Greek literary and cultural context

A candidate has written the four sentences below in a 15-mark answer on a passage of tragedy. Apply the deletion test to each and decide which survive, and in what form.

1. 01Sentence one

   Greek tragedy was performed at Athens in the fifth century BC at festivals in honour of the god Dionysus. Delete it, and every claim in the answer still stands. It is true, it is relevant to the subject in general, and it is doing nothing here. Cut it. Almost every weak answer contains a sentence of exactly this shape, usually as its opening.

2. 02Sentence two

   Because the audience already knew how the myth ended, the character's confidence about the future is heard twice: as a statement and as an error. Delete it and the claim about dramatic irony that follows has lost its premise and becomes an assertion. This one survives, and note that it is already written as a subordinate clause plus a claim — the context is in the because, not in a sentence of its own.

3. 03Sentence three

   Athenian juries could number several hundred citizens and there was no appeal. In an answer on tragedy this earns nothing and should be cut. In an answer on a speech of oratory it would survive, but only if what follows is a claim it supports — the speaker's urgency is a response to a single, final, same-day decision. Context is not true or false in the abstract; it is load-bearing or it is not, and that depends on the claim standing next to it.

4. 04Sentence four

   Refusing a suppliant was an offence against Zeus, who protected them, so the refusal in this scene is not a personal harshness but an act of impiety, and the audience would have registered it as such. Delete it and the reading of the scene changes completely: without the rule, the character is merely unkind. This survives, and it is the strongest of the four, because it converts an observation about behaviour into a claim about what the scene means.

5. 05The rewritten version

   Two sentences survive out of four, and both of them already have the shape context wants: a subordinate clause carrying the fact, and a main clause carrying the claim. Rewritten together they take about forty words and leave room for two more units of close analysis. The two that were cut took about thirty-five words and left the answer no better than it would have been without them.

6. 06The general rule the test produces

   Context belongs in because-clauses and since-clauses. If you find yourself writing a sentence of context whose main verb is was or were — tragedy was performed, juries were large, women were excluded — check it immediately, because that grammatical shape is the signature of background rather than argument. The shape you want is because X was the case, this passage does Y.

Result: Sentences one and three were cut: both true, neither supporting a claim in this answer. Sentences two and four survived because deleting them destroyed the claims that depended on them. The surviving pair share a grammatical shape — a subordinate clause of context attached to a main clause of argument — and that shape is the reliable test for whether a piece of context is earning its place.

Without looking at the timeline, place Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Xenophon, Plato and Demosthenes in order, group them by period, and then state one literary consequence for each grouping.

1. 01The order

   Homer, at a distance and with a contested date somewhere in the eighth or seventh century BC. Then, all within the fifth century, Herodotus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, born within about fifty years of one another. Then Xenophon and Plato, born around 430 and 428 BC respectively and writing into the fourth century. Then Demosthenes, born 384 and dying 322 BC, the latest of the group.

2. 02Consequence of the gap before the fifth century

   Because Homer is three centuries earlier and universally known, a fifth-century author using a Homeric story is working with material the audience can check. So the analytical question about any tragedy on an epic subject is not what happens but what has been changed, and a change is a statement. Notice that this consequence is a literary tool, not a historical fact: it tells you what to look for in the text.

3. 03Consequence of the fifth-century cluster

   Because Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes were competing in the same festivals before the same citizens, comedy can parody tragedy and expect to be understood, and a tragedy can respond to a rival's treatment of the same myth. Herodotus, writing prose in the same generation, shares the audience's stock of assumptions about the gods, fate and the reversal of fortune, which is why his narrative shapes so often resemble tragic ones.

4. 04Consequence of the fourth-century pair

   Because Plato and Xenophon were both young men when Socrates was tried in 399 BC and both wrote about him afterwards, their accounts are two treatments of one figure by two authors with different purposes, which makes them comparable in a way that few ancient texts are. And because both write after the fifth century has ended, their Attic prose is a more developed instrument than Herodotus's.

5. 05Consequence for Demosthenes and the orators

   Because political oratory survives in bulk from the fourth century and not the fifth, the register of public argument we can read is a fourth-century one, and the Component 02 comprehension passage — a passage of oratory until 2032 — will belong to that world of large juries, same-day verdicts and speeches written to be delivered once.

6. 06The form to write all this in

   Notice that not one of the five consequences above is a sentence of history. Each begins with because and ends with a statement about how a text should be read. That is the only form in which chronology is worth carrying into an examination, and building the chronology this way — as a set of because-clauses rather than a set of dates — is what makes it usable.

