Keartamen 2 (K2) - Preliminary Round 4

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. What priesthood, whose uniform Livy calls distinctive for its embroidered tunic and bronze breastplate, preserved Numa Pompilius’ twelve sacred shields, the ancilia, and often “leapt” during processions?

SALIĪ

B1: Some believe that a company of Saliī originally venerated what god, whose cult partner was Hora?

QUIRINUS

B2: According to Livy, the Saliī were originally designated as the priests of what specific aspect of Mars?

(MARS) GRADIVUS

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

1. By blaming failures on Cassius Longinus and other advisors, what woman saved her own life and perhaps that of her son, Vaballathus, who was the nominal emperor of Palmyra?

(SEPTIMIA) ZENOBIA

B1: In what modern-day country is the city of Palmyra located, leading to much of it being destroyed by ISIL in 2015?

SYRIA

B2: Name both Zenobia’s husband, who set up Palmyra’s empire, and the Sassanian king whom he defeated to do so.

OD(A)ENATHUS and SHAPUR I / THE GREAT

2. What city contains a temple featuring an image of a chariot dragging Troilus, prompts a simile where workers are compared to bees toiling in the early summer, and hosts the first meeting of a fugitive Phoenician queen and Aeneas?

CARTHAGE

B1: What name, derived from the ox-hide with which Dido had acquired Carthage, was traditionally given to the Carthaginian citadel?

BYRSA

B2: In a sort of reversal of the bee-simile in Book 1 of the Aeneid, to what other kind of animal are Aeneas’ men compared in Book 4 as they prepare their ships to leave Carthage?

ANT(S)

3. Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco randomly notes how “rōbur read backward is rubor.” Differentiate in meaning between this levidromic pair.

RŌBUR = OAK (TREE) / STRENGTH and RUBOR = REDNESS

B1: Unfortunately, few levidromic pairs feature forms directly from the dictionary entry, like rōbur and rubor, but there are many such pairs when one allows other word forms. For example, distinguish in meaning between the levidromic pair mitis and sitim.

MITIS = MILD / SOFT / GENTLE and SITIM = THIRST [ACCUSATIVE SINGULAR OF SITIS]

B2: Likewise, distinguish in meaning between levidromic verb-form pair seret and terēs.

SERET = HE WILL SOW or HE WILL JOIN / WEAVE or HE MAY FASTEN and TERĒS = YOU WILL RUB

4. Of the words “compost,” “posterity,” “postal,” and “posture,” which does not belong by derivation, because it derives from the preposition post?

POSTERITY

B1: What derivative of pōnō refers to “a senior administrative officer in many universities”?

PROVOST

B2: What derivative of post refers to “a back or side door, especially as in a castle”?

POSTERN

5. What man is called “versūtus” in a line where the Italian “Camēna” is uniquely invoked, starting a Saturnian-verse translation about him by the “father of Latin literature,” Livius Andronicus?

ODYSSEUS / ULYSSES / ULIXĒS

B1: What man—who stars in an unfinished epic by Statius—titles a tragedy by Livius?

ACHILLES

B2: What man is a “whip-bearer,” or Mastigophorus, in a Livian tragedy adapted from a play of Sophocles?

AJAX TELAMON // AJAX THE GREATER // AJAX (OF) SALAMIS // BIG AJAX [PROMPT ON AJAX]

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6. Zeus and Dione were venerated together at what city in Epirus, where oracles were given via natural sounds, such as the rustling of the sacred oak trees that provided the Argo’s speaking-beam?

DODONA

B1: What hero’s shrine became an important oracle at Lebadeia after he cut off the head of his brother, Agamedes, and was swallowed by the earth?

TROPHONIUS

B2: What hero’s shrine became an important oracle near Oropus after he was killed alongside his charioteer Elato?

AMPHIARAÜS

7. Using a deponent verb, say in Latin: “They think that they are the most blessed men.”

ARBITRANTUR / MEDITANTUR / RENTUR EŌS / SĒ BEĀTISSIMŌS / FĒLĪCISSIMŌS / FORTŪNĀTISSIMŌS (HOMINĒS / VIRŌS ESSE) [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B1: Using two different deponent verbs, say in Latin: “They enjoy and make use of the fruits of their labors.”

