SECTION 112 Thursday 10-11 242 Dwinelle
diablo II 1.11b crackSECTION 113 Thursday 11-12 175 Barrows
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Hello Everyone,
I hope you enjoyed our brief tour through Greek myths on Roman sarcophagi, and that you’re revelling in the weekend sunshine.
This upcoming week we return to Euripides. The play is the Ion, which we’ll use, among other things, as a convenient means for looking at the god Apollo and the issue of prophecy and divine knowledge. For our next section meeting (March 18), please read the following items and address the writing prompts which follow.
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1) Pages 136-142 (the story of Croesus), and pages 230-235, 246-254 (about Apollo), in Morford and Lenardon’s Classical Mythology.
2) Chapters 158:q and 167:a-j (Cassandra and the Trojan Horse) in Robert Graves’s Greek Myths.
3) Pages 143-157 of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon. (Here Cassandra, newly arrived with Agamemnon, talks with the old men of Argos [represented by the chorus and their leader].)
4) Euripides’s Ion (pages 131-172 in our “Ten Plays by Euripides” volume).
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1.a) Apollo is often called the god of light, shining rationality, and lucid clarity. Yet think of the nature of his oracles and prophecies: would you describe them in terms of lucid clarity, given what we’ve read? Is there a contradiction here, or not?
1.b) Think of Cassandra. Think of the Sirens (what they offer in their song, and what it costs). What are the implications for our ability to attain godlike knowledge?
2) Does even Apollo seem to have total and perfect knowledge of the future?
3) Who are the Ionians? What is their relationship to Apollo, and to Athens?
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