AgamemnonQuiz

1. In order to  appreciate the action of Aeschylus’ AGAMEMNON, the audience must understand the location and significance of both:

a) Corinth and Colchis

b) Aulis and Athens

c) Sparta and Samos

d) Troy and Mycenae

e) Troy and Mr. Caucasus

 

2. Why is Clytemnestra described as a mannish woman in Aeschylus’ AGAMEMNON?

a) because she wears man’s clothing

b) because she dares to do a daring act of violence

c) because she worshiped the phallic god Priapus

d) because she hates women

e) because she is in love with Aegisthus, a puny man

 

3. What act of Agamemnon’s before the Trojan War angered his wife?

a) his sacrifice of their daughter Iphigeneia

b) his sudden departure without saying ‘good bye’

c) his rape of Cassandra

d) his appointment of a singer to act as her guardian

e) his sending Orestes away

 

4. How did Clytemnestra get such quick news of Troy’s downfall?

a) Hermes came to her in a dream

b) Iris came to her in a dream

c) Aegisthus had sent a spy to the harbor

d) she had arranged fire-signals on mountain tops from Troy to Mycenae

e) Orestes had inadvertently let fall a hint, which Clytemnestra and nobody else understood

 

5. Why does Aeschylus’ AGAMEMNON contain so many lines about the destruction wrought by the Greeks at Troy?

a) to set a tone of sin, crime, punishment, and foreboding for the death of Agamemnon in this play

b) to show military accomplishments of Argives, and show patriotism

c) to show the power of the gods who favored the Greeks

d) to prove the superiority of Greek technology over ‘barbarian’ Trojans

e) to complete the story of the Iliad

 

6. What had Clytemnestra done while Agamemnon was at Troy?

a) taken a lover

b) plotted with Aegisthus to take over Mycenae

c) made plans to kill her husband

d) sent Orestes away to a guest-friend’s house

e) all of the above

 

7. What does xenia have to do with the cause of the Trojan War?

a) Menelaus had violated xenia when he married Helen

b) Agamemnon called upon xenia when he marshaled the Greeks

c) Paris had violated the xenia of Menelaus’ house by stealing Helen from him

d) Calchas said that Artemis was angry with the Greeks’ lack of xenia at her sanctuary

e) Achilles had complained that Agamemnon was not a good xenos

 

8. What do the Furies have to do with blood?

a) they give it to the wounded, like in a transfusion

b) like bloodhounds, they smell it when it is spilled, and then hound the shedder of the blood if it was shed unjustly

c) they receive it in sacrifices, and turn it into wine

d) they turn blood into ichor for the gods

e) they claim that it makes them ‘chthonic’

 

9. Why might Orestes be called a ‘serpent son’?

a) because he slept with a serpent, who told him to avenge his father’s murder

b) because his sister gave him a snake to put in his mother’s bed

c) because Aegisthus called him ‘snake boy’ as a nickname

d) because Clytemnestra dreamed that she bore a serpent who bit her breast

e) because in Greek Orestes means ‘serpent son’

 

10. What bloody image does Cassandra describe to the Chorus of Aeschylus’ AGAMEMNON that they see, but do not understand, and what did it mean?

a) she describes the fall of Troy, which means that Mycenae will fall 

b) she describes the bloody banquet in which Atreus served Thyestes’ children, showing that there is a curse on the house that is about to be fulfilled

c) she describes the fire signals, which mean that Clytemnestra is burning to kill Agamemnon

d) she describes the eagle who kills its mate, which Clytemnestra will do to Agamemnon

e) she describes Paris carrying off Helen, which Aegisthus has done to Clytemnestra

 

11. What does Cassandra tell the Chorus of Aeschylus’ AGAMEMNON about her relationship with Apollo?

a) that she was actually his half-sister

b) that she spurned his love

c) that her father had bribed Apollo to leave her alone

d) that she sacrificed to him until she discovered he loved another

e) that when she found out that he also loved boys, she dumped him