VĒSCUNTUR / FRUUNTUR ET ŪTUNTUR / VĒSCUNTUR FRŪCTIBUS / FRŪGIBUS
(SUŌRUM / EŌRUM) LABŌRUM [ACCEPT USE OF -QUE; ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B2: Using a deponent verb and proper idioms, say in Latin: “At daybreak they will attack the enemy’s pitched camp.”

PRĪMĀ LŪCE ADORIENTUR / AGGREDIENTUR / ADGREDIENTUR
POSITA CASTRA HOSTIS / HOSTIUM [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

8. What work asks the gods to “perpetuum dēdūcite … carmen” after beginning to sing of “mūtātās ... fōrmās” in the first of its 15 books describing mythological transformations?

(OVID’S) METAMORPHŌSĒS // (OVID’S) METAMORPHŌSEŌN LIBRĪ

B1: In the Metamorphōsēs, Ovid’s narration through interlinked stories resembles the Theogony and Catalogue of Women of what Greek author?

HESIOD(OS)

B2: Book 15 of Ovid’s Metamorphōsēs gives a version of the theory of metempsychosis, or “transmigration of souls,” advanced by what philosophical school, which the author Nigidius Figulus sought to revive at Rome?

(NEO-)PYTHAGOREAN(ISM) // SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

9. What cognōmen is shared between a man about whom Caesar said “I begrudge you your death” after he committed suicide at Utica and his great-grandfather, who ordered Punic destruction with the refrain of “Carthāgō dēlenda est”?

CATO / CATŌ

B1: Following what battle did Cato the Younger commit suicide at Utica?

(BATTLE OF) THAPSUS

B2: Cato the Elder’s advocacy of Punic destruction stands in opposition to his conduct in 167 B.C., when he delivered a speech arguing that Rome should not attack what island?

RHODES

10. Excluding alliteration, consonance, and assonance, what rhetorical device appears in the quote “īdem ventī vēla fidemque ferent,” where a verb “yokes” together two differing objects?

ZEUGMA

B1: What rhetorical device appears in the verbs of the quote “tum bis ad occāsūs, bis sē convertit ad ortūs, ter iuvenem baculō tetigit, tria carmina dīxit”?

ASYNDETON // TRICOLON (DIMINISHING / DĪMINUĒNS) // HOMOIOTELEUTON
[DO NOT ACCEPT “TRICOLON CRESCENDO / CRESCĒNS”]

B2: What rhetorical device appears in the adapted quote “ante urbem ... ignēs rogīque ... significant lūctum”?

HENDIADYS

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11. Romans were expected to use both hands to catch and throw balls filled with hair in what game, so named because players stood in the three corners of an equilateral triangle?

TRIGŌN

B1: In what area of Rome were games like trigōn usually played?

CAMPUS MĀRTIUS // FIELD OF MARS

B2: What type of ball, probably larger than a pila, was filled with air and shares its name—in the plural—with the word for “bellows”?

FOLLIS / FOLLĒS

12. What author described a recognition via trinkets discovered in a casket, a man who leaves Syracuse to find his identically-named twin brother, and a slave who feigns that his master’s house is haunted within three of his comedies?

(TITUS MACCIUS) PLAUTUS

B1: In which Plautine play does the slave Palaestrio continually dupe Pyrgopolynices in order to unite his master and his master’s love?

MĪLES GLŌRIŌSUS // (THE) BRAGGART SOLDIER

B2: Name that slave from Plautus’ Mostellāria who feigns the haunting of Theopropides’ house in order to disguise the liaison of his younger master.

TRANIO

13. What name in mythology is shared between the Spartan who discovered Orestes’ coffin and the herald who became a stony reef off Cape Cenaeüm after Heracles threw him into the sea?

LICHAS

B1: One bonus on each, then. Heracles’ relationship with an Oechalian woman set off the conflict with Deianeira that resulted in Lichas’ death. Name that Oechalian woman’s father, with whom Heracles had a troubled relationship.

EURYTUS

B2: What sort of craftsman, who owned an establishment where “blow met with blow and woe was laid upon woe,” directed Lichas to Orestes’ coffin?

