Exercise 1

Images of athletes and athletic achievement appear throughout the history of ancient Greek art.  For example, take a look at this Archaic Black Figure vase depicting  Foot Racers.  Now examine three famous sculptures: the Classical Discobolos (discus-thrower) and the Apoxyomenos (a young man removing dirt and sweat with a scraper), and the Hellenistic Seated Boxer.  Beyond the fact that each of these pieces depict athletes, what do they have in common? How do the artists represent the bodies of their subjects, and what do they try to suggests about their subjects' minds? How do these pieces exemplify the characteristics of, respectively, Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic art? What do these works suggest about the values and priorities of Greek humanism?

Exercise 2

One of the now-familiar literary genres to emerge from Greek civilization was biography.  Why did the Greeks (and, later, the Romans) practice this form? What did they hope to achieve by telling the life-stories of notable people? For insight into these questions, take a look at the comments of two early biographers, Plutarch and Theon: what, for each of these writers, was the purpose of biography as a distinct genre of writing? Plutarch is one of the most famous ancient biographers, whose comparative lives of Greek and Roman political figures are still widely appreciated.  Take a look at this excerpt from his biography of Alexander the Great.  Why, for Plutarch, is Alexander notable? Does Plutarch appear to consider Alexander truly great? If so, by what standard? If not, why not?