Verse literature: Group 4 set text

Constructed teaching Greek in a comic register, printed as prose and not as verse. Translate it and identify the features that mark it as comedy. — Α. νὴ τὸν Δία, πεινῶ γε δεινῶς. Β. τί οὖν; οὐκ ἔστιν ἄρτος οὐδείς; Α. οὔ, ὦ πόνηρε· τὰ γὰρ ἄλφιτα πάντα οἱ στρατηγοὶ κατέφαγον. Β. οἴμοι τάλας· ἀεὶ γὰρ οὗτοι πάντα κατεσθίουσιν.

1. 01The oath, which is the first genre marker

   νὴ τὸν Δία is an affirmative oath, by Zeus, with νή taking the accusative of the god sworn by; its negative counterpart is μὰ τὸν Δία. Oaths of this kind are everywhere in comedy and rare in tragedy, because they belong to how Athenians actually spoke. πεινῶ is the contracted first person singular of πεινάω, I am hungry, and γε emphasises it, while δεινῶς is an adverb doing colloquial duty for terribly. Translate: by Zeus, I am terribly hungry.

2. 02The question, and a compound negative

   τί οὖν; is two words and means what then, or well? οὐκ ἔστιν ἄρτος οὐδείς; is a question expecting the answer yes — is there really no bread at all? οὐδείς is a compound negative agreeing with ἄρτος, and Greek compound negatives reinforce rather than cancel, so οὐκ ... οὐδείς is emphatic and not a double negative in the English sense.

3. 03The vocative that depends on an accent

   ὦ πόνηρε is a joke about a word you know. πονηρός, accented on the last syllable, means wicked; the same letters accented recessively, πόνηρε in the vocative, are a familiar, half-affectionate address — my poor fool, you wretch. It is exactly the sort of pair the specification has in mind when it requires learners to distinguish words of identical spelling with differing accentuation, and here the accent is the difference between an insult and an endearment.

4. 04The political joke

   τὰ γὰρ ἄλφιτα πάντα οἱ στρατηγοὶ κατέφαγον: for the generals have eaten up all the barley-meal. τὰ ἄλφιτα is the neuter plural object, πάντα agrees with it, οἱ στρατηγοί is the plural subject and so takes a plural verb. κατέφαγον is the aorist of κατεσθίω, eat up, and the κατα- prefix is doing work: they did not eat, they devoured. Naming a class of public officials as the reason there is no food is the characteristic move of Old Comedy, which mocked identifiable Athenians by name and by office.

5. 05The paratragic lament

   οἴμοι τάλας is a cry straight out of tragedy — alas, wretched that I am — and it is being used here about a shortage of barley-meal. That mismatch between register and occasion is paratragedy, and it is one of comedy's most reliable devices. Then ἀεὶ γὰρ οὗτοι πάντα κατεσθίουσιν, for these men are always eating everything, brings the register straight back down: a present tense of habit, the dismissive οὗτοι, and the same verb again without its aorist prefix force.

6. 06What the passage shows about reading comedy

   The grammar was easy: an oath, two questions, an aorist, a present of habit, a compound negative. Everything difficult was register — knowing that νὴ τὸν Δία is colloquial, that πόνηρε depends on an accent, that naming the generals is a political joke, and that οἴμοι τάλας is borrowed from a genre this text is making fun of. That is the characteristic shape of comic difficulty, and it is why a commentary is not optional.

Result: By Zeus, I am terribly hungry. — What then? Is there really no bread at all? — No, my poor fool: the generals have eaten up all the barley-meal. — Alas, wretched that I am; for these men are always eating everything. The genre markers are the oath νὴ τὸν Δία, the colloquial γε and δεινῶς, the accent-dependent vocative ὦ πόνηρε, the named public officials, and the paratragic οἴμοι τάλας applied to a domestic shortage.

Four short pieces of Greek. For each, say which genre it belongs to and give the evidence. (a) ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον — quoted exactly, Homer, Odyssey 1.1. (b) ἄπελθε, μῆτερ· δεινὰ γὰρ πάσχω κακά — constructed, scanned earlier as a regular iambic trimeter. (c) νὴ τὸν Δία, πεινῶ γε δεινῶς — constructed, in a comic register. (d) ἡ τῶν νεωτέρων γνώμη ἐνίκα — constructed, in a prose narrative register.

1. 01(a) the evidence for epic

   Three things settle it. The metre is dactylic hexameter, five dactyls and a spondee. The verb ἔννεπε is an epic form of a verb that Attic does not use in this way. And the syntax puts the accusative object first, before the vocative addressed to a Muse, which is the conventional opening of an epic invocation. Any one of the three would be suggestive; together they are conclusive.

2. 02(b) the evidence for tragedy

   The metre is iambic trimeter, which narrows the field to drama. The register then decides between tragedy and comedy: μῆτερ as a vocative in a scene of suffering, δεινὰ κακά as an elevated periphrasis for what has happened, and the absence of any colloquial particle or oath. There is no obscenity, no topical name, no oath by a god. Elevated trimeter is tragic trimeter.