Result: Three groups: Homer, at a contested date some three centuries earlier; the fifth-century cluster of Herodotus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes; and the fourth-century group of Xenophon, Plato and Demosthenes. The five consequences are all of the form because X, read Y this way — reworking as statement, parody as shared reference, tragic shapes in Herodotean narrative, two comparable accounts of Socrates, and a fourth-century register for the oratory.

Constructed teaching Greek in an oratorical register, not a quotation. ἐγὼ μέν, ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί, οὐδέποτε πρότερον εἰς δικαστήριον εἰσῆλθον· ἀλλὰ νῦν ἀναγκάζομαι. δέομαι οὖν ὑμῶν εὐνοίᾳ ἀκοῦσαι. Translate it, then explain each feature by what the occasion required.

1. 01Translate

   I, gentlemen of the jury, have never before come into a court; but now I am compelled to. I ask you, therefore, to listen with goodwill. Note εἰσῆλθον, aorist of εἰσέρχομαι; ἀναγκάζομαι, present passive, I am being compelled; δέομαι governs the genitive of the person asked, ὑμῶν; εὐνοίᾳ is a dative of manner; ἀκοῦσαι is the aorist infinitive completing δέομαι.

2. 02The address, and why it is there

   ὦ ἄνδρες δικασταί is the standard opening address. The occasion required it because the speaker is talking to several hundred fellow citizens who are about to decide his case, not to a judge and not to a record. Naming them as men and as jurors does two things at once: it flatters the role they are performing and it reminds them that the decision is theirs personally.

3. 03The claim of inexperience

   οὐδέποτε πρότερον εἰς δικαστήριον εἰσῆλθον, I have never before come into a court, is a topos — a standard move — and it exists because the jury was amateur and suspicious of professional cleverness. A litigant who seemed practised at litigation was at a disadvantage, so speakers routinely disclaimed experience, often in speeches written for them by professionals. That last detail is the contextual fact that makes the move analysable rather than merely noted: the disclaimer is itself a technique.

4. 04The compulsion

   ἀλλὰ νῦν ἀναγκάζομαι, but now I am compelled, is passive and agentless. The speaker presents himself as acted upon rather than acting, which pre-empts the charge of being litigious. The occasion required this because prosecuting was a citizen's own initiative and could be represented as malice; a speaker therefore had to explain why he was there at all.

5. 05The request

   δέομαι οὖν ὑμῶν εὐνοίᾳ ἀκοῦσαι, I ask you therefore to listen with goodwill. The request for εὔνοια is the third standard element of a proem, and it exists because attention was not guaranteed: the jury was large, the setting was public, and the speaking time was limited and measured. A speaker who did not secure a hearing in his first sentences might not get one.

6. 06The one clause worth writing in an answer

   All of the above compresses to this: because an Athenian jury was a large body of amateur citizens who would decide the case the same day, the proem is designed to secure goodwill before any fact is stated — hence the disclaimer of experience, the agentless ἀναγκάζομαι, and the explicit request for εὔνοια. One sentence of context and three textual observations attached to it, which is the ratio to aim for.

Result: I, gentlemen of the jury, have never before come into a court; but now I am compelled to. I ask you therefore to listen with goodwill. The three features — the disclaimer of experience, the agentless passive of compulsion, and the request for goodwill — are all products of one contextual fact: a large amateur jury deciding the case the same day, before whom seeming practised or litigious was a liability.

Constructed teaching Greek, not a quotation. ὁ δὲ πεσὼν πρὸς τὰ γόνατα ἱκέτευεν· ὦ δέσποτα, πρὸς Διὸς ἱκεσίου, μή με κτείνῃς. Translate it, and then show how the unstated rule turns the scene into evidence.

1. 01Translate, and note the forms

   And he, falling at his knees, kept supplicating: master, in the name of Zeus of suppliants, do not kill me. πεσών is the aorist active participle of πίπτω, agreeing with the subject. ἱκέτευεν is imperfect, which matters: not he supplicated once but he went on supplicating. πρὸς Διὸς ἱκεσίου is πρός with the genitive in its adjuring sense, in the name of. μή με κτείνῃς is a prohibition, μή with the aorist subjunctive, which is the standard Attic construction for forbidding a single act.

2. 02The physical detail is a ritual, not a description

   πρὸς τὰ γόνατα, at the knees, is not incidental. Supplication had a recognised posture — the suppliant took hold of the knees, and sometimes the chin, of the person supplicated — and taking it placed the suppliant under divine protection. A reader who does not know this sees a man kneeling; a reader who does sees a formal act with legal and religious force being performed.

