Key to Exercise VIX I. Discuss the following questions with your partner and then come up with your answers. 1.What does the Greek myth attempts to explain? Greek myth attempts to explain the origins of the world, and details the lives and adventures of a wide variety of gods, goddesses, heroes, heroines, and mythological creatures.
2.What do Hesiod’s Theogony and the Works and Days involve? The Theogony and the Works and Days by Hesiod contain accounts of the genesis of the world, the succession of divine rulers, the succession of human ages, the origin of human woes, and the origin of sacrificial practices. Myths are also preserved in the Homeric Hymns, in fragments of epic poems of the Epic Cycle, in lyric poems, in the works of the tragedians of the fifth century BC, in writings of scholars and poets of the Hellenistic Age, and in texts from the time of the Roman Empire by writers such as Plutarch and Pausanias.
3.How many periods can the Greek mythological “history of the world” be divided into? The resulting mythological "history of the world" may be divided into three or four broader periods: 1)The myths of origin or age of gods (Theogonies, "births of gods"): myths about the origins of the world, the gods, and the human race. 2)The age when gods and mortals mingled freely: stories of the early interactions between gods, demigods, and mortals. 3)The age of heroes (heroic age), where divine activity was more limited. The last and greatest of the heroic legends is the story of the Trojan War and after (which is regarded by some researchers as a separate fourth period).
4.Are the gods in Greek mythology associated with any specific aspects of life? Yes. Most gods were associated with specific aspects of life. For example, Aphrodite was the goddess of love and beauty, Ares was the god of war, Hades the ruler of the underworld, and Athena the goddess of wisdom and courage. Some gods, such as Apollo and Dionysus, revealed complex personalities and mixtures of functions, while others, such as Hestia (literally "hearth") and Helios (literally "sun"), were little more than personifications.
5.According to Ovid, most of the tales in Greek mythology are divided into two thematic groups. What are they? Most of these tales were later told by Ovid's Metamorphoses and they are often divided into two thematic groups: tales of love, and tales of punishment.
II. Fill in each of the following blanks with an appropriate word or phrase chosen from the text. 1. teachings; nature 2. Iliad ; Odyssey 3. arts; language 4. culture; changes 5. political 6. Animism; nature 7. chronology; humans 8. spiritual; Olympian 9. Zeus; father 10. Oceanus; moon