欧洲文化入门课后习题答案：
Division one: Greek culture and Roman culture
希腊、罗马文化
Ⅰ.Greek culture 希腊文化
1.What are the major elements in European culture?
There are two main elements ——the Greco-Roman element and the Judeo-Christian element.
2.What were the main features of ancient Greek society?
In Greek society, only adult male citizen had real power and the citizenship was a set of rights which a man inherited from his father. The economy of Athens rested on an immense amount of slave labor. Slaves worked for their masters. The exploitation was a serious social problem. The Greeks loved sports. They often took part in the contests of sports in Olympus Mount, thus Olympic Games came into being.
3.What did Homer do? Why is he important in the history of European literature?
He depicted the great Greek men who lived in the period 1200-1100B.C. and wars happening at that time. As an author of epics, he employed fine literary language to describe wars and men, even though they were dull. He stood in the peek of Greek literature and exerted a great influence on his followers.
4.Who were the outstanding dramatists of ancient Greece? What important plays did
each of them write?
Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were three outstanding dramatists of ancient Greece. Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound, Persians, Agamemnon
Sophocles: Oedipus the King, Electra, Antigone
Euripides: Andromache, Medea, Trojan Women
5.Were there historians then? Who were they? What did each of them write about? Yes, there are. They were Herodotus and Thucydides.
Herodotus wrote about the wars between Greeks and Persians. Thucydides wrote about the war between Athens and Sparta and between Athens and Syracuse.
6. Would you say that philosophy was highly developed then? Who were the major philosophers?
No, I wouldn’t. Because those philosophical ideas were only idealism or simple materialism or metaphysics. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were the major philosophers at that time.
7. Did Socrates write any book? How then do we know about him? What distinguished his philosophy?
No, he didn’t. We know Socrates chiefly through what Plato recorded of him in the famous Dialogues written by Plato. He considered that philosophy rested with the dissect of oneself and virtue was high worth of life. His method of argument, by questions and answers, was known as the dialectical method.
8. Tell some of Plato’s ideas. Why do people call him an idealist?
(1) Men have knowledge because of the existence of certain general “ideas”, like beauty, truth, and goodness. (2) We should not look at the things which are not seen: for the things which are not seen eternal. Because he emphasized the importance of “ideas” and believed that “thought”
had created the world, people call him an idealist.
9. In what important ways was Aristotle different from Plato? What are some of Aristotle’s works that are still influential today?
(1) Aristotle emphasized direct observation of nature and insisted that theory should follow fact. This is different from Plato’s reliance on subjective thinking. (2) He thought that “idea” and matter together made concrete individual realities in which he differed from Plato who held that ideas had higher reality than the political world. His significant works includes: Ethics, Politics and Rhetoric.
10. Who were some of the other philosophers active in that period? Does the word “Epicurean” in its modern sense convey the true meaning of the philosophy of the ancient Epicureans? What were their views on pleasure?
(1) They were Heracleitue, Democritus, Diogenes, Pyrrhon, Epicurus and Zeno.
(2)No, it doesn’t. The ancient Epicureans believed pleasure to be the highest worth of life, but by pleasure they meant, not sensual enjoyment but that attained by the practice of virtue. But this idea was misled by modern people, in their sense, the wor d “Epicurean” has come to mean indulgence in luxurious living.
11. Say something about Greek sculpture, pottery and architecture. What was the most famous Greek temple? Is it still there?
(1) Along with the formation of Greek civilization, Greek sculpture, pottery and architecture got many great achievements. Greeks put into works of art the things they admired and worshiped, the scientific rules they discovered. Greek art evolved from the archaic period to the classical period which marked its maturity. (2) the most famous temple was the Acropolis at Athens. (3) Yes, it is still there.
12. Give some examples to show the enormous influence of Greek culture on English literature.
Some examples:
(1) A Freudian term “Oedipus Complex” of 19th century originating from a Greek tragedy in which king Oedipus unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. (2) In the early part of the 19th century , in England alone, three young Romantic poets expressed their admiration of Greek culture in works which have them selves become classics: Byron’ s Isle of Greece, Shelley’ s Hellas and Prometheus Unbound and Keats’ s Ode on a Grecian Urn. (3) In the 20th century, there are Homeric parallels in the Irishman James Joyce’s modernist masterpiece Ulysses.
Ⅱ. Roman culture 罗马文化
1.What did the Roman have in common with the Greeks? And what was the chief
difference between them?