3. 03(c) the evidence for comedy

   νὴ τὸν Δία is an oath of the kind Athenians used in the street and tragedy avoids. πεινῶ is a verb about being hungry, which is a comic subject and not a tragic one. γε and δεινῶς together are conversational emphasis rather than poetic elevation. The register alone settles it, without any metrical evidence at all.

4. 04(d) the evidence for prose

   There is no metre: the syllables do not fall into any repeating pattern, and the phrase ἡ τῶν νεωτέρων γνώμη puts an attributive genitive between the article and its noun, which is a prose habit that verse tends to avoid because it is metrically inconvenient. ἐνίκα, an imperfect of a contract verb in its ordinary Attic form, confirms it. Not every piece of Greek in this qualification is verse, and checking whether it scans at all is a legitimate first move.

5. 05The order to test in

   Metre first, because it is objective: does it scan, and if so as what? Then dialect, because epic forms are unmistakable once learned. Then register, which separates tragedy from comedy and is decided by oaths, obscenity, named contemporaries and the subject matter. Three tests, in that order, and the genre of almost any passage falls out in under a minute.

Result: (a) Epic: hexameter, the epic imperative ἔννεπε, and the conventional invocation shape. (b) Tragedy: iambic trimeter with an elevated register and no colloquial marker. (c) Old Comedy: the oath νὴ τὸν Δία, the subject of hunger, and conversational particles. (d) Prose: it does not scan, and it uses the attributive genitive between article and noun. The diagnostic order is metre, then dialect, then register.

Constructed teaching Greek, each line scanned as a regular iambic trimeter in the previous topic. A mother and her child. (1) τί φῄς; τί λέξεις; οὐ γὰρ οἶδα τὸν λόγον. (2) ἄπελθε, μῆτερ· δεινὰ γὰρ πάσχω κακά. (3) τίς σοι παρέσχε τήνδε τὴν βουλήν ποτε; Write the analysis, naming the technique at each step.

1. 01The form: stichomythia, and what it implies

   Three consecutive lines, one speaker each, each line syntactically complete. That is stichomythia, and the convention carries information before any word is analysed: the exchange is a confrontation, it is moving at the speed of the metre, and neither speaker is being allowed a set-piece speech. In a play, a stretch of stichomythia normally marks the point at which argument has replaced exposition.

2. 02The mother, characterised by repetition

   τί φῄς; τί λέξεις; is two questions in five positions, with anaphora on τί and a move from the present φῄς, what are you saying, to the future λέξεις, what will you say. She asks the same thing twice without waiting, and the second version is more anxious than the first because it anticipates worse to come. οὐ γὰρ οἶδα τὸν λόγον, for I do not understand the statement, then concedes that she has not followed — a character admitting incomprehension in her first line is a character the scene will keep in the dark.

3. 03The child, characterised by refusal

   ἄπελθε is an aorist imperative and the first word of the reply: the child does not answer the question at all but issues an order. μῆτερ follows immediately, so the address and the dismissal share a breath, which is a compact way of showing a relationship being used and rejected at once. Then δεινὰ γὰρ πάσχω κακά gives a reason that explains nothing: terrible sufferings, unspecified. The child speaks in generalities where the mother asked for a fact.

4. 04The word order that frames the suffering

   δεινά and κακά agree with each other and stand at opposite ends of the clause, with γὰρ πάσχω between them: terrible ... I suffer ... evils. The framing encloses the verb of suffering inside the word for its quality, so the line is shaped like the state it describes. This is a claim about arrangement, it is demonstrable by pointing, and it does not depend on the metre, which in this line is entirely regular.

5. 05The third line, and where an examiner would press

   τίς σοι παρέσχε τήνδε τὴν βουλήν ποτε; — who ever put this plan into your head? The mother does not respond to the suffering but to the decision, and τίς assumes that somebody else is responsible. That assumption is characterisation: she cannot conceive of the plan as her child's own. If this were a real play, the audience would very probably know the answer to her question already, and the line would carry the second meaning that constitutes dramatic irony — which is exactly the kind of moment an examiner sets, and exactly why the claim needs the audience's knowledge stated.

6. 06How to write it up

   One claim: the exchange characterises the two speakers by what each refuses to give the other — the child refuses information, the mother refuses to believe the decision is her child's. Then three units, each with Greek, translation and an explanation of how: the anaphora and tense shift in line 1, the imperative-plus-vocative opening of line 2 with the framing of δεινά and κακά, and the assumption buried in τίς in line 3. Then one sentence linking outward to the play's larger pattern. Four paragraphs, twenty minutes.

Result: The form is stichomythia, which supplies confrontation and speed before any word is read. The mother is characterised by doubled questions, a tense shift and an admission that she has not understood; the child by an imperative in place of an answer and a generality in place of a fact; and the mother again by a question whose interrogative assumes another agent. The framing of δεινά around γὰρ πάσχω is the strongest single piece of evidence, and it is about word order, not metre.

