Reed College
Reed College

Humanities 110

Introduction to the Humanities

Paper Topics | Fall 2016 | Paper 4

Paper Due: Saturday, December 3, at 5:00 PM in your conference leader's Eliot Hall mailbox
Length: 6-8 pages (1500-2000 words)

  1. How does Herodotus use the practices of deciphering oracles and interpreting dreams to comment on monarchy and democracy? You might consider the passage in which Artabanus interprets Xerxes' dream in book VII.

  2. Compare Xerxes' dream in book VII to Agamemnon's dream in Iliad II. Given that Herodotus was aware of this scene from the Iliad, how might Herodotus be using the resonance between these two passages?

  3. Examine the way love and beauty are represented in one poem by either Sappho (c. 600) or Anacreon (c. 582-485).

  4. Both Persepolis and the Athenian Acropolis are state-sponsored monuments. How are the ideologies of Persia and Athens manifested at both of these sites? Consider in particular the organization of space and the iconographic program of each.

  5. Much of the Bisitun Inscription and Herodotus 3.61-89 cover the same basic events: the death of Cambyses, the conspiracy of the Magi, and Darius' rise to power. The texts, though, present the same series of events in different ways. Examine how the narrative of each text works to establish Darius' legitimacy, particularly focusing on how the intended audience of each text shaped the construction of its respective narrative.

  6. As a whole, Aeschylus' The Oresteia tells of what appears to be a never-ending cycle of violence stretching from Agamemnon's father Atreus' unspeakable crime up to Orestes' trial. Throughout the trilogy, however, each act of violence is also constructed or justified as an act of justice. Basing your argument in at least two crimes committed in The Oresteia, as well as Orestes' trial, explore how this set of tragedies addresses the relationship between violence and justice. Do gender and class play a role in how this relationship is conceived? Is Aeschylus arguing, implicitly or directly, for a specific notion of justice?

  7. Sophocles' Antigone deals with the aftermath of Thebes' civil war, and can thus be read as a complex study of the relationship between dissent and the rule of law (represented by Creon, the sovereign). For instance, consider how Ismene and Haemon are torn between allegiance to the sovereign and being loyal to someone they love. How does Sophocles' present the relationship between dissent and the rule of law?