Keartamen Open (KO), Round 4

1. What state gained power via “scrupulous fear of the gods,” favor by Tyche, and avoiding anacyclosis with a “mixed constitution,” at least per a history tracing its 50-year rise to Mediterranean dominance by its adopted citizen Polybius?

ROME // ROMAN REPUBLIC

B1: What work explained moral attitudes common to Greeks and Romans through 48 biographies, many arranged in pairs?

(PLUTARCH’S) PARALLEL LIVES

B2: What other work, written in 20 books around the time of Augustus, traced Rome’s history down to the First Punic War for a Greek audience, even claiming that Rome was originally a Greek city?

(DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS’) ROMAN ANTIQUITIES

2. What man rebuilt Messenia’s capital on Mt. Ithome and helped found Megalopolis for the Arcadian League, as he needed allies to check Sparta in a campaign that ended in 362 B.C. at Mantinea, which also stopped Thebes’ hegemony?

EPAMINONDAS

B1: Epaminondas also unsuccessfully tried to ally with Athens, where suspicion of Thebes coincided with the rise of what eloquent statesman, who later opposed Eubulus by vigorously urging military resistance to Philip II of Macedon?

DEMOSTHENES

B2: Both sides also tried to ally with what Persian king, who had earlier defeated his brother Cyrus the Younger at Cunaxa?

ARTAXERXES II [PROMPT ON “ARTAXERXES”]

3. Likened in a saying to the “κακὰ” of “θάλασσα καὶ πῦρ,” thought by Plato to endure the “wandering animal” of the “ὑστέρα,” and said by Vergil to be always “varium et mūtābile,” what kind of person was targeted by ancient misogyny?

WOMAN / WOMEN / FEMALE(S) / γυνή / γυναῖκες / FĒMINA(E)

B1: What two-word Latin phrase gained misogynistic effect in Juvenal's line ending “in terrīs nigrōque simillima cygnō”?

RĀRA AVIS

B2: What aria from Verdi’s opera Rigoletto is thought to base its title phrase on Vergil’s quote “varium et mūtābile”?

“LA DONNA È MOBILE”

4. What structure—supposedly based on one made by the Egyptian pharaoh Mendes and with a name meaning “house of the double axe”—housed Asterius when it was built underground by the royal palace at Knossos by the inventor Daedalus?

LABYRINTH / MAZE

B1: Daedalus built a fortress on a rock at the heart of what city near Agrigentum, designing its entrance road to be so narrow and winding that enemies of its king Cocalus could not capture it?

CAMICUS

B2: Some say Daedalus was responsible for building the nuraghi towers that name a civilization on what island?

SARDINIA

5. Translate this sentence into English: “senēs mīrantur quamobrem quaedam rēs tam difficilēs memorātū sint.”

THE OLD MEN {WONDER // ARE WONDERING} {WHY // FOR WHAT REASON} {CERTAIN / SOME} THINGS ARE SO {DIFFICULT / HARD} TO {REMEMBER / RECALL} [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B1: Now translate this sentence into English: “iuvenēs iam dicunt nōs ‘lautōs’ esse, et vereor nē verum dicant.”

{THE YOUTH(S) // YOUNG PEOPLE} NOW SAY THAT WE ARE “WASHED,”
AND I FEAR {THAT / LEST} THEY SPEAK THE TRUTH [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B2: Now translate this sentence into English: “ὥσπερ Σόλων, γηράσκω ἀεὶ πολλὰ διδασκόμενος, ἀλλὰ μόνον ὅτι πάντων ἐπελαθόμην.”

{LIKE // JUST LIKE // JUST AS} SOLON, I GROW OLD ALWAYS {LEARNING // BEING TAUGHT}
MANY THINGS, BUT ONLY BECAUSE I HAVE FORGOTTEN {EVERYTHING // ALL THINGS}
[ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

6. What sort of people, per poems dedicated to them, are still “dream[s] of a shadow” despite earning “gold, like blazing fire at night” and “the best thing—water,” as even epinicia and praise by Pindar cannot beat glory’s transience?

VICTORS / WINNERS (IN GAMES) // (VICTORIOUS) ATHLETES // COMPETITORS

B1: What poet wrote epinicia for athletes of his native island before moving to Thessaly to serve Scopas, whose stinginess over a victory ode led the Dioscuri to collapse his dining-hall on him?

SIMONIDES (OF CEOS)

B2: What poet wrote an elegy criticizing the honors given to victorious athletes and their horses instead of intellectuals, as well as one beginning “for now the floor is clean” about feast preparations?