(1)The Romans had a lot in common with the Greeks. Both peoples had traditions rooted in the idea of the citizen-assembly, hostile to monarchy and to servility. Their religions were alike enough for most of their deities to be readily identified —Greek Zeus with Roman Jupiter, Greek Aphrodite with Roman Venus, and so on—and their myths to be fused. Their languages worked in similar ways and were ultimately related, both being members of the Indo-European language family which stretches from Bangladesh to Iceland.
(2) There was one big difference. The Romans built up a vast empire. The Greeks didn’t,
excepted for the brief moment of Alexander’s conquests, which soon disintegrated.
2.Explain Pax Romana.
In the year 27 B.C., Octavius took supreme power as emperor with the title of Augustus. Two centuries later, the Roman empire reached its greatest extent in the North and East. The emperors mainly relied on a strong army—the famous Roman Legions and an influential bureaucracy to exert their rules. Thus the Romans enjoyed a long period of peace lasting 200 years. This remarkable phenomenon in the history is known as Pax Romana.
3.What contributions did the Romans make to the rule of law?
In Roman’s earliest stage, only a number of patricians knew the customary legal procedure. When the rules were put into writing in the middle of the third century B.C. it marked a victory for the plebeians. There was further development of law under the emperors until it was codified, eventually to become the core of modern civil and commercial law in many Western countries.
4.Who were the important prose writers in ancient Rome? What does “Ciceronian”
mean? Did Cicero write that kind of rhetorical prose all the time?
<1>Marcus Tullius Cicero and Julius Caesar were two important prose writers. <2> Ciceronian means Cicero’s eloquent oratorical manner of writing, Which has had an enormous influence on the development of European prose.<3> No, he didn’t. Because Cicero appears as a different man with a different style, far less rhetorical, but colloquial and intimate.
5.Give the example of the terse style of Julius Caesar’s prose.
An example: I came, I saw, I conquered (models of succinct Latin).
6.Who was Lucretius? What did he do?
(1)Lucretius was a poet of ancient Rome.(2)He wrote the philosophical poem On the Nature of Thing to expound the ideas of Epicurus the Greek atomist.
7.What is the book for which Virgil has been famous throughout the countries? In what
ways is the book linked with the Greek past?
(1)The book was Aeneid. (2)The story was about Aeneas, one of the princes of Troy, who escaped from that burning city when it fell to the Greeks, to carry on the Trojan cause in a new place, Ro me. He didn’t go alone, but, carrying his father on his shoulders and leading his little son by the hand, a family group of three generations moved together. Thus in this way the book is linked with the Greek past.
8.Why do we say Aeneus is a truly tragic hero?
Because Aeneas had to betray the great passion of his life, his love for Dido, queen of Carthage, so that he could fulfill his historic mission.
9.What is the chief Roman achievement in architecture? Give some examples.
(1)The Romans were great engineers. They covered their world from one end to the other with
roads, bridges, aqueducts, theatres and arenas.
(2)Some examples:
A.The Pantheon: the greatest the best preserved Roman temple built in 27
B.
C..
B.Pont du Gard: it is an exceptionally well-preserved aqueduct that spans a wide valley in
southern France.
10.Why are the wall-paintings of the ancient Romans still significant to us today?
Roman painting was strongly influenced by the art of Greece. And it also had pecularities of its own. Unfortunately much of the painting no longer exists. There are, however, some wall-paintings from Pompeii and other towns near Naples. These wall-paintings include still
lives, landscape paintings and figure paintings. Among them were Lady Musician and Young Girl, the Maiden Gathering Flowers and the Landscape.
Division two: the Bible and Christianity
基督教及其《圣经》
1.What was the Hebrew’s major contribution to world civilization?
The history of the Hebrews was handed down orally from one generation to another in the form of folktales and stories, which were recorded later in the Old Testament, which still later became the first part of the Christian Bible. Thus the Hebrews made one of the greatest contributions to the world civilization.
2.Why do we say Judaism and Christianity are closely related?
Judaism and Christianity are closely related: ⑴it was the Jewish tradition which gave birth to Christianity; ⑵both originated in Palestine—the hub of migration and trade route, which led to exchange ideas over wide areas.
3.When did the great exodus take place?
Around 1300 B.C., Moses, the famous Hebrew leader, went to see the pharaoh of Egypt, telling him that Yahweh wanted the pharaoh to end Hebrew slavery and let the Hebrew leave Egypt. With this began the Exodus, which lasted forty years.
