K-Agon 2 - Preliminary Round 4

Moderator says: “There will be no test questions in this year's tournament. Subsequent questions will count for points. Good luck and have fun!”

1. After he hears about Lycurgus’ doomed fight against the gods, what son of Hippolochus is robbed of his wits by Zeus and unthinkingly relinquishes his golden armor in exchange for the bronze armor of Diomedes?

GLAUCUS

B1: In his own speech to Diomedes, Glaucus describes his lineage and narrates the adventures of what grandfather of his?

BELLEROPHON

B2: In Book 16 of the Iliad, Glaucus kills Bathycles, whose father was first among what people in wealth? A leader of these people was Menestheus, the son of the river-god Spercheus.

MYRMIDONS

2. An active war inside a whale’s belly and a journey to a moon made of cheese appear in the best-known work by what satirist, born in Samosata and the author of the much less important How To Write History?

LUCIAN (OF SAMOSATA)

B1: Lucian was a member of what literary movement, which flourished during the Roman Empire’s second century and included Herodes Atticus among its members?

SECOND SOPHISTIC (MOVEMENT)

B2: What Greek biographer, a member of the circle of the Roman empress Julia Domna, authored the Lives of the Sophists?

(LUCIUS FLAVIUS) PHILOSTRATUS

3. Note to players: please answer in English. Apollodorus indirectly attacked Stephanus in a speech that prosecuted a member of what profession, known in Greek as hetaira and likely including Neaera, Aspasia, and some other Athenian women?

COURTESAN / MISTRESS / PROSTITUTE [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS; REJECT “SLAVE(S)”]

B1: Some hetairai rose practically to the level of wives, such as Aspasia, whose son by Pericles was executed after failing to rescue the survivors of what naval battle?

(BATTLE OF) ARGINUSAE (ISLANDS)

B2: What hetaira is sometimes said to have suggested the burning of Persepolis to Alexander the Great?

THAÏS

4. What is the case and number of the form Ἀννίβα, the non-iota-subscripted forms λεώ and νεώ, and the Homeric form ἵπποιο, which is the equivalent of the Attic ἵππου?

GENITIVE SINGULAR

B1: What is the Attic genitive singular of the word for “tooth,” “ὀδούς”?

ὀδόντος

B2: What is the Attic dual genitive of the word “χρυσός”?

χρυσοῖν

5. Using the verb κωλύω, say in Attic Greek: “Nothing prevented all of you from leaving.”

οὐδὲν ἐκώλυσε(ν) ὑμᾶς (πάσας) {λείπειν / λίπειν} [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B1: Now translate this sentence, spoken by Aeschylus in Aristophanes’ Frogs, into English: “ἀπόκριναί μοι, τίνος οὕνεκα χρὴ θαυμάζειν ἄνδρα ποιητήν;”

ANSWER (TO) ME, {FOR WHAT REASON // WHY} IS IT NECESSARY FOR SOMEONE TO {WONDER AT // MARVEL AT // ADMIRE} A POET? // ANSWER (TO) ME, FOR WHAT REASON // WHY} IS IT NECESSARY FOR A POET TO {WONDER AT // MARVEL AT // ADMIRE} A MAN? [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B2: Now translate this sentence from Thucydides into English: “ξυνέβησαν ἐφ᾽ ᾧ ἐξίασιν ἐκ Πελοποννήσου ὑπόσπονδοι καὶ μηδέποτε ἐπιβήσονται αὐτῆς.” Keep in mind that συμβαίνω can mean “to make an agreement.”

THEY MADE AN AGREEMENT ON THE CONDITION THAT THEY, BOUND BY A TREATY, WOULD LEAVE (FROM) THE PELOPONNESUS AND NEVER ENTER IT AGAIN [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

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6. To approach Deucalion’s daughter Melantho, Poseidon took the form of what type of animal, one of which stopped at Taenarum after saving the poet Arion and another of which found Amphitrite for Poseidon?

DOLPHIN(S)

B1: An ode of Bacchylides details how what hero was taken by dolphins to Poseidon’s palace after Minos threw a ring into the sea so that he could prove his parentage?

THESEUS

B2: What Greek tyrant did not believe Arion’s story that a dolphin saved him from a treacherous crew until those sailors arrived and falsely declared that Arion had not journeyed with them?

