history roman republic final exam
The final exam contain three parts: matching; identification questions of major ideas, places, events, etc.; and two essay questions Identification question responses should be a minimum of three complete sentences in length. Essay question responses must be developed with supporting facts. Note that the first essay is required; for the second essay choose ONE of four options.
Make the most appropriate match.
Question 2 (30 points)
Identify 10 of the following in two or three complete sentences (3 points each). Note: If you identify more than 10, only the first 10 will count toward your grade.
1. “veni, vidi, vici”
2. proscription
3. Tiberius Gracchus
4. Marcus Licinius Crassus
5. Mithridates VI
6. Marcus Tullius Cicero
7. Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix
8. Cincinnatus
9. equites
10. Gaius Marius (Senior)
11. Theodor Mommsen
12. Lucius Sergius Catilina
13. Marcus Portius Cato (Uticensis)
14. Jugurtha
15. Maison Carrée
16. paterfamilias
17. Titus Annius Milo
18. Annales Maximi
19. Lex Manilia
20. Lacus Curtius
Question 3 (35 points)
Piers Brendon has observed that, while history is our only guide, “all too often…students of the past succumb to the temptation to foretell the future. “However,†he notes, “the past is a map, not a compass. It charts human experience, stops at the present and gives no clear sense of direction. History does not repeat itself nor, as Arnold Toynbee would have it, does it proceed in rhythms or cycles. Events buck trends. Everything, as [Edward] Gibbon said, is subject to ‘the vicissitudes of fortune’.”
Do you agree or disagree with Brendon? What IS the point of studying history, especially ancient history? Are analogies between past and present useful? Are they dangerous? Do analogies ever completely work? In an essay of at least 300 words, formulate your own answer to these interconnected questions. Cite specific examples from the material of this course.
Question 4 (20 points)
Respond to ONE of the following questions. (250 words)
Option One:
Slavery was a fact of life in the Roman Republic. Using as much detail as possible, discuss the nature of slavery in the Republic, describing its sources, its extent and the varied forms of its operation. (20 points)
Option Two:
No modern historian will agree with Theodor Mommsen that Caesar was the leader of a “people’s party”, but it cannot be denied that many of Caesar’s measures indeed protected the ordinary people against the selfish policy of the nobles. This can easily be illustrated by pointing at Caesar’s measures on taxation and citizenship. However, was the improvement of the position of the people Caesar’s aim or just a tool to establish a strong base for a personal regime?
Make an argument for either the “aim” or the “tool” position. Provide evidence to support your position.
Option Three
Anthony Everitt has written: “The Roman constitution was a complicated contraption of levers and balances, with obsolete pieces of machinery left in place along-side modern additions. Its management called for sensitivity, imagination, and, above all, an ability to accommodate, to concede, to compromise. For centuries, these qualities among Rome’s politicians had drawn the admiration, reluctant or full-hearted, of friend and foe. Now, though, the tragic trajectory of the Gracchi exposed the Republic for what it had become, an unstable and uncreative monster.”
Explain with specific details what Everitt means about the Roman constitution and what the Gracchi did to expose its defects. (20 points)
Option Four
Conflict between plebeians and patricians, between rich and the poor, citizen and non-citizen characterized the early years of the Republic. But gradually through confrontation and compromise a greater measure of equality was attained, but were the fundamental issues ever really solved. What were the issues at the root of the Conflict of the Orders and its later manifestation the struggle between the Populares and the Optimates? (20 points)
Option Five
Mary Beard has written: “I am even more concerned than [Kenneth] Clark with the discontents and debates around the idea of civilisation, and with how that rather fragile concept is justified and defended. One of its most powerful weapons has always been ‘barbarity’: ‘we’ know that ‘we’ are civilised by contrasting ourselves with those we deem to be uncivilised, with those who do not – or cannot be trusted to – share our values. Civilisation is a process of exclusion as well as inclusion. The boundary between ‘us’ and ‘them’ may be an internal one (for much of world history the idea of a ‘civilised woman’ has been a contradiction in terms), or an external one, as the word ‘barbarian’ suggests; it was originally a derogatory and ethnocentric ancient Greek term for foreigners you could not understand, because they spoke in an incomprehensible babble: ‘bar-bar-bar .. : The inconvenient truth, of course, is that so-called ‘barbarians’ may be no more than those with a different view from ourselves of what it is to be civilised, and of what matters in human culture. In the end, one person’s barbarity is another person’s civilisation.†[Mary Beard, How Do We Look: The Body, the Divine, and the Question of Civilisation (New York 2018) 14.]
Do you agree with Mary Beard’s conclusion? Provide evidence/examples from the material for this course to support your position.
.