XENOPHANES (OF COLOPHON)

7. What Greek promoted Panhellenism by sending colonists with Lampon and making peace with Pleistoanax, but denied it at Athens with a pure-blood citizenship law that he amended in the plague to legitimize his son with the metic Aspasia?

PERICLES

B1: Just before the Peloponnesian War, Pericles sanctioned Megara for cultivating what sacred Attic city’s land?

ELEUSIS

B2: In reality, the sanctions were retaliation for Megara’s support of Corinth at what 433 B.C. battle against Corcyra?

(BATTLE OF) SYBOTA

8. Worship on what island of the chthonic Palici and the mother goddess Hybla, the namesake of three cities, was replaced by tales that Enna was the site of Persephone’s abduction, Eryx was a local king, and Arethusa flowed to Syracuse?

SICILY / SICILIA

B1: Greeks also beat out the Punic–Sicel culture, such as at Panormus, a major city today known by what name?

PALERMO

B2: The Sicels established what city on the island’s northeast corner, naming it after the local word for “scythe” and controlling it until Messenian refugees renamed it Messana after their homeland?

ZANCLE

9. What meaning is shared by a Greek verb that underlies the name of the bodily humor “phlegm,” one that gives us “ink” and “calm,” one that ancients said formed the root of “Ethiopian,” and one built on the noun that gives us “pyre”?

(I / TO) BURN / BLAZE / FIRE / KINDLE / LIGHT [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B1: What English noun derived from another Greek verb that can mean “burn” denotes “a chemical system’s heat content?”

ENTHALPY

B2: What English adjective, derived from another Greek verb that can mean “burn” but usually means “fasten to” or “join,” means “pertaining to the sense of touch”?

HAPTIC

10. In the Iliad, the death of what region’s warrior Atymnius prompts a note that his father Amisodarus reared a monster there, just as a lineage exchange lets Glaucus tell how his ancestor Bellerophon slew it and founded Sarpedon’s line?

LYCIA

B1: What daughter of Bellerophon was the mother of Sarpedon, though Artemis later killed her for an uncertain offense?

LAODAMEIA / HIPPODAMEIA

B2: The appearance of Atymnius just before Sarpedon’s death is striking, since another story says Sarpedon was driven from Crete after a youth named Atymnius—or one with what other name—chose him over Sarpedon’s brothers?

MILETUS

11. What is the English meaning of the late form medioximus, which some say developed via a similar adjectival process as a form of prope or a form of magnus, though others call it a conflation and translation of proximus and mediocris?

MIDDEST // MIDDLEMOST // {MOST / VERY} MID / INTERMEDIATE / MEDIOCRE //
MID-MOST // NEAREST (THE) MIDDLE / MEDIOCRE [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

B1: Festus provides the sole reference in Latin to the adverb oximē, which has what meaning, like the related ocissimē?

{MOST / VERY} {SWIFTLY / QUICKLY}

B2: The Greek superlative ending -ατος may have spread from spatial words like μέσσατος, meaning “middest.” If so, what Greek superlative meaning “farthest,” likely derived from a preposition, was also an early leader?

ἔσχατος

12. Compared to winged horses pulling a charioteer and split into rational, spirited, and appetitive parts in two Platonic works, what concept is also central to the Phaedo and to metempsychosis, which details its transmigration at death?

(THE) SOUL

B1: Book 10 of what Platonic work ends with the myth of Er, who revives on his funeral pyre to describe an afterlife vision that demonstrates the soul’s immortality?

(THE) REPUBLIC

B2: In the Meno, Socrates uses a problem in what discipline to help explain the soul’s immortality to an enslaved man?

GEOMETRY [PROMPT ON “MATH(EMATICS)”]

13. Announcing what kind of event provoked a 6 A.D. revolt by Sicarii or Zealots against Judaea’s legate Quirinius, who held the powers once given to two magistrates for 18 months every fifth year to settle tax rolls and tally citizens?

CENSUS

B1: In the imperial period, the census no longer included what ancient purification ceremony?

SUOVETAURĪLIA // LŪSTRĀTIŌ / LUSTRUM / LUSTRATION

B2: A census of Galerius provoked revolt by Maxentius, who beat what western Augustus that Galerius sent against him?

(FLAVIUS VALERIUS) SEVERUS // SEVERUS (II)

14. Respond in Greek to the question about this sentence: “Δέσποτα, εὖ μέμνεο τῶν κακῶν Ἀθηναίων.” τί μέρος τοῦ λόγου εἰσὶ “Δέσποτα” καὶ “Ἀθηναίων”? Know that Greek’s word for “noun” was echoed in Latin, as both mean “name.”

ὄνομα

B1: τίνι βασιλεῖ περσικῷ δοῦλος τρὶς τῆς ἡμέρας ἔλεγεν: “Δέσποτα, μέμνεο τῶν Ἀθηναίων”?