PERIANDER

7. What people were the subject of Colin Renfrew’s “Anatolian Hypothesis,” are divided into two groups based on the satem-centum split, worshipped the sky god *Dyḗus phtḗr, and served as the linguistic ancestors of most modern western languages?

(PROTO-)INDO-EUROPEANS

B1: The Proto-Indo-European weather god Perkwunos, some of whose function was absorbed by Zeus in Greek mythology, was particularly associated with what type of tree?

OAK (TREE)

B2: The linguist Ferdinand de Saussure proposed the existence of what phonemes, which existed in the original Proto-Indo-European language but cannot be reconstructed from direct evidence in daughter languages?

LARNYGEALS // LARNYGEAL (CONSONANTS)

8. What meaning is shared by the verb θέω and the verb τρέχω, the latter of which has a principal part that is the origin of δρόμος, an event at the Olympic Games?

(TO / I) RUN

B1: What is the meaning of the impersonal verb πρέπει?

IT IS {FITTING / BECOMING} [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B2: What is the meaning of the impersonal verb ὕει?

IT IS RAINING // IT RAINS [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

9. What author, who describes the queen Atossa summoning the ghost of Darius in his only extant work on a historical theme, details the renaming of the Eumenides in the final play of his Oresteia trilogy?

AESCHYLUS

B1: Name two of Aeschylus’ surviving three plays besides Persians and those in the Oresteia trilogy.

TWO OF: SEVEN AGAINST THEBES, {SUPPLIANTS // SUPPLIANT WOMEN}, or PROMETHEUS BOUND

B2: Aeschylus’ Persians was structurally dependent on the Phoenissae by what author, who was fined by the Athenian state for his play The Capture of Miletus?

PHRYNICHUS

10. After he was ordered “ἀπὸ τοῦ ἡλίου μετάστηθι,” what man declared “Διογένης ἂν ἤμην” — or “if I were not myself, I would be Diogenes” — and later loosed the “Γόρδιος δεσμός,” or “Gordian knot?”

ALEXANDER {THE GREAT // III} (OF MACEDON)

B1: When Alexander was on his deathbed, he may have bequeathed his kingdom “to Craterus,” a general of his. However, other generals accidentally or willfully misheard his words as “to the strongest,” which sound similar in Greek. Please give the Greek phrase meaning “to the strongest” that they claimed to have heard.

(τῷ) κρατίστῳ

B2: Modern quotation aggregators commonly and incorrectly attribute the following quotation, found in the movie Die Hard, to an ancient text. Please fill in the blank in that quotation: “And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, [because] [blank].”

“THERE WERE NO MORE WORLDS LEFT TO CONQUER”

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11. The people of Pheneüs say what man died when he was pushed from a boat, contradicting the story that he was pushed from a winged chariot of Poseidon by the husband of Hippodameia after helping him treacherously best Oenomaüs?

MYRTILUS

B1: To atone for this crime, Hippodameia’s husband, Pelops, established the first temple to what god in the Peloponnesus?

HERMES

B2: Pausanias says that Pelops’ sword was shown at Olympia in the treasury of what city, once ruled by Polybus, who left the throne to Adrastus upon his death?

SICYON

12. What young man reciprocated being saved at Potidaea when he returned at Delium to save his teacher, allowing both to witness his victory at Cyzicus and defection to the Spartans after supposedly mutilating Athens’ herms?

ALCIBIADES

B1: Alcibiades’ defection to the Spartans allowed him to inform them of the Sicilian expedition, leading them to send what mothax to train the Syracusan forces that opposed Athens?

GYLIPPUS

B2: After Alcibiades’ victory at Cyzicus, the Athenians intercepted a Laconic dispatch that stated, “ships lost; [what man] dead; men starving; can’t figure out what to do”?

MINDARUS

13. Of the nouns ὁπλίτης, ὕβρις, γέρων, and φῶς, which is best described here: “μέγαν ποίει και ἄλκιμον ἐν φρεσὶ θυμόν. παρ’ ἀλλήλοισι μὲνει, μηδὲ φόβου ἄρχει μηδὲ αἰσχρῆς φυγῆς, ἀλλὰ μαχεται.”

