A Miscellany of Latin & Ancient Greek Literature Quiz

Answer: Seneca

Seneca (born 4 BC, died AD 65) was a Roman Stoic philosopher as well as tutor to the emperor Nero.
"On the Constancy of the Wise Man" is just a study on a stoic wise man and his values.

Answer: a didactic poem

"The Georgics" (or "Georgicon" in Greek, meaning literally 'of the farmers') is a didactic poem on farming (i.e. crops, trees and shrubs, livestock, bees).
Publius Virgilius Maro(70 BC-19 BC) was one of the greatest Roman poets, mostly known for his epic poem, "The Aeneid".

Answer: a grandiloquent style

Asianism was an inflated, pompous style of speech, while Atticism was an elegant and concise way of writing. Both these styles of oratory fluorished in the 2nd century BC.

Answer: Yes

The 'stasimon', meaning literally 'stationary', was in fact a song that the chorus sang after each episode, once it had taken its position in the orchestra, while the parodos, meaning literally 'road on', was the entrance of the chorus.

Answer: Livy

It was Quintilian (Roman rhetorician, born 35 AD-died 95 AD) that in his "Institutio Oratoria"("Education of an Orator"), book 10,chapter 1,paragraph 32, described as "Lactea ubertas" (literally 'milky fullness') the prose of Livy, a Roman historian who died in AD 17.

Answer: Yes

In 45 BC Apollodorus of Pergamum was one of the teachers of the future Roman emperor Octavianus Augustus, while Theodorus of Gadara, who founded a famous rhetorical school, was the teacher of the future emperor Tiberius.

Answer: a comparison

The 'synkrisis' is the final comparison between two biographies, as we see in Plutarch's "Parallel Lives", such as that comparing Caesar and Alexander.
Plutarch(AD 46- after 119 AD)in fact compares one Greek personality with one comparable Roman.
An antithesis is a rhetorical contrast of ideas, while the
onomatopoeia is the use of words whose sound suggests an associated sense.

Answer: An encyclopedic work

Callimachus,a Greek poet and grammarian who fluorished 3rd century BC, wrote "The Pinakes" (literally "Tables"), a catalog in 120 volumes of the works contained in the Alexandrian library.
Callimachus in fact was the most representative scholar of the staff of this famous library.

Answer: The Apology of Socrates

The Greek historian Xenophon(430 BC-c.355 BC) was one of the young disciples of Socrates and wrote "The Apology of Socrates" ("Socrates'Defense")to explain the reasons that induced Socrates to prefer death to life.
He wrote also: "The Cyropaedia"('Education of Cyrus ') which deals with the education of Cyrus the Great; "The Anabasis"("The March Up") which is an account of a military expedition ;"The Hellenica" which deals with history of Greece from 411 to 362 B.C.

Answer: True

In "The Frogs" written 405 B.C. the Greek playwright Aristophanes tells of the god Dionysus, who travels to Hades to bring Euripides back from the dead as he despairs of the quality of living tragedians. But finally he chooses to bring Aeschylus back, when Aeschylus wins the competition for the title of best playwright.
As for the title of the play, it derives from the chorus of frogs that greet Dionysus.