欧洲文化入门课后习题答案.pdf
Division one: Greek culture and Roman culture 希腊、罗马文化
Ⅰ.Greek culture 希腊文化
1.What are the major elements in European culture
There are two main elements ——the Greco-Roman element and the Judeo-Christian element.
2.What were the main features of ancient Greek society
In Greek society, only adult male citizen had real power and the citizenship was a set of rights which a man inherited from his father. The economy of Athens rested on an immense amount of
slave labor. Slaves worked for their masters. The exploitation was a serious social problem. The Greeks loved sports. They often took part in the contests of sports in Olympus Mount, thus Olympic Games came into being.
3.What did Homer do Why is he important in the history of European literature
He depicted the great Greek men who lived in the period . and wars happening at that time. As an author of epics, he employed fine literary language to describe wars and men, even though they
were dull. He stood in the peek of Greek literature and exerted a great influence on his followers.
4.Who were the outstanding dramatists of ancient Greece What important plays did each of
them write
Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were three outstanding dramatists of ancient Greece.
Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound, Persians, Agamemnon
Sophocles: Oedipus the King, Electra, Antigone
Euripides: Andromache, Medea, Trojan Women
5.Were there historians then Who were they What did each of them write about
Yes, there are. They were Herodotus and Thucydides.
Herodotus wrote about the wars between Greeks and Persians. Thucydides wrote about the war between Athens and Sparta and between Athens and Syracuse.
6. Would you say that philosophy was highly developed then Who were the major philosophers
No, I wouldn’t. Because those philosophical ideas were only idealism or simple materialism or metaphysics. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were the major philosophers at that time.
7. Did Socrates write any book How then do we know about him What distinguished his philosophy
No, he didn’t. We know Socrates chiefly through what Plato recorded of him in the famous Dialogues written by Plato. He considered that philosophy rested with the dissect of oneself and
virtue was high worth of life. His method of argument, by questions and answers, was known as
the dialectical method.
8. Tell some of Plato’s ideas. Why do people call him an idealist
(1) Men have knowledge because of the existence of certain general “ideas”, like beauty, truth, and goodness. (2) We should not look at the things which are not seen: for the things which are not seen eternal. Because he emphasized the importance of “ideas” and believed that “thought” had created the world, people call him an idealist.
9. In what important ways was Aristotle different from Plato What are some of Aristotle’s works that are still influential today
(1) Aristotle emphasized direct observation of nature and insisted that theory should follow fact.
This is different from Plato’s reliance on subjective thinking. (2) He thought that “idea”and matter together made concrete individual realities in which he differed from Plato who held that
ideas had higher reality than the political world. His significant works includes: Ethics, Politics and Rhetoric.
10. Who were some of the other philosophers active in that period Does the word “Epicurean” in its modern sense convey the true meaning of the philosophy of the ancient Epicureans What were
their views on pleasure
(1) They were Heracleitue, Democritus, Diogenes, Pyrrhon, Epicurus and Zeno.
(2)No, it doesn’t. The ancient Epicureans believed pleasure to be the highest worth of life, but by pleasure they meant, not sensual enjoyment but that attained by the practice of virtue. But this
idea was misled by modern people, in their sense, the word “Epicurean”has come to mean indulgence in luxurious living.
11. Say something about Greek sculpture, pottery and architecture. What was the most famous Greek temple Is it still there
(1) Along with the formation of Greek civilization, Greek sculpture, pottery and architecture got many great achievements. Greeks put into works of art the things they admired and worshiped, the scientific rules they discovered. Greek art evolved from the archaic period to the classical period
which marked its maturity. (2) the most famous temple was the Acropolis at Athens. (3) Yes, it is
still there.
12. Give some examples to show the enormous influence of Greek culture on English literature.
Some examples:
(1) A Freudian term “Oedipus Complex” of 19th century originating from a Greek tragedy in which king Oedipus unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. (2) In the early part of the 19th century , in England alone, three young Romantic poets expressed their admiration of Greek culture in works which have themselves become classics: Byron’ s Isle of Greece, Shelley’ s Hellas and Prometheus Unbound and Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn. (3) In the 20th century, there are
modernist masterpiece Ulysses.
Homeric parallels in the Irishman James Joyce’ｓ
Ⅱ. Roman culture 罗马文化
1.What did the Roman have in common with the Greeks And what was the chief difference
between them
(1)The Romans had a lot in common with the Greeks. Both peoples had traditions rooted in the
idea of the citizen-assembly, hostile to monarchy and to servility. Their religions were alike enough
for most of their deities to be readily identified —Greek Zeus with Roman Jupiter, Greek Aphrodite with Roman Venus, and so on—and their myths to be fused. Their languages worked in similar ways and were ultimately related, both being members of the Indo-European language family which stretches from Bangladesh to Iceland.
(2) There was one big difference. The Romans built up a vast empire. The Greeks didn’t, excepted for the brief moment of Alexander’s conquests, which soon disintegrated.
2.Explain Pax Romana.
In the year 27 ., Octavius took supreme power as emperor with the title of Augustus. Two centuries later, the Roman empire reached its greatest extent in the North and East. The emperors mainly
relied on a strong army—the famous Roman Legions and an influential bureaucracy to exert their rules. Thus the Romans enjoyed a long period of peace lasting 200 years. This remarkable phenomenon in the history is known as Pax Romana.
3.What contributions did the Romans make to the rule of law
In Roman’s earliest stage, only a number of patricians knew the customary legal procedure. When
the rules were put into writing in the middle of the third century . it marked a victory for the plebeians. There was further development of law under the emperors until it was codified, eventually to become the core of modern civil and commercial law in many Western countries.
mean Did 4.Who were the important prose writers in ancient Rome What does “Ciceronian”
Cicero write that kind of rhetorical prose all the time
<1>Marcus Tullius Cicero and Julius Caesar were two important prose writers. <2> Ciceronian means Cicero’s eloquent oratorical manner of writing, Which has had an enormous influence on
the development of European prose.<3> No, he didn’t. Because Cicero appears as a different man with a different style, far less rhetorical, but colloquial and intimate.
5.Give the example of the terse style of Julius Caesar’s prose.
An example: I came, I saw, I conquered (models of succinct Latin).
6.Who was Lucretius What did he do
(1)Lucretius was a poet of ancient Rome.(2)He wrote the philosophical poem On the Nature of Thing to expound the ideas of Epicurus the Greek atomist.