ὁπλίτης

B1: What neuter noun is the Greek word for “bow”?

(τό) τόξον

B2: What word essentially meaning “taken by the spear” is the Greek word for “prisoner of war”?

(ὀ) αἴχμάλωτος

14. Like with Plutarch, what man’s writings are cited with “Stephanus numbers,” where “359e,” “30e,” and “514a” refer respectively to the “Ring of Gyges” myth, a character’s gadfly analogy, and the “Allegory of the Cave” in Republic?

PLATO

B1: Besides Plato, what other author also produced an account of Socrates’ defense speech in his own dialogue Apology?

XENOPHON

B2: In the Phaedrus, Plato compares the soul to a person of what occupation controlling two of the soul’s three parts?

CHARIOTEER

15. Translate this sentence, written in dubious cross-dialect Greek as a palindrome, into English: “σοφά τε καὶ μή, γῆ μία κὲ τάφος.”

{WISE OR NOT (WISE) // WISE AND NOT (WISE), {THE EARTH IS ONE TOMB // THERE IS ONE EARTH AND TOMB} [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B1: Now translate this palindromic Greek sentence into English: “Εἶπεν ἄφρων, ὀρφανὲ, πῑε.”

DRINK, OPRHAN, HE SAID SENSELESSLY [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B2: Now translate the following palindromic Greek sentence, often written on baptismal fonts, into English: “νίψον ἀνομήματα, μὴ μόναν ὄψιν.”

CLEANSE (YOUR SINS), NOT ONLY YOUR FACE / APPEARANCE [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

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16. What manner of death — which was shared by Midas’ bastard son Lityerses, the trapped thief Agamedes, and Apollodorus’ version of Eurystheus — produced Chrysaor and Pegasus when Perseus killed Medusa?

BEHEADING / DECAPITATION [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B1: The Danaids buried their husbands’ heads at Larisa or what other city, where Poseidon lay with Amymone and produced an important spring?

LERNA

Agamedes’ brother, Trophonius, had his oracle at what city, where the earth swallowed him as he fled?

LEBADEIA

17. Primarily championed by its eventual leader Lycomedes, what alliance established a council of voting citizens called the μυρίοι, or “Ten Thousand,” who met at Megalopolis to determine how to keep Sparta in check?

ARCADIAN LEAGUE

B1: What process, in which several communities were merged into one political entity, was used to found Megalopolis?

SYNOECISM / SYKNOIKISMOS

B2: What important Arcadian city entered the Arcadian League in 370 B.C. after a democratic uprising, prompting an invasion of Arcadia by Agesilaus II?

TEGEA

18. What subject was brought to Athens via works by Tisias, a writer from Leontini, and Corax of Syracuse, who inspired the exercise of placing pebbles in a trainee’s mouth, as Demosthenes successfully tried?

RHETORIC / ORATORY

B1: Name that Leontinian writer, who was probably the most famous sophist besides Protagoras.

GORGIAS (OF LEONTINI)

B2: Name either of the youngest two members of the canonical Ten Attic Orators. Both wrote speeches attacking Demosthenes in the wake of the Harpalus Affair.

HYPERIDES or DINARCHUS

19. While he was investigating “Grave Circle A,” located south of the “Lion Gate,” what man found a golden burial mask that he claimed depicted Agamemnon, adding to the reputation he had developed as Troy’s excavator?

(HEINRICH) SCHLIEMANN

B1: To find ancient Troy, Schliemann dug through several layers under what Turkish city, located on a sizeable hill?

HIS(S)ARLIK

B2: What amateur English archaeologist had conducted a preliminary investigation of Hissarlik nearly a decade before Schliemann and suggested to Schliemann that the hilltop might contain the ruins of Troy?

(FRANK) CALVERT

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20. What type of tree, possibly the etymological origin of the Jewish potato pancake “latke,” has its name lie at the root of “Vaseline,” “linoleum,” and “oil”?

OLIVE (TREE)

B1: What sauce, a type of mayonnaise flavored with garlic, ultimately traces its name back to ἐλαία, meaning “olive tree”?

(GARLIC) AIOLI

B2: What supreme judicial council of the ancient Jews traces its name back to the word ἕδρα, meaning “seat” or “chair”?

SANHEDRIN

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