Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. In what meter are the Iliad and the Odyssey written? You might know this as the meter of Longfellow's poem "Evangeline".
2. Greek poetic meters are not based on syllable stress, like English poetic meters are. Instead, Greek meter is based on what aspect of the syllable?
3. Furthermore, syllables in ancient Greek words aren't accented by stress. What are they accented by?
4. Objects and heroes have more than one epithet because Greek words change their endings to indicate grammatical meaning. An epithet may work with one form of a word, but not another. What are the different grammatical forms of a noun called?
5. There are multiple distinct dialects of ancient Greek. For instance, the historian Herodotus, from Halicarnassus in Asia Minor, wrote in Ionic Greek, while the historian Thucydides, from Athens, wrote in Attic Greek. The dialect in which Homer composed his works is known as Homeric Greek. Was this an actual spoken dialect?
6. Homer uses older and newer versions of words as it suits the meter. It just so happens that a certain consonant was in the process of dropping out of use around Homer's time. Name it, or the English letter corresponding to its sound. For a clue, you might compare the newer form "oinos" with its English cognate "wine," Latin "winus."
7. Another consonant was also in the process of dying out in certain situations: intervocalic iota (i), also known as y. Surprisingly, one word where we find an intervocalic iota present is "Athenaie," the name of the goddess more commonly known as...
8. Homeric Greek lacks this part of speech, certainly present by the time of, say, Plato. I'll give you *the* hint required to get this question right, not just *a* random clue.
9. Many Greek names consist of two normal Greek words put together. For instance, the name of Hector's son, Astyanax, consists of the two words "astu" (town) and "anax" (lord). Patroclus' name contains the same two words, in reverse order, as what famous queen?
10. You've heard the story where Odysseus tells the Cyclops he's Mr. Nobody, but the Greek includes a pun on top of that. One form of the word "no" is "ou," and this is the form Odysseus gives the Cyclops in his name "outis." But when the Cyclops starts telling his friends that Nobody's hurting him, he uses the other form, "me," out of grammatical necessity. What meaning, other than "nobody," does "metis" have? You might know this personified as Athena's mother, the goddess of intelligence.
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agony before going online.
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