Exam questions
Questions will often ask you to interpret sources
in order to find evidence of some aspect of Athenian society, such as women, slavery, attitudes to non-Greeks, and so on.
Look not only at what they
show, but also at what they do not show.
e.g. in the Parthenon frieze, what do we not see the women doing?
Men are presented naked, but not women. Men interact freely with one another,
but women do not. What attitudes does that reveal to us?
Look not only at the obvious
bits, but also at the little glimpses of normal life that an artist might not have paid much notice to.
e.g. in the Lysistrata, where do women ordinarily meet? How
often?
Consider the layers between
us and the evidence.
For example, in the funeral speech, we do not have a bald description of Athens. We have what is presented as Pericles’
words about Athens.
But we don’t even have Pericles’ actual words, we have Thucydides’ version of what he said. But we don’t even have that! We
have a translation of Thucydides. How far can we separate out the translator,
or Thucydides, or Pericles, to see the real 5th century Athens?