You have read, in English, a tragedy in which a chorus of city elders repeatedly urges caution, is ignored by the ruler, and at the end laments an outcome it had predicted. Your Greek prescription is a scene from a different play. Produce usable evidence and then a paragraph that uses it.

1. 01The structural note

   Chorus of city elders. Urges caution in its first ode, again in dialogue with the ruler in episode two, and is dismissed both times. Present on stage for the whole play. Laments at the end in terms that echo its first ode. Nothing it says is new information; its function is to make the ruler's refusals audible and to supply the audience with a voice that agrees with it.

2. 02The comparative note

   In the Greek prescription the chorus is silent for most of the scene and speaks only two lines. So the two plays use the same institution to opposite ends: one makes the chorus an insistent counter-voice, the other makes it a witness. Write that contrast down as a single line, because it is the expensive part and it will be needed intact under time.

3. 03The claim the notes support

   A chorus is not a fixed device but a variable one, and what a dramatist does with it is a decision about how much the audience is to be guided. That claim can be argued from the two texts together and could not be argued from either alone, which is exactly why the linked reading is assessed.

4. 04The paragraph, written

   The chorus of the set text is remarkable for how little it says. In the printed scene it speaks twice, briefly, and neither intervention alters what follows. That restraint reads very differently once it is set beside the play read in translation, whose chorus of elders urges caution in its opening ode, repeats the warning in dialogue, and is dismissed on both occasions, so that the audience is supplied throughout with an articulate voice that agrees with it. The two dramatists use the same institution for opposite purposes: one to guide the audience's judgement, the other to withhold guidance and leave the judgement to be formed unaided. The set text's silence is therefore not a weakness of construction but a choice about how much help the spectator is to be given.

5. 05What the paragraph does not do

   It does not quote the translation, because a translation cannot be quoted for its language. It does not retell either play. It does not say also or similarly and leave the comparison hanging. And it ends with a conclusion that neither text could have supported by itself, which is the test any comparative paragraph should be able to pass.

Result: The usable notes were structural — who the chorus is, how often it speaks, whether it is heeded, and what it does at the end — and the comparison was reduced to a single line before any essay was attempted. The resulting paragraph argues that the chorus is a variable device whose handling is a decision about guiding the audience, a claim that requires both texts and quotes neither translation.

You are sitting Component 04. Two hours, 75 marks, three sections. Plan the paper and then decide what to do at two points where things have gone wrong.

1. 01Minutes 0 to 5 — read, allocate, plan the essay

   Read the mark allocation for all three sections and write three finishing times in the margin: with an even split, Section A by minute 40, Section B by minute 75, Section C by minute 110, checking to 120. Read the essay titles, choose one, and write it at the top of a fresh page with a four-line plan: claim, two arguments, counter-case. Then close that page. Five minutes, no Greek translated yet, and the most valuable five minutes of the paper.

2. 02Minutes 5 to 40 — Section A

   Translation first, straight into fair copy, from the Greek and not from memory. Then comprehension, one fact per mark, quoting the deciding Greek word. Then the 15-mark question: overall claim as the first sentence, then four units of claim, Greek, translation and explanation, then a link outward. Watch the clock at minute 30 and, if the analysis is not started, start it immediately, whatever remains unfinished above.

3. 03Minutes 40 to 75 — Section B

   The same shape on the Group 4 text. One extra discipline here: resist the temptation to spend longer because this is the text you know best. The 15-mark question in Section B is worth the same as the one in Section A, and the essay that follows is worth more than either.

4. 04Minutes 75 to 110 — Section C

   Reopen the page with the plan on it. The claim is already written, so the first paragraph takes ninety seconds. Then two argument paragraphs, each supported from the Greek and from the reading in translation, then the counter-case, then the close. Thirty-five minutes is enough for roughly six hundred words of argued prose, which is a full essay at this level.

5. 05Checkpoint one — it is minute 50 and Section A is not finished

   Stop Section A now, mid-answer if necessary, and start Section B. Ten minutes of Section A time have been lost and cannot be recovered; taking them from Section B would simply move the problem. Come back to the unfinished Section A answer in the checking window if any of it survives. The rule is that a section's finishing time is a hard boundary, because every section contains easy marks at its start and the easy marks of the next section are always worth more than the hard marks of the last.

6. 06Checkpoint two — it is minute 100 and the essay is two paragraphs in

   You have twenty minutes and three paragraphs planned. Cut the counter-case, not an argument, and write the third argument at normal length. Then spend the last four minutes on a close that reaches a genuine conclusion. An essay of four paragraphs that concludes reads as a shorter essay; an essay of five paragraphs that stops in the middle of the fourth reads as an unfinished one, and examiners mark the second more harshly than the first.

Result: The plan is five minutes to read, allocate and plan the essay; thirty-five minutes each on Sections A, B and C; ten minutes to check. The two rules that carry it are that section finishing times are hard boundaries, and that when the essay must be shortened the counter-case goes and the closing sentence never does.