(τῷ) Δαρείῳ

B2: ἐν τίνι πτώσει “Ἀθηναίων” ἐστίν?

(ἐν τῇ) {γενικῇ / κτητικῇ / πατρικῇ} (πτώσει)

15. Who invokes the “magic arts” of a Massylian priestess before making Barce help with a rite that ends with Iris cutting a lock of her hair, symbolizing her reunion with Sychaeüs after killing herself on a pyre in front of her sister, Anna?

DIDO

B1: Dido resolves on suicide after seeing Trojans scurrying to pack ships, with Vergil comparing them to what animals?

ANT(S)

B2: Dido’s Massylian priestess guarded what group’s temple, which stood amid sleep-inducing poppies?

HESPERIDES

16. In 19th-century England, what sort of place—where poor use of a so-called Gradus earned a “tunding,” a word in a unique Latin-based slang—was home to those who used Bradley’s Arnold in “sixth form” and obeyed older “prefects”?

(PUBLIC / BOARDING / SECONDARY / HIGH) SCHOOL // COLLEGE [REJECT “UNIVERSITY”]

B1: At Winchester College, older boys told newcomers to find a fake book called Pempe ton moron proteron. Translate its title—which describes what each older boy did when asked where to find it—knowing that proteron means “further.”

SEND THE {IDIOT / MORON} {FURTHER / ONWARD} (TO ANOTHER STUDENT)

B2: Identify the British boarding school whose Latin motto is ōrandō labōrandō, whose 19th-century headmaster Thomas Arnold emphasized classical ideals, and which lent its name to a modern sport resembling the Roman harpastum.

RUGBY (SCHOOL)

17. What fifth-declension Latin noun refers to “the pupil of an eye” since it was used with oculōrum to mean “very keen sight” and to “a sword’s blade” since it means “sharp edge,” from which it also gets its meaning of “battle-line”?

ACIĒS

B1: What two fifth-declension nouns can refer to the outward “form,” “image,” or “appearance” of something?

SPECIĒS and FACIĒS

B2: The fifth-declension noun caesariēs indicates someone has a lot of what, as does the later medical noun hirsūtiēs?

HAIR(S)

18. What event occurred when Phanes hatched from an egg encircled by the snake-like Ophion, at least per Orphic myths that reworked the tale of Eros, Erebus, and Nyx told in a Hesiodic work beginning with the spontaneous birth of Chaos?

(THE) COSMOGONY / THEOGONY // {CREATION / BIRTH} {OF THE WORLD / UNIVERSE / COSMOS / GODS}

B1: Some see echoes of the Babylonian creation story in what divine Greek couple, as one of them encircled the earth?

OCEANUS and TETHYS

B2: Orphics say Zeus began a second creation after killing Phanes in what manner, reflecting a motif of generational succession and echoing an Orphic ritual that followed the sparagmos and had a name derived from the root ὠμός?

{ATE / SWALLOWED} {HIM // HIS (RAW) FLESH} [ACCEPT EQUIVALENTS]

19. Efforts to fortify what mountain range’s Dariel Pass and region of Lazicum followed Rome’s conquest of the Artaxiads and Colchis, since it sought to control the northern route to Armenia from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea?

CAUCASUS (MOUNTAINS)

B1: The easternmost Roman inscription ever discovered was left in today’s Azerbaijan during Vespasian’s reign by a member of what legion, whose members were supposedly saved by the “Miracle of the Rain” a century later?

(LEGIŌ XII) FULMINĀTA // LEGIŌ XII (FULMINĀTA) // {THUNDERING / THUNDERBOLT}
(TWELFTH LEGION) // (THUNDERING / THUNDERBOLT) TWELFTH (LEGION)

B2: The legion was there to support the defense of Albania and what other confusingly-named kingdom in the Caucasus?

(CAUCASIAN) IBERIA

20. What author boldly portrayed a statesman being torn from his mistress’ arms and claimed “sī foret fās ... flērent dīvae Camēnae,” showing the “Campanian arrogance” that fueled a feud with the Metelli when he wrote Bellum Pūnicum?

(GNAEUS) NAEVIUS

B1: Gellius called Naevius’ epitaph “full of Campanian arrogance,” though Naevius may not have been from there. However, what author definitely retired to Campania, buying Cicero’s villa and the site of Vergil’s tomb?

(TIBERIUS CATIUS ASCONIUS) SILIUS ITALICUS

B2: What native of Burdigala became a proud Campanian after serving as governor and later bishop there, converting under the influence of his Spanish wife Therasia and against the advice of his teacher Ausonius?

PAULINUS (OF NOLA)