Prose literature: Group 2 set text

Constructed teaching Greek in a Herodotean narrative manner, not a quotation. οἱ δὲ Πέρσαι, ὡς ἐπύθοντο ταῦτα, αὐτίκα ἐβουλεύοντο· καὶ οἱ μὲν ἐκέλευον μάχεσθαι, οἱ δὲ ἀπιέναι. τέλος δὲ ἐνίκα ἡ τῶν νεωτέρων γνώμη. Show what Section B would ask of this passage and what Section C would ask of the same material.

1. 01The translation

   The Persians, when they learned this, at once began deliberating; and some urged fighting, others withdrawing. In the end the opinion of the younger men prevailed. Note ἐβουλεύοντο is imperfect and inceptive, they began deliberating; οἱ μέν and οἱ δέ are the article used as a pronoun, some and others; and ἐνίκα is again imperfect, of a debate whose outcome emerged rather than arrived.

2. 02Section B, task one and two

   Translate the passage — the exercise above. Then comprehension: what did the Persians do when they learned the news, and what were the two views among them? Two facts for two marks: they immediately held a debate, ἐβουλεύοντο; and opinion divided between fighting and withdrawing, οἱ μὲν ... μάχεσθαι, οἱ δὲ ἀπιέναι. Short, factual, drawn from the Greek.

3. 03Section B, the 15-mark question

   A local analytical question, for example: how does the writer present the Persian debate? The answer works within the passage: the imperfects that make the deliberation a process rather than an event; the οἱ μέν and οἱ δέ construction that reduces a whole council to two positions; the withholding of any named speaker, so the debate is presented as a movement of opinion rather than a contest between individuals; and τέλος, in the end, which frames the outcome as the resolution of a process.

4. 04Section C, the same material used differently

   A Section C question would not ask about this passage. It would ask something like: how far does the writer present the outcome of events as determined by the quality of the advice given? The passage above then becomes one piece of evidence among several, valuable precisely because it shows a decision reached without a named adviser — and the essay would set it against episodes elsewhere in the Greek, and against the material read in translation where a named adviser IS present and is ignored.

5. 05The difference in one sentence

   Section B asks what this passage does; Section C asks what the work argues, and uses passages as evidence. The preparation is therefore different in kind: for Section B you need every passage worked closely, and for Section C you need the whole work organised by theme so that any question can be answered from four or five places at once.

Result: Section B takes the passage as an object: translation, two factual answers, and a 15-mark analysis of how the debate is presented. Section C takes the same material as evidence for a claim about the whole work, set alongside other episodes and alongside the reading in translation. The first needs close notes on passages; the second needs a thematic index of the whole text.

You have read, in English, an episode in which a council debates whether to fight or withdraw; a respected older adviser argues for caution, is overruled by younger men, and events prove him right. Produce notes that could actually be used in a Section C essay, and then show what a bad note on the same material looks like.

1. 01The bad note

   Chapter 12: the council debate. This records that you read it. It cannot be quoted, cannot be deployed, and cannot support a claim, because it contains no fact that an argument could rest on. Notes of this kind fill a notebook and produce nothing in an examination.

2. 02The usable note, first form

   Council debate: an older adviser argues for withdrawal on the ground that the position cannot be held; the younger men overrule him and the assembly follows them; the defeat that follows vindicates him, and the narrator makes no comment. Theme index: advice, age and authority, the crowd, narratorial reticence. Now there is something to argue with: three facts and a stated absence.

3. 03The usable note, second form — the comparison

   Add a line that connects it outward: compare the Greek set text, where the adviser figure is given direct speech and the narrator again declines to judge. Notes that carry their own comparisons are worth more than notes that do not, because in the examination the comparison is the expensive part and the fact is the cheap part.

4. 04What the note lets you write

   A paragraph like this: the pattern is not confined to the passage set in Greek. In the material read in translation the same shape recurs — an older adviser urges caution, the younger men prevail, and the narrator records the outcome without moralising over it. The repetition matters, because it turns what might have looked like a single ironic episode into a habit of composition, and it makes the narrator's silence a technique rather than an accident.

5. 05The test to apply to every note

   Ask of each note: could I write a sentence of an essay from this alone, without going back to the book? If not, the note is a bookmark rather than a note. Rewriting a term's bookmarks into notes takes one weekend and roughly doubles the amount of evidence available to you.

Result: A usable note names what happens, who is involved, what follows, and what the writer does or declines to do, and carries a line connecting it to the Greek text. A useless note names a chapter. The paragraph in the fourth step was written entirely from the note, without reopening the book, which is the standard every note should meet.