3. 03The god named is the point

   Διὸς ἱκεσίου is Zeus in his specific capacity as protector of suppliants, and naming him converts the appeal from a personal plea into an invocation of an obligation. The addressee is no longer being asked for mercy; he is being told, in front of witnesses, that a refusal will be an offence against a god. That is why the phrase is a formula: it does a job, and it does it by being recognisable.

4. 04What the rule makes visible

   With the rule in place, the scene is not about whether the addressee is kind. It is about whether he will accept a religious obligation that has been publicly imposed on him. If he refuses, the audience registers impiety and expects consequences. If he accepts, he has been manoeuvred: the suppliant has used a ritual to remove his freedom of action. Either way the scene has become an event with stakes, and none of that is stated in the Greek.

5. 05The imperfect, read in the light of the rule

   ἱκέτευεν being imperfect now carries something too. A completed aorist would report an act performed; the imperfect reports an act sustained, and a supplication that has to be sustained is one that is not being accepted. The tense is doing characterisation of the person being supplicated, who is present in this sentence only as the man who has not yet answered.

6. 06The one clause to write

   Because a suppliant who has taken the ritual posture is under the protection of Zeus, the refusal that this scene withholds is an act of impiety rather than of harshness, and the imperfect ἱκέτευεν, he went on supplicating, holds the audience in the moment before the impiety is committed. One clause of context, one claim about the scene, one piece of Greek quoted and translated. That is the finished unit.

Result: And he, falling at his knees, kept supplicating: master, in the name of Zeus of suppliants, do not kill me. The unstated rule — that ritual supplication places the suppliant under Zeus's protection — converts the kneeling into a formal act, the divine name into an imposed obligation, and the imperfect ἱκέτευεν into a characterisation of the silent man who has not yet accepted it.

The contextual fact: an Athenian tragedy was performed once, in competition, before a mass civic audience that already knew the myth. Build a paragraph of a 15-mark answer from it, and show the two wrong ways of using the same fact.

1. 01Wrong way one — the background paragraph

   Greek tragedies were performed at the City Dionysia, a festival in honour of Dionysus held in Athens in the spring. Plays were entered in a competition and judged, and a wealthy citizen funded the chorus. The audience was large and made up of citizens. Three sentences, all true, all worth nothing here, because not one of them says anything about the passage. This is the shape most misused context takes, and it usually appears first.

2. 02Wrong way two — the bolted-on inference

   The audience already knew the myth. This means that they would have known what was going to happen. This creates dramatic irony, which makes the passage more powerful for the audience. Better, because it is trying to connect, but still weak: no Greek is quoted, the second sentence merely restates the first, and more powerful is not a claim about anything. The paragraph could have been written without reading the passage.

3. 03The right way — the fact as a premise

   Because the audience came to the theatre already knowing how the story ended, the speaker's confident statement about the future is heard twice — as the character means it, and as the audience knows it will turn out. The Greek makes the doubleness available rather than merely allowing it: the assurance is unqualified, with no particle of hedging and no conditional, so nothing in the character's own words admits the possibility the audience is holding. The effect is not that the audience feels clever but that they are made to watch a person speak past the edge of what he can see.

4. 04What changed

   The contextual fact occupies one because-clause. The rest of the sentence is about what the character says. The second sentence is about the Greek — the absence of hedging particles, the absence of a conditional — which is evidence that can be pointed at. And the third sentence states the effect in terms of what happens to the audience, not in terms of how good the passage is. Three sentences, one of them context, and the paragraph is an analysis.

5. 05The same fact used for its other two jobs

   The same contextual fact can also explain a convention: because a play was seen once and had to work on first hearing, the entrance of a character is announced by the chorus rather than left to be inferred, which is construction and not clumsiness. And it can support a claim about a departure: because the standard version of the story was known, a change made to it is a statement, so the alteration in this scene is the loudest thing the dramatist does. One fact, three uses, all of them in a clause.

6. 06The rule to carry away

   A piece of context is worth what it lets you say about the Greek and nothing more. Before writing a contextual sentence, decide which of the three jobs it is doing, and write the claim first and the clause second — literally, if it helps: write the main clause, then go back and put the because in front of it. That order makes the wrong versions almost impossible to write.

Result: The paragraph that earns marks uses the contextual fact in one because-clause, spends its remaining sentences on the Greek — the absence of hedging particles and of any conditional — and states the effect as something that happens to the audience. The background version and the bolted-on version use the same true fact and say nothing about the text. The same fact also explains a convention and licenses a claim about departure from the standard story, each time in a single clause.