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| Poetry performed in a symposium setting. Expressive and about philosophical topics. A genre of Greek poetry focused on love, the pursuit of it, and its ethical implications. The poems often had ties with the divine, ethics, politics, and many other topics. Issues also addressed are lesbian love (Sappho) and homosexual love. |
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| A rural sweetheart from the bucolic idylls of Theocritus; represents the innocent love ancients saw in nature. Shepherdess who stabbed herself in the heart for a lover’s attention; blood became the flower |
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| Alcibiades is the last to arrive at the Symposium in Plato’s Symposium. He praises Socrates greatly but with negative intentions. Alcibiades is in love with Socrates and hates him simultaneously because Socrates refuses to sleep with him or allow him to perform sexual favors. He has been rejected of apprenticeship through a homoerotic relationship. |
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| Present in Plato’s Symposium, he argues that Love in itself is not beautiful because it longs and needs beauty (thus it does not have it). He develops this position on love after having been educated by Diotima. gives the near-definitive version of love as the desire for good things in Symposium; also in the clouds; note differences |
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| Roman almost-dictator; ended the Republic; deified (apotheosis); emperors compared to Jupiter; Cicero often criticized Ceasar. Ovid mentions Caesar in Metamorphoses, designating him as a deity only surpassed by Augustus in greatness, sarcastically. Ovid also recounts Caesar's death in similar form to the other stories in Metamorphoses. |
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| One of the speakers in Plato’s Symposium. He claims that there are two kinds of love: earthly love and heavenly love. Earthly love is attributed to the Common Aphrodite; this love is characterized by body over soul, women over boys, and less intelligent partners. Heavenly Aphrodite love is for love for boys; it is older, stronger, and more virtuous. |
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| Point in a play when the actors go offstage and the chorus directly addresses the audience ie in Aristophanes Clouds when the clouds pause the praise to explain why Aristophanes should win the Dionysia; usually comical |
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| The one who philosophically discusses love with Socrates; her ideas become the basis of Socrates’ argument of Love in the Symposium; love is the desire for good things; love is a spirit between mortal and immortal; love=immortality through reproduction; her representation of beauty is a platonic form often referred to as Diotima's ladder. |
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| The slave in Aristophanes’ Frogs. His significance is that Xanthias outwits and is superior to the God Dionysus. This portrayal is significant in that Xanthias’ role would never be seen in a tragedy, only in a comedy. This is significant to the distinction between major and minor genres that has run through this course. |
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| The central argument of a play between the protagonist and the antagonist. The topic of concern is usually ethical, and both sides present different sides of the issue. |
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| The capitol of Ptolemaic Egypt. It was a multi-ethnic city with Egyptians, Greeks, Jews, and others. The Library of Alexandria held many of the great texts of Antiquity. Theocritus was a poet who worked in the library. |
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| The Ptolemies were the Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt from the time of Alexander the Great to the Roman conquest. They were concerned with maintain ing their Greek heritage and protecting Greek culture which is one of the reasons they built the Library of Alexandria. |
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| A sculptor in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book 10: 242-95) who was sick of women and thus sculpted his own perfect image of a woman. He falls in love with the statue and Aphrodite grants his wishes and transforms the statue into living flesh. Proof that love can be for anyone and anything. |
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| A metaphysical theory, which explains the unknowns and mysteries of the universe, exemplified in the Creation in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. |
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| A reference to a historical work and its contents. Ovid makes many allusions in Metamorphoses to past leaders, writers, and poets (Caesar, Virgil’s Aeneid). |
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| Thought about the origin of the life and the universe; split the universe into cosmic forces of Love and Strife; influenced by Pythagoreans; thought up the four Classical Elements; ties back into cosmology; elements brought together by love and torn apart by strife; Strife is knowledge because it divides things into bits one can know |
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| The deification of a mortal. Found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the apotheosis of Julius Caesar. Goes along with Ovid’s desire to live forever though his writing. Possibly ironic and sarcastic become the theme of the book is change and Ovid talks about how Rome and all things eventually fail so immortality is not permanent either. |
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| An art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted object is 3-dimensional. This is seen in Ovid where things seem to be something which they are not. |
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| The concept that all works of art should have ethical, instructional, or educational value. The Greeks determined which writers were “good” based on the ethical messages they instilled in the reader. |
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A narrative structure which comes full-circle, often beginning and ending with the same theme or story-line. Present in Ovid's Metamorphoses.
A story structure that loops back onto itself; narrator goes through a series of topics developing a big ideal, then retraces back in the other direction; Metamorphosis; Alcaeus used it in his symposiastic poetry |
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| Meaning Teacher of Love. This is the what Ovid declares himself in the Art of Love; he claims to fully understand Love and thus is in a position to offer advice with guaranteed results. |
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| This is one type of love that the Greeks distinguished. Its defining qualities are physicality, sexuality, and erotic passion. Whether it is an emotion, a desire, or a need is debated. |
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| A Greek word related to modern day English “morals, values, or ethics.” This is often the prevailing theme of many ancient works, for poets and writers were judged based on ethos. Virtue; more than just ethics; also being; part of the soul as in looking at love from an ethical perspective; what fosters virtue; discussed on individual, social, and universal level |
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| Philosophy claiming that emotions are destructive in nature, for they distract the mind and plague it with irrational thoughts. Cicero’s claims in Tusculan Disputations are stoic in nature. |
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A genre of Greek poetry which was set in the countryside / farmlands. Theocritus is a Bucolic Poet. This genre usually involves shepherds and everyday layperson conflicts or events.
e.g. Cyclops’ Serenade, Daphnis + Chloe |
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| One type of Greek love that is rarely discussed by the Ancients but emphasized by Saint Paul. Agape is unconditional, divine, self-sacrificing love. |
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| A ridiculously beautiful male character in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Narcissus and Echo). Narcissus is struck by Cupid’s arrow as he gazes into a pond. He falls in love with his own reflection and eventually melts away after the burning passion in his heart engulfed his physical body. |
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| Ovid’s poem which begins at the Creation and ends with Ovid himself (it is his history). The focus of the poem is on the continuous changing nature of the universe; this is reflected in not only the plot but also the structure of the poem. |
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| Ancient God of wine and the patron of agriculture and theatre. The festival at Dionysus featured the competition of comedies and tragedies, which included Aristophanes' Clouds and Frogs and Medea. The festival is also mentioned in Plato's Symposium, and Daphnis and Chloe. He is the main character in Aristophanes’ Frogs. The god is portrayed as a comedic dimwit, outsmarted by his slave and completely illogical (as seen when he judges Euripides and Sophocles). |
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| Greek word for learning through research; It is relevant to Longus. The text calls itself a "historia", a title usually reserved for Roman and Greek Histories such as those of Thucydides and Herodotus. What makes this work like those are two characteristics: (a) its focus on seasonal cycles for the design of the narrative; and (b) the emphasis on the pedagogical function of the text. literally means “inquiry” or an investigation. |
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