(BLACK)SMITH

14. The Latin word bēssis, better known as bēs, represents what fraction, which may also be expressed as duae partēs?

TWO-THIRDS

B1: How does one express “one-half” in Latin?

DĪMIDIUM // DĪMIDIA PARS // SĒMIS

B2: Say “three-fourths” in Latin using only one word.

DŌDRĀNS

15. A Roman military tribune detached maniples to rout the enemy’s immobile right wing of pikemen—first showing the legion’s superior maneuverability compared to the phalanx—at what victory for Flamininus in 197 B.C.?

(BATTLE OF) CYNOSCEPHALAE

B1: At what battle of the mid-Republic did the Roman commander draw up his legionaries in columns, rather than the expected quincunx, sending the enemy’s elephants harmlessly down the open lanes?

(BATTLE OF) ZAMA (REGIA)

B2: At what battle of the mid-Republic did the Romans forestall potential Gallic charges by advancing from two directions while offering concentrated javelin fire?

(BATTLE OF CAPE) TELAMON

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16. What is the only grammatical case that appears in the mottoes of the Rugby School, Trinity College in Connecticut, Brown University, and the state of Mississippi?

ABLATIVE (CASE)

B1: Besides Mississippi, name another state that has a Latin motto that only features the ablative case.

NEW MEXICO or OREGON [DO NOT REVEAL OTHER ANSWER]

B2: Name another.

[SEE ABOVE]

17. What author, who lived in Cassiciacum after leaving his chair of rhetoric in Milan, was born in the Numidian city of Thagaste and became a priest and bishop in Hippo?

(SAINT) AUGUSTINE (OF HIPPO)

B1: In what city, where Tertullian and Cyprian were born, did Augustine study rhetoric?

CARTHAGE

B2: In what city, the birthplace of an author who was once Pudentilla’s husband, did Augustine also study?

MADAURA / MADAUROS / M’DAOUROUCH

18. What kind of animal—which is mentioned in the Iliad’s last word in an epithet of Hector—is given a voice by Hera to warn Achilles of his impending death and serves as the model for the Greeks’ wooden “gift”?

HORSE(S)

B1: In Book 10 of the Iliad, Dolon describes what man’s horses as “whiter than snow and as swift as the winds”?

RHESUS (OF THRACE)

B2: Give either the Greek or the English for that epithet of Hector.

HORSE-TAMER / HORSE-BREAKER / BREAKER OF HORSES //
HIPPODAMOS / HIPPODAMOIO [ACCEPT ENGLISH EQUIVALENTS]

19. What part of speech may feature transformed names of deities, as in pol and meherculē, but more commonly borrows Greek expressions such as papae, vae, and euge?

INTERJECTIONS

B1: Interjections are more common in the archaic language of comedy than “classical” Latin. Therefore, translate this Plautine sentence: “Euge, euge, dī mē salvom et servātum volunt.”

HOORAY, HOORAY, THE GODS WANT ME SAFE AND SAVED [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B2: Translate this Plautine sentence: “Vae miserō mihi, mea nunc facinora aperiuntur, clam quae spērāvī fore.”

ALAS TO / WOE FOR MISERABLE ME: NOW MY DEEDS / CRIMES ARE OPEN,
WHICH I HOPED WOULD BE (IN) SECRET / HIDDEN [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

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20. Running beside Caecilia Metella’s tomb and starting at the Porta Capēna—a gate named for its original endpoint at Capua—what route built in 312 B.C. was the so-called “rēgīna viārum”?

APPIAN WAY // VIA APPIA

B1: What emperor built a large bath complex on the Via Appia that was inspired by the thermae of Trajan and inspired the thermae of Diocletian?

CARACALLA

B2: What family built a tomb on the Via Appia that unusually featured interment in inscribed sarcophagi rather than cremation, such as with a man nicknamed “Barbātus” who “subdued all Lucania”?

SCIPIO(S) // SCĪPIŌNĒS // CORNĒLIĪ // CORNĒLIĪ SCĪPIŌNĒS // GĒNS CORNĒLIA

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[SOURCES]