Constructed teaching Greek, not quotations. (a) Narrative: οἱ δὲ Πέρσαι, ὡς ἐπύθοντο ταῦτα, αὐτίκα ἐβουλεύοντο· καὶ οἱ μὲν ἐκέλευον μάχεσθαι, οἱ δὲ ἀπιέναι. τέλος δὲ ἐνίκα ἡ τῶν νεωτέρων γνώμη. (b) Dialogue: ΣΩ. τί δέ; ὁ δίκαιος ἆρα βλάπτει τινά; ΚΡ. οὐδαμῶς. ΣΩ. οὐκοῦν οὐδὲ τὸν ἐχθρόν; ΚΡ. ἥκιστά γε. (c) Oratory: τί οὖν, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, δεῖ ποιεῖν; ἐγὼ μὲν οἶμαι δεῖν βοηθεῖν· οὗτοι δὲ κελεύουσιν ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν. σκέψασθε δὴ ποτέρα βουλὴ τῇ πόλει συμφέρει.

1. 01(a) narrative — what the arrangement implies

   Translation: the Persians, when they learned this, at once began deliberating; and some urged fighting, others withdrawing. In the end the opinion of the younger men prevailed. Nothing is asserted about whether the decision was wise. But three arrangements imply it: no speaker is named, so the debate is a movement of opinion rather than an argument between people; the two options are reduced to two infinitives, μάχεσθαι and ἀπιέναι, which flattens whatever reasoning lay behind them; and the winning view is identified by the AGE of those who held it, ἡ τῶν νεωτέρων γνώμη. A reader who knows the shape of Greek historical narrative already suspects how this ends, and the writer has done that without a word of comment.

2. 02(b) dialogue — where the real work is done

   Translation: SOC. What then? Does the just man harm anyone? CR. Not at all. SOC. Then not even his enemy? CR. Least of all. The visible argument is two questions. The real work is in the first one, because ὁ δίκαιος βλάπτει τινά; asks about harm in the abstract, and the assent οὐδαμῶς therefore concedes a universal. The second question merely tests the universal against the hardest case, τὸν ἐχθρόν, and the interlocutor, having granted the general claim, cannot refuse the particular one. Analysing this passage means saying that the concession was made a question earlier than it appeared to be.

3. 03(b) continued — characterisation by length

   Crito answers in two words and then in two words again, and the second reply, ἥκιστά γε, least of all, is more emphatic than the first. The escalation without any added content is the characterisation: he is agreeing harder rather than thinking harder, which is exactly the position a dialogue needs its interlocutor to occupy if the argument is to run. One could evaluate this: the technique is efficient but it purchases its inevitability by giving the opposing view no competent advocate.

4. 04(c) oratory — what the audience is being asked to do

   Translation: what then, men of Athens, must we do? I for my part think we must send help; these men urge us to keep quiet. Consider, then, which of the two policies is advantageous to the city. Every feature is aimed at a vote. τί δεῖ ποιεῖν; puts a practical question, not a theoretical one. ἐγὼ μέν and οὗτοι δέ set two named parties against each other and, by that framing, delete any third option. οὗτοι, these men, refuses the opponents their names. And σκέψασθε is an imperative to the audience, which hands them the decision at the exact moment the alternatives have been reduced to two.

5. 05The evaluative sentence for each

   Narrative: the withholding of comment is more damaging to the younger men than a stated verdict would have been, because a reader who reaches the judgement unaided does not argue with it. Dialogue: the method is efficient but its inevitability is bought by an interlocutor who never resists, so the conclusion is secure and the argument for it is not. Oratory: the reduction to two options is effective in the assembly and dishonest in the abstract, and the speech is designed for the first setting rather than the second. Three judgements, each supported by the feature named above it.

Result: Narrative argues by arrangement — unnamed speakers, flattened options, the winning view identified by age. Dialogue argues by placing the decisive concession earlier than it looks, and characterises by the length and escalation of assent. Oratory argues towards an action, deleting the third option and handing the audience an imperative. In each case the analytical move is different, and in each case an evaluative sentence is available and should be written.

Specimen title, of the kind Section C sets: How far does the writer suggest that the disasters he describes are the result of bad advice rather than of bad luck? In your answer you should refer to the set text and to the material you have read in translation. Produce the architecture, not the essay.

1. 01Read the question for its hinge

   The hinge is how far, and the two alternatives are bad advice and bad luck. That means the essay is not asking whether advice matters — it is asking you to weigh two explanations against each other. Any answer that argues only that advice matters has answered half the question. Write the hinge at the top of your plan: ADVICE against LUCK, and how far.

2. 02The claim, in one sentence

   Draft it before anything else, because everything hangs on it: the writer consistently presents disaster as the consequence of advice ignored, but he leaves enough unexplained that the reader is never allowed to reduce events to human choice alone. That sentence contains a position, a qualification, and therefore a shape for the whole essay.

