K-Agon, Round 3

K-Agon - Preliminary Round 3

Moderator Instructions for Starting the Round:
1. Ensure that all players are present.
2. Enter mod into your text channel to make yourself the moderator. This will give you special moderator powers and ensure you are muted once someone buzzes in.
3. Remember that the command to unmute yourself is to send “r” in chat, while the command to clear the buzzer is to send “c” in chat.
4. Consult your scoresheet: if names are missing for teams, they have more than four players listed on their roster and we are unsure about whom they will field. In that case, please find out which four players are playing the round. Then, type those players in the sheet.
a. If a player does not show for a round, please place a # in front of his/her name. For example, if Player 3 is not present, write “#Player 3”
5. Introduce yourself/yourselves!
6. Read the below script.

Script for Round 3:

1. Welcome to the third round of K-Agon! I have a few brief reminders before we begin this last preliminary round.
2. Players may lodge challenges to the moderator via the text channel or the voice chat. Players may lodge a challenge directly after a question or at a scorecheck.
3. If any player experiences technical difficulties, please let the moderator know as soon as possible. If these arise during a question, the moderator has discretion to allow more or less time (or pause the round) for an answer to be given.
4. Any questions?
5. I will now read the Aurelia passage, demonstrating how I pronounce Ancient Greek: “Αὐρηλία, ᾗ ἡ πόλις ἐδόκει, ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ ἦν σὺν τῇ μεγάλῃ οἰκίᾳ καὶ τῇ ἵππῳ. τρεισκαίδεκα τῷ Διὶ ἀγῶνας μεγάλους ἐν τῷ κυνηγετικῷ θεάτρῳ Αλεξανδρείας ἐθεώρουν. τέλος ὠργισμένη ἥδε ἡ ἵππος οἴκαδε ἦρξεν ἀναβαίνουσα. Ζεὺς δὲ, τοῖς ἀγῶσιν χαίρων, δεδοικυῖαν τὴν ἵππον ῥᾳδίως ἀναφέρει εἰς τὸν ἐγγὺς τοῦ θεάτρου σταθμόν. εὐοῖ.”
6. Check the server ca. 9:45 P.M. Eastern to see if you made semifinals!

Moderator says: “I will read one test question for no points. This question is not necessarily reflective of the difficulty of the round or tournament. Topics in test questions may appear later in the tournament.”

0. “Short, wearing a linen corslet, and more skillful with the spear than any other Greek” is the Iliad’s description of what man, who leads 40 black ships from Locris but is inferior to an identically-named son of Telamon?

AJAX THE LESSER // AJAX OILEUS // AJAX LOCRIS [PROMPT ON “AJAX”]

B1: After death, Ajax inhabited the island of Leuce, whose name translates to what in English?

WHITE (ISLAND)

B2: Name either of the possible mothers of Ajax Oileus.

ERIOPIS or RHENE

Moderator says: “Subsequent questions will count for points. Good luck and have fun!”

1. What genre, in which Ephorus wrote, was the subject of a critique by Lucian called How to Write [This Genre] and in traditionally credited to a native of Halicarnassus named Herodotus?

HISTORY

B1: What Hellenistic-era historian wrote a history in 40 books that detailed the period between 264 B.C. and 146 B.C.?

POLYBIUS

B2: What historical work picks up the history of Greece in 411 B.C., where Thucydides left off, and offers only the slightest of transitions between the works?

(XENOPHON’S) HELLENICA

2. What region, where Zaleucus supposedly produced the first Greek law code, was the site of the discovery of a skyphos reading “I am the cup of Nestor” and the early colonies of Taras, Pithecusae, and Cumae?

(SOUTHERN) ITALY // MAGNA GRAECIA

B1: What city founded the colony of Taras?

SPARTA / LACEDAEMON

B2: In what city in southern Italy did Zaleucus live?

(EPIZEPHYRIAN) LOCRI(S)

3. According to Hesiod, a cave at Arima housed what “flesh-eating” and “ageless” monster, who bore both a creature that Hera raised to spite Heracles and the hound Cerberus by the monster Typhon?

ECHIDNA

B1: Hesiod’s Theogony also says that Echidna was the mother of what creature, whose master and master’s master Heracles killed “on wave-washed Erytheia”?

ORTH(R)US

B2: Echidna may have been the mother of the Sphinx, as the Theogony’s Greek leaves it ambiguous. The Theogony, which is written in a Boeotian dialect, also gives the Sphinx’s name as Φίξ, from which we derive the name of what mountain, the Sphinx’s home?

(MOUNT) PHICIUM / PHICION

4. Define the verb σπεύδω, knowing that it appears in the adage “σπεῦδε βραδέως” that was favored by the Roman emperor Augustus.

