Final Examination

INSTRUCTIONS (READ THIS!):  Once you start this exam, you should take no more than three (3) hours to complete it and you should complete it in one setting.  It will be available to you from 12:30 PM, Thursday, March 9 to 5:00 PM, Monday, March 13 (that is: you MUST submit it BY 5:00 PM on Monday, March 13).  Note that there is no way for me to time your 3 hours with this format, but I trust you to take no more than that...plus, you really don't want to be spending more than that (writing more does not mean you're necessarily giving a better answer).

This is an OPEN BOOK exam...feel free to consult your texts/notes. 

THE EXAM:

The exam is provided below; and here is a link to a PDF of the exam, if that's easier for you (i.e., you'd like to print it out to refer to or view it in another window as you compose your answers).  Please enter your responses as a file upload via Canvas.  PLEASE CLEARLY NUMBER YOUR RESPONSES.

Note that there are 3 Parts to the exam:

PART I  (60%, 6@10 pts.) Write a short paragraph on each of any SIX of the following fourteen in which you identify the text or building etc., and comment on one or more points of interest (literary, biographical, political, etc.) raised by the passage/ID.  For quotations, be as specific as you can in your identification, i.e., author and work.

1. "And it's while you are consul -- you, Pollio -- that this glorious

       Age shall dawn, the march of its great months begin.

       You at our head, mankind shall be freed from its age-long fear,

       All stains of our past wickedness being cleansed away.

       This child shall enter into the life of the gods, behold them

       Walking with antique heroes, and himself be seen of them,

       And rule a world made peaceful by his father's virtuous acts."

2. "Yet if anything besides the name survives death,

            if some shade escapes the pyre,

    if news of me reaches my parents' shades,

            if I am arraigned before the court of Hades,

    I pray that they may know, in all honesty, that the sentence of banishment

            was for a mistake not a crime." 

3. "On the following night in the meadow by the Tiber the Emperor Caesar Augustus sacrificed to the Moirae nine ewe-lambs, to be wholly offered, according to the Greek ritual, and nine she-goats according to the same ritual, with the following prayer: 'O Moirae, as is written in the Great Books for you that in every respect everything may prosper for the citizens, the people of Rome, you should receive a sacrifice of nine ewe-lambs and nine she-goats. I pray and beseech you to increase the power and authority of the citizens, the people of Rome, in war and peace, protect for ever the name of Latium....[and] may you look with kindly grace on the citizens, the people of Rome, on the College of Fifteen, on me, my family and household....'"

4. Lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus

5. "Asked by my lady why I came in so late,

    I pleaded in excuse a call of state:

    A tribute that our Prince to Phoebus paid,

    Opening the sun god's golden colonnade.

    Spectacular it stood, and finely spaced

    With Punic piers, and in between were placed

    The girls whom Danaus in his lengthy span

    Had fathered....."

6. "At the entranceways [Mars] sees arms of all sorts from all lands conquered by his soldier. On one side he sees Aeneas with his precious burden and about him the many ancestors of the Julian house; on the other, Romulus....with the arms of the enemy chief he conquered with his own hand and statues of distinguished Romans with the names of their great deeds."

7. “I revert now to myself -- only a freedman’s son,

   run down by everyone as only a freedman’s son,

   now because I’m a friend of yours, Maecenas, before

   because as a military tribune I commanded a Roman legion.”

8. Gemma Augustea or the Prima Porta (choose one of these two)

9. “As swiftly as the hawk follows the feeble

Dove, or in snowy Thessaly the hunter

      The hare, so he sailed forth

To bind this fatal prodigy in chains.

Yet she preferred a finer style of dying:

She did not, like a woman, shirk the dagger

      Or seek by speed at sea

To change her Egypt for obscurer shores."

10. "________ [who?] had bidden these songs by swift flame be turned into ashes,

            Songs which sang of thy fates, Phrygia's leader renowned.

    Varius and Tucca forbade, and thou, too, greatest of Caesars,

            Adding your veto to theirs, Latium's story preserved."

11. "Meanwhile a clamor arose in the senate over the disorderly conduct of the women and of the young men, this being alleged as a reason for their reluctance to enter into the marriage relation; and when they urged him to remedy this abuse also, with ironical allusions to his own intimacy with many women, he at first replied that the most necessary restrictions had been laid down and that anything further could not possibly be regulated by decree in similar fashion. Then, when he was driven into a corner, he said, 'You yourselves ought to admonish and command your wives as you wish; that is what I do.'

12. "There are two gates of Sleep: the one is made of horn,

    The other's a gate of brightly-shining ivory; this way

    They say, and affords the outlet for genuine apparitions:

    The other's a gate of brightly-shining ivory; this way

    The Shades send up to earth false dreams that impose upon us." 

13. "My epic was under construction -- wars and armed violence

       in the grand manner, with metre matching theme.

       I had written the second hexameter when Cupid grinned

       and calmly removed one of its feet." 

14. "Moons make speed to repair their heavenly losses, but not so

            We, who, when once we have gone

    Downwards to join rich Tullus and Ancus and father Aeneas,

            Crumble to shadow and dust.

                                                ....

    Once you are dead, Torquatus, and Minos delivers his august

            Verdict upon your affairs,

    No blue blood, no good deeds done, no eloquent pleading

            Ever shall conjure you back."  

PART II (35%). Essay.  In the course of our examination of various aspects of Augustan culture and society -- literature, art, architecture, religion, law and even politics -- it became apparent that there is considerable overlapping or repetition of several themes and motifs.  These have included, to name only the most obvious, fertility, prophecy, the linking of past and present, peace vs. war, etc.  Compare and contrast the appearance or use of one or more such themes (you are not limited to those mentioned here) in at least two of the areas named above (literature, art, architecture, religion, law, politics).  The best answers to this question will be specific in citing examples and demonstrate familiarity with material covered in your readings.

PART III (5%). Mystery essay.  Briefly discuss what most impressed you about the Augustan period....and what impressed you the least.