3. 03Argument one, with both kinds of evidence

   Point: the structure of the episodes makes advice the visible cause. Greek evidence: the debate passage, οἱ μὲν ἐκέλευον μάχεσθαι, οἱ δὲ ἀπιέναι, some urged fighting, others withdrawing, where the alternatives are stated immediately before the outcome and nothing intervenes between them. Translated evidence: the council episode in which a named older adviser is overruled and vindicated by events. Both show the same shape, which makes it a technique rather than an accident.

4. 04Argument two, with both kinds of evidence

   Point: but the narrator declines to draw the moral, and the refusal is doing work. Greek evidence: the closing antithesis in which the two men are set side by side with no comment. Translated evidence: an episode where a disaster follows an unforeseeable event and the narrative offers no adviser at all to blame. The second undercuts a purely moralising reading of the first.

5. 05Counter-case and close

   Counter-case: the strongest objection is that the pattern of the ignored adviser is a literary convention rather than a historical claim, so the writer may be shaping his material to a familiar form rather than arguing about causation. Answer: the convention is used, but it is used selectively — the disasters that have no adviser are told in the same register, which suggests the writer is not simply reaching for a form. Close: return to the claim, sharpened — the writer makes bad advice the visible cause and leaves luck as the unexplained residue, and the effect is to make human responsibility legible without making it complete.

6. 06The plan on the page

   All of the above fits in about fifteen lines of note form and takes four or five minutes to write. Claim; three argument headings with two pieces of evidence each; counter-case with its answer; a closing sentence. Nothing in it is a full sentence except the claim and the close, which are worth drafting because they are the two sentences the examiner will read most carefully.

Result: The architecture is: a claim containing a qualification; two argument paragraphs, each supported from the Greek and from the translated reading; a counter-case that takes the convention objection seriously and answers it; and a close that sharpens the claim rather than repeating it. Four or five minutes of planning, and the essay can then be written without a single pause to think what comes next.

Title: How far does the writer present the crowd as a reliable judge of what should be done? In your answer you should refer to the set text and to the material you have read in translation. Produce a five-minute plan and then write the opening paragraph.

1. 01Minute one — find the hinge and take a position

   The hinge is reliable judge, and the question invites a scale rather than a yes or no. A position that is worth arguing: the crowd is presented as decisive but not as discerning — it reaches conclusions quickly, it reaches them by responding to the speaker rather than to the argument, and the writer records the outcomes without ever quite condemning the mechanism. That position contains a distinction, decisive against discerning, which will carry the whole essay.

2. 02Minute two — three arguments

   One: the crowd is characterised by speed. Evidence from the Greek: αὐτίκα ἐβουλεύοντο, they immediately began deliberating, where the adverb is doing the characterising. Evidence from the translation: the assembly that reverses its own decision overnight. Two: the crowd responds to the speaker, not to the case. Greek: the debate reduced to οἱ μέν and οἱ δέ with no named advocate and no reported reasoning. Translation: the episode where a named speaker prevails on grounds unrelated to the question. Three: the writer withholds judgement, which is itself a judgement.

3. 03Minute three — the counter-case

   The strongest objection is that on several occasions the crowd is right, and the writer records those occasions without condescension. That has to be acknowledged, not dodged. The answer available: being right is not the same as judging well, and the writer's presentation makes the crowd's successes look as accidental as its failures, which supports the distinction the essay is drawing rather than undermining it.

4. 04Minutes four and five — the close, drafted in advance

   Draft the last sentence now, while there is time to think: the crowd in this text is not a bad judge so much as a fast one, and the writer's refusal to separate its right decisions from its wrong ones is the most damaging thing he does to it. Having the closing sentence already written removes the commonest cause of a weak ending, which is running out of time and stopping.

5. 05The opening paragraph, written

   The writer presents the crowd as decisive rather than discerning: it reaches its conclusions quickly, it reaches them by responding to the speaker rather than to the case, and the narrative records the outcome of its decisions without distinguishing the sound ones from the lucky ones. That case rests on three things — the vocabulary of speed with which crowd decisions are introduced in the Greek, the systematic absence of reported reasoning from the debates, and, in the material read in translation, the assemblies that reverse themselves without any new information having arrived.

6. 06What the paragraph does and does not do

   It answers the question in the first eleven words. It contains a distinction that the essay can spend three paragraphs proving. It names both bodies of evidence explicitly, so the examiner can see at once that the requirement has been met. It contains no biography, no dates, no summary of the work, and no announcement of structure. It is two sentences long and it took ninety seconds to write, because the five-minute plan had already done the thinking.

Result: A five-minute plan produced a position (decisive rather than discerning), three arguments each with evidence from the Greek and from the translated reading, a counter-case that concedes the crowd is sometimes right and turns the concession into support, and a pre-drafted closing sentence. The opening paragraph is two sentences: the answer with its qualification, and the evidence the argument will rest on.