4.Who was Moses? What did he do for the Hebrews?
Moses was a famous Hebrew leader. Around 1300 B.C., Moses led the Hebrews to leave Egypt for the Promised Land. This was called the Exodus which lasted forty years. When the wandering Hebrews left the desert and entered the mountainous Sinai, Moses climbed to the top of the mountain to receive form god message, which came to be known as the Ten Commandments. He died shortly before the Hebrews arrived at their homeland.
5.What are the Ten Commandments about?
The Ten Commandment are a set of rules Moses commands all Israel to obey in the name of God: ⑴Yahweh is the only God all Israel should worship;⑵ Do not carve and serve any idol to worship; ⑶Do not take the name of God in vain; ⑷Keep the Sabbath day and labor in the other six days; ⑸Honor and respect one’s parents; ⑹Do not kill; ⑺Do not commit adultery; ⑻Do not steal; ⑼Do not bear false witness against people; ⑽Do not desire one’s neighbor’s wife, nor his house, nor his field, nor his servants, nor his livestock, nor anything else.
6.What writings make up the New Testament?
The New Testament consists of 14 books. The four accounts, which were believed to have been written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, four of Jesus’ early followers, are the first part of the New Testament and tell of the birth, teaching, death and Resurrection of Jesus. Then come: the Acts of the Apostles, a history of the early Christian movement: the Epistles, or letters to the church groups around the Mediterranean; and lastly the book of Revelation, a visionary account
of the final triumph of God’s purpose.
7.How did the relations between Christians and the Roman government change?
The early Christian were subject to persecutions by the Roman government. Jesus Christ was crucified by the Roman government. After Jesus died, his disciplines St. Peter and St. Paul suffered martyrdom under the Roman Emperor Nero about 65 A.D. Nero even burned Christians in his garden in 64 A.D. For 240 years after the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul, persecutions of Christians continued. The chief persecutions were under Nero, Domitian, Trajan, Valerian and Diocletian. Despite these persecutions, Christians continued to spread steadily over the Mediterranean region. It began to draw men and women from all classes and the attitude of the Roman government toward Christianity began to change. By 305 Diocletian gave up his effort to destroy the young religion. When ConstantineⅠ won the throne from his rivals, he believed
that God had helped him, and in 313 he issued the Edict of Milan which granted religious freedom to all and made Christianity legal. Under Constantine Christianity made great contribution of the empire. The emperors who followed ConstantineⅠcontinued pro-Christian policies. In 392 A.D., Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the empire and outlawed all other religions. Now Christianity had changed from an object of oppression to
a weapon in the hands of the ruling class to crush their opponents.
8.How did Christian monks help Western civilization survive?
The Christian monks helped western civilization survive in many ways: ⑴The Christian monks
spread Christianity to the Mediterranean region and some of them even suffered martyrdom;
⑵Some monks translated the Old Testament into Greek and St. Jerome translated the whole
Bible into Latin. Later some such as John Wycliffe and William Tyndale translated the Bible into the vernacular; ⑶In the Middle Ages, people in Western Europe were mainly divided into three classes: clergy, lords and peasants. Of these three classes, the only literate section was the clergy. The Christian monks did a lot to help preserve and transmit a large part of the traditional heritage of the western culture. They not only translated the Bible into Latin or the Vernacular but also copied or translated the ancient works into the vernacular, such as the monks in these monasteries set up by Charlemagne and Alfred the Great.
9.Why do we say the Bible has shaped Western culture more decisively than anything
else ever written?
Judeo-Christian tradition constitutes one of the two major components of European culture. The Bible which is virtually related to every phase of human life greatly influences people’s daily life, especially in the Middle Ages when almost everyone was a Christian; The Bible has great impact upon western literature. For a long period of time, the Latin Bible was accepted as the authority and Latin was official language of the Roman Catholic Church, so most Europe literature at that time was in Latin. Besides it is generally accepted that the English Bible and Shakespeare are two great reservoirs of Modern English. Furthermore, the use of Biblical themes has been a literary tradition. In fact few great English and American writers of the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th century can be read and appreciated with satisfaction without a sufficient
knowledge of the Bible; The study of the Christian teaching especially the Bible has become an important branch of knowledge—scholasticism which has been prevalent for centuries; The Bible has also influenced western philosophies and science. Thus the Bible has shaped western culture more decisively than anything else ever written.