
13. Who were Aegisthus’s father and uncle?
14. What was Orestes’s terrible dilemma?
15. Why did he decide to kill his mother?
16. Describe what Orestes saw after killing his mother that no one else did? [ NOTE: These were the Erinyes, the Furies. (see pages 44 & 80 in Hamilton’s Mythology.)]

Next read the Eumenides (Some of this is easy to understand and some is difficult. Don’t get bogged down in the difficult part. Just get an overview—we’ll work on the difficult stuff next week.)

Finally read 362-363 and answer the following questions:

17. How did Orestes free himself from the curse of the Erinyes?
18. What did Orestes say to Athena?
19. What was significant about these words?
20. What was result of these words?