CLAS 2201 Study Guide - Final Guide: Sicilian Expedition, Irony, Platonic Love
13 Dec 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Civil Greek Final Exam ID List
Themes:
• Personal identity (Greek, woman, etc.)
• Interpersonal relationships
• Nature vs nurture
• Greekness vs the other
• Oligarchy/empire vs democracy
• Sex, gender, love
• Women vs men in society and war (fame, virtue, glory)
• Role of love in ethics, religion, education
• Myth/storytelling
People:
Agathon:
• Symposium
• Tragic playwright
• Just won his 1st prize and they are having the dinner party in honor of him
• Rebukes others for praising love only for his effects on mankind and not the god itself
• Praises god and his good qualities
Alcibiades:
• Symposium and Thucydides
• Symposium:
o Turns tables (love is a cycle)
o Drunk entrance
o Presents relationship to Socrates as a jealous boyfriend
o Praises Socrates
• Ugly Satyr
• Uses "power of mouth" to bewitch
• Socratic Irony (ignorant/ugly on outside, virtuous/beautiful on inside)
• Anecdote: Socrates saved Alcibiades' life during war
• Thucydides:
o Outlaw/exile from Athens
• Plotted against democracy, but Thucydides said he should have been not guilty
o Traitor? -> gives speech and advice to Spartans urging them to send support to Syracuse against the
Athenians
• Problematizes democracy
• Claims Athens' goal in Sicily is to conquer all of Hellas/Greece
• Military advice
o People do’t trust hi ee though he's a great leader; he's very wealthy and greedy
o Athens would've done better if they trusted him
Apollodorus:
• Narrator of the Symposium
• Tells the dinner party story to a friend who he heard from Aristodemus
• The story occurred when Apollodurus was a child
• Frame narrative (2nd level/hand)
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find more resources at oneclass.com
Aristodemus:
• Symposium
• Tells Apollodorus the symposium story (1st hand because he was a guest there)
Aristophanes:
• Symposium, Lysistrata
• Lysistrata:
o "Old" comedy writer
o 3 plays recovered - all peace plays about the Peloponnesian war
o Wrote about religion, politics, philosophy
• Would mock fellow citizens for gullibility, depravity, stupidity
o Savage satirical portrayals of prominent Athenians (Cleon, Socrates)
o Member of the Athenians council after the Peloponnesian war
• Symposium:
o Comedian
o Tells myth about love
o Love is the name we give to our desire for wholeness, we are merely halves
o Love guides us towards those who are close in nature to us and benefit our character
Phaedrus:
• Symposium
• Aristocrat, follower of Socrates
• Exiled for profaning the mysteries
• Quotes Hesiod and pre-Socratic philosophers in his definition of love
• Lover of Agathon
• Mythography
• Aristocratic, homoerotic, pedagogical relationships (recalls archaic, pre-democratic Athens)
Diotima:
• Symposium
• Socrates gives his speech by giving responsibility of definition to Diotima (might be a made-up person)
• Tells myth of Eros (love) = allegory
o Love, resource, and poverty are personified
o As the child of Resource and Poverty, Love is always poor, and, far from being sensitive, he is very
tough, sleeping out of doors on the rough ground. Like his mother, he is always in a state of need, but
like his father, he can scheme to get what he wants.
• We only use sexual love but there are many other types of love, we just have names for them
o Ex: lover of wisdom = philosopher
• Staircase of Love
• Platonic Theory of Forms
• Platonic Love
Eros:
• Symposium
• Eros = Love
• Different definitions of love that portray different values about the world and different themes
o Myth/storytelling
o Platonic Love
o Theory of Forms
o Staircase/Ladder of Love
o Philosophy
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find more resources at oneclass.com
Eryximachus:
• Symposium
• A medical doctor
• Recalls Hippocratic teachings such as humeral theory
• Love = harmony of opposites
Socrates:
• Symposium
• Philosopher and teacher
• No writings or publications from him, only about him
• Socratic Method: proves point by asking a series of questions
• Socratic Irony
• Executed for corrupting youth and creating false gods (also due to political leanings: anti-democracy, pro-
Sparta)
Plato:
• Student of Socrates
• Fouder of The Aade at Athes
o First university
• Main source of evidence for life of Socrates
• Major philosophical ideas:
o Theory of forms
o Immortality of the soul (reincarnation)
o Platonic love
o City-soul Analogy / Aristocracy (rule of the best)
Thucydides:
• Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War
• Athenian commander
o Commanded at Amphipolis, exiled for failure
• Suffered plague
• Histor is ufiished, does’t olude ith the ed of the ar
• Against democracy
Pausanias of Athens:
• Symposium
• Heavenly vs common love
• Plato portrays him as having an interest in comparative law and custom (nomos)
• Lover of Agathon
Pausanias of Sparta:
• General/commander of Spartan troops and father of Spartan king
• Commander of allied Greek forces at Plataea (Herodotus)
• Aused of ollusio ith Persias ad esapes to Persia, eoes adisor to kig, arries the kig’s
daughter, and medizes in his custom and dress
Gylippus:
• Thucydides – Sicilian Expedition
• Spartan general in command of the Syracusan aid expedition
• His reinforcements are the reason Athens decides to withdraw from Syracuse
• Major speech to Syracusan and Spartan allies before Athenians attack at Syracuse
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