(TO / I) HURRY / HASTEN // (TO / I) MAKE HASTE

B1: What is Plutarch’s three-word Greek version of Caesar’s quotation “vēnī, vīdī, vīcī”? It features three verbs in the aorist.

ἦλθον, εἶδον, ἐνίκησα

B2: Provide a literal English translation of the phrase “ἀνερρίφθω κύβος.”

LET THE DIE HAVE BEEN {CAST / THROWN}

5. What man, who proclaims “I am become a name” and rues having to “mete and dole / laws unto a savage race” in a poem, titles a modernist novel containing the episodes “Cyclops” and “Calypso” that was written by James Joyce?

ULYSSES / ODYSSEUS

B1: Give the one-word name of Ulysses’ eleventh episode, which tries to replicate the quality of music through onomatopoeia and rhythmic syncopation. In this episode, Stephen Dedalus encounters two seductive barmaids named “Miss Kennedy” and “Miss Douce.”

SIRENS

B2: The poem “Ulysses,” written by Tennyson, ends with what ten-word line that either expresses a heroic optimism or a dramatic irony, depending on one’s analysis?

“TO STRIVE, TO SEEK, TO FIND, AND NOT TO YIELD”

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6. What author described a woman calling on the moon after preparing a spell to recall her lover, two Syracusan women attending a festival of Adonis, and Thyrsis’ lament for Daphnis in three of his Idylls?

THEOCRITUS

B1: What name is often given to Theocritus’ poem on the women attending the festival of Adonis? It follows the same naming scheme as an Aristophanes play set at an all-female festival.

ADONIAZUSAE

B2: What author from Smyrna imitated Theocritus with his Lament for Adonis?

BION (OF SMYRNA)

7. What rhetorical device is found in Euripides’ lines “ἄνεχε, πάρεχε· φῶς φέρω, σέβω, φλέγω, / ἰδού, ἰδού, λαμπάσι τόδ᾽ ἱερόν,” because they entirely omit conjunctions?

ASYNDETON

B1: What rhetorical device is found in Homer’s line “βούλεται ἀντιάσας ἡμῖν ἀπὸ λοιγὸν ἀμῦναι”?

TMESIS

B2: What grammatical device is exemplified by the word καὐτός, as in Homer’s line “καί τε πολέας ἐσάωσε, μάλιστα δὲ καὐτὸς ἀνέγνω”?

CRASIS

8. What structure, whose destruction some thought would “[begin the] freedom of Greece,” was originally completed in 458 B.C. or 457 B.C. to ensure that supplies could still be brought from the sea at Piraeus if Athens was besieged?

LONG WALLS (OF ATHENS)

B1: After what naval victory in 394 B.C. did Conon return to Athens and rebuild the city’s Long Walls?

(BATTLE OF) KNIDOS / CNIDUS

B2: A similar system was originally built to connect Athens to what port south of the city? An orator from this city named Demetrius governed Athens in the late 300s B.C. after the Macedonian king, Cassander, appointed him.

PHALERON / PHALERUM

9. Verbs such as μετέχω, ἐπιθυμέω, κρατέω, ἀναμιμνήσκω, and ἄρχω most commonly take what case for their objects?

GENITIVE

B1: Define the verb τυγχάνω, which can take the genitive with certain meanings.

(TO / I) HAPPEN (TO) // (TO / I) OCCUR (TO) // (TO / I) HIT (UPON) // (TO / I) MEET

B2: Define either the verb μετέχω or the verb ἐπιθυμέω.

μετέχω = (TO / I) TAKE PART // (TO / I HAVE A) SHARE IN // (TO / I) BE INVOLVED (IN)
or ἐπιθυμέω = (TO / I) DESIRE [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

10. Who pretends to be the daughter of a ship-maker named Dymas and a son of Anchialus who rules the “sea-going Taphians” in the Odyssey, where she also divinely intercedes as an old man named Mentor?

ATHENA

B1: To what girl does Athena appear in the form of Dymas’ daughter in the Odyssey?

NAUSICAÄ

B2: To whom does Athena send a phantom in the form of Iphthime at the end of Book 4 of the Odyssey?

PENELOPE

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11. What author, who claimed to have “a beautiful child, with a face like golden flowers” named Cleïs, addressed an ode to the “richly-throned” goddess Aphrodite and was commonly called the “Tenth Muse”?

(P)SAPPHO

B1: What Greek poet, whose patron was Pittacus, was sometimes called Sappho’s lover?

ALCAEÜS

B2: What poem by Sappho is directly imitated in Catullus 51? You may give either the poem’s number or its first two words in Greek.

(SAPPHO FRAGMENT) 31 // φαίνεταί μοι

12. Note to players: There will be an extra clue following the sentence. Feel free to wait if you wish. Translate into English the following saying of Solon: γηράσκω αἰεὶ πολλὰ διδασκόμενος. Keep in mind that γηράσκω is an inceptive verb related to the noun γέρων.

I (BEGIN TO) GROW OLD (WHILE) ALWAYS LEARNING MANY THINGS [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B1: Please translate this sentence into English: ἆρα ἔπεμψαν τὸν Σωκράτην παιδεύσοντα τοὺς νέους;

DID THEY SEND SOCRATES {TO EDUCATE // ABOUT TO EDUCATE} THE YOUTHS?
[ACCEPT EQUIVLAENTS]

B2: Please translate this sentence into English: Τὸν Περικλέα ἐν αἰτίᾳ εἶχον ὡς πείσαντα σφᾶς πολεμεῖν.

THEY HELD PERICLES IN BLAME {BECAUSE // ON THE GROUNDS} THAT
HE HAD PERSUADED THEM TO {FIGHT // (MAKE) WAR} [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

13. What group of people were often degraded in the syssitia ritual, were outranked by the perioikoi, were targeted by the krypteia, and prevented Sparta from fighting too far afield because they might revolt?

HELOTS [PROMPT ON “SLAVES”]

B1: Helots may have represented the original population of what region, which Sparta conquered despite the efforts of Aristodemus?

MESSENIA

B2: During the early stages of the Peloponnesian War, a few helots were offered freedom if they agreed to carry food to Spartans whom Demosthenes had besieged on what island?

SPHACTERIA

14. In Homer, what is referred to metonymically by the word ἅλς, is known by the adjective οἶνοψ—an epithet which likens its appearance to the darkness of wine—and is called πόντος or θάλασσα?

SEA / OCEAN

B1: οἶνοψ is often translated as “wine-dark,” but what does it literally mean?

WINE-FACED / WINE-EYED

B2: What is the primary meaning of the word ἅλς?

SALT

15. What type of bird forever sang “Itu, Itu”—a Greek vocative—after the gods transformed a woman who boiled her own son, Itys, to avenge the maiming of her sister, Philomela?

NIGHTINGALE [DO NOT ACCEPT “SWALLOW”]

B1: That man, Tereus, was transformed into what type of bird, whose cry was “pou, pou,” meaning “where, where [is Itys]?”

HOOPOE

B2: A similar story is told about what woman, the wife of Zethus, who accidentally killed her son Itylus and was transformed into a nightingale?

AEDON

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16. Which of the following words, if any, is not derived from the same Greek root as the others: surgical, clergy, argon, energetic?

CLERGY

B1: What Greek word, with what meaning, joins ἔργον to form the roots of “surgical”?

χείρ = HAND

B2: What Greek word, with what meaning, lies at the root of “clergy”?

κλῆρος = LOT / ALLOTMENT / INHERITANCE

17. What author, who began “all men by nature desire to know” in a work named for being “after”—or meta—the Physics in the manuscript, wrote works named for his student Eudemus and his son, Nicomachus, that explored ethics?

ARISTOTLE

B1: What eight-book work by Aristotle contains an analysis of Plato’s ideal republic?

POLITICS

B2: What name is typically given to the collection of Aristotle’s treatises on logic?

ORGANON

18. A drinking song beginning “I will carry my sword in a bough of myrtle” commemorates what two men, who “restored equal laws to Athens” by assassinating the tyrant Hipparchus at the Panathenaic Games?

HARMODIUS and ARISTOGEITON

B1: Part of the reason for the assassination was that Hipparchus had refused to let Harmodius’ sister perform what action in the Panathenaic procession? A description is fine.

CARRY A BASKET [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B2: The actions of Harmodius and Aristogeiton enabled the ascendancy of Cleisthenes, although Cleisthenes had to himself revolt against what pro-Spartan aristocrat?

ISAGORAS

19. For the verb ἀκούω, give the form that is shared between the Attic 2^nd-person singular, present mediopassive indicative and the Attic 3^rd-person singular, present active subjunctive?

ἀκούῃ

B1: Now give the Attic 3^rd-person singular, future active optative of ἀκούω.

ακούσοι

B2: Now give the Attic 2^nd-person singular, aorist passive indicative of ἀκούω.

ἠκούσθης

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20. Epeius succeeded Endymion to the rule of Elis, Odysseus received a silver mixing-bowl at the funeral games of Patroclus, and Atalanta repeatedly preserved her virginity from suitors by winning what type of event?

FOOTRACE

B1: Give a possible name of Atalanta’s father, who instituted the race to protect her.

SCHOENEUS / IASUS / MAENALUS

B2: What man, who was once advised by the Delphic Oracle to “fix a new tip to his plow,” surprisingly defeated Zetes and Calaïs in an armed footrace on Lemnos?

ERGINUS

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