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Course Information

Sample Study Guides for Western Civilization to 1500

Study Guide No. 1

  1. What impact did geography have on Ancient Greece?
  2. What characterized Homeric heroes?
  3. What does tyranny mean to the Ancient Greeks?
  4. Why is Sappho famous?
  5. What impact did the Lycurgan regime have in Sparta?
  6. What was a major result of the Persian Wars?
  7. What does the term liminal mean regarding Athenian women?
  8. Why was Philip II able to conquer Greece?
  9. What important consequence did Alexander=s conquests have?
  10. How would one describe the political history of the Hellenistic period?
  11. What was the relation between the Hellenistic cities and the monarchy?
  12. How deep was Hellenization among Eastern peoples?
  13. What does koiné mean?
  14. What was distinctive about Hellenistic culture?
  15. What factors led to the widespread rise of philosophy in the Hellenistic world?
  16. What work made Euclid famous?
  17. Why did urban women grow more prominent in Hellenistic times?
  18. What were the major consequences of the Hellenistic Age?
  19. How do the Romans compare with the Greeks as diplomats?
  20. What were the major social divisions of the Early Roman Republic?
  21. The social strength of the Plebeians derived from what force during the struggle of the Orders?
  22. What general led Carthage during the Second Punic War?
  23. What was the main feature of the Reform Program of Tiberius Gracchus?
  24. How did Gaius Marius change the nature of the Roman Army?
  25. What was the major consequence of Julius Caesar’s reforms?

Study Guide No.2

  1. As Roman Administrator, what was Pontius Pilate’s major concern?
  2. What documents provide the most important information about the Life of Jesus?
  3. What was the main source of Augustus’ power?
  4. Where was Roman imperial expansion concentrated during the reign of Augustus?
  5. What were the social products of the economic turmoil of the third century?
  6. What Roman Emperor legalized Christianity?
  7. How would one describe the overall relationship between Christians and Rome to 312 A.D.?
  8. In AListening to the Past, Chapter 6, why did the Emperor Claudius want to seat Romanized Gauls in the Senate?
  9. What was the most important ingredient in the making of Europe according to the text?
  10. What idea is central to the Petrine Doctrine?
  11. What word describes the worth of an individual in Germanic law?
  12. How did Bishop Ambrose and Pope Gelasius conceive of a well-ordered Christian society?
  13. What strengths allowed Constantinople to remain a military bulwark for centuries?
  14. How did St. Augustine view history in The City of God?
  15. What were penitential’s?
  16. What was the major purpose of the Salic Law and other Germanic law codes?
  17. After the death of Caliph Ali, Islam divided into what two groups?
  18. How do Moslems view the purpose of the state?
  19. How was royal succession often determined in Merovingian times?
  20. What does the term rex et sacerdos refer to in the Carolingian Monarchy?
  21. What were the military border regions called in the Carolingian dynasty?
  22. What did peasants owe their lords in the system of Manorialism?
  23. In current research, what is held primarily responsible for the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire?
  24. What important technological breakthrough played a major impact on feudal military order?
  25. What did the lord furnish the peasants in return for their obligations?

Study Guide No.3

  1. Who were the two major figures involved in the Investiture Controversy?
  2. What was the basis of the power of Emperor Otto I?
  3. What was the strongest county in northern France in the 10th and 11th centuries?
  4. What factor gave women higher fertility in the High Middle Ages?
  5. What name is given to the Spanish leaders’ expulsion of the Muslims from the peninsula?
  6. What groups formed the Roman curia?
  7. What was the main reason the First Crusade was successful?
  8. What avenues opened to women during the Crusades?
  9. What were the conditions and obligations of European serfs during the High Middle Ages?
  10. What factor increased the prosperity of individual peasant families the most?
  11. What developments enhanced agricultural productivity in Medieval times?
  12. What characteristics were attached to the nobility in Medieval Society?
  13. What was one major source of tensions in Medieval noble families?
  14. What kinds of power and duties did aristocratic widows possess?
  15. What was the primary source of recruitment for monasteries and convents?
  16. Who performed manual labor in medieval monasteries?
  17. To what does the term territorial lordship refer?
  18. What were the reasons priests were forbidden to attend trial by ordeal by the Fourth Lateran Council?
  19. Why did William the Conqueror have the Domesday Book compiled?
  20. What was the fundamental principle of French Royal administration?
  21. What elements composed the new international business firms of the Commercial Revolution?
  22. What major social function did towns and cities play?
  23. In the Low Countries and Italy who generally governed towns and cities?
  24. What were the characteristics of the new Dominican and Franciscan orders?
  25. What was the purpose of the Inquisition?

Study Guide No.4

1. What did monarch do to cope with the agrarian crises in the early 14th century?
2. How did the clergy behave during the Great Plague or Black Death?
3. What made the Plague more vulnerable in cities?
4. What was the economic result of the Black Death?
5. Why did some French nobles support the English King during the Hundred Years War?
6. Why did the English win the Battle of Crécy?
7. What were the beliefs of the Conciliarist Theologians?
8. Who saved France during the Hundred Years War?
9. What were the consequences of the Hundred Years War for England and France?
10. What happened to Rome during the Babylonia Captivity?
11.What did John Wyclif teach about Christianity?
12. What did the Council of Constance accomplish?
13. Who was involved in the rebellions that swept across Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries?
14. What factors account for Florentine economic vitality?
15.Where did the artistic and literary manifestations of the Italian Renaissance first appear?
16.In Renaissance society what was the official attitude toward rape?
17.What was the purpose of Italian balance-of-power diplomacy?
18.What were the central components of Italian Renaissance culture?
19.To what did Laura Cereta ascribe the inferiority of women?

20. What social group actually participated directly in Renaissance Culture?
21.According to Machiavelli, what was the sole test of good government?
22. What made up the policies of the ANew Monarchs@ in the 15th century?
23.What policies did Charles VII follow in centralizing French government?
24. How did the Tudors win the upper middle class to their side?
25. How did the Catholic Kings of Spain enhance royal authority?

Sample Essay

Political Evolution in Athens
Essay Spring 2005

The political development of Athens proceeded over more than two hundred years driven by many impulses for reform and change. Describe the political development of Athens from the time of Draco and Solon through  Pericles’ leadership up to his death at the beginning of the Peloponnesian Wars in 429 B.C. What factors motivated reformers, and to what extent was Athens a true democracy?

This essay should be written in several sections. The discussion should begin with the evolution of the Athenian political system and include the conditions, as far as we know them, at the time of  Draco’s  publication of the Laws and the social conditions prior to Solon’s reform efforts. This section should discuss Solon’s program in relation to debt and slavery, his division of Athenian society. Then the essay should address Pisistratus’s use of the common people and social changes of the sixth century as a basis for his policies against aristocratic enemies. Finally one must address Cleisthenes’ reforms of 508 B.C.

The essay should turn to the motivation for the reforms, which include Solon’s patriotism and the role of political struggles between rival leaders for power in Athens. Next the essay should consider Athens growing imperial directions following the defeat of the Persians, in particular the role of Cimon in turning the Delian League into a means of Athenian expansion and the reasons for this policy, as well as Pericles’ use of the League funds for the building program and beautification of Athens.

Finally, the essay should assess the nature of Athenian polity in term of which segments of society had a voice in political affairs, which segments did not, and which Athenians actually exercised political power.

An essay is an extended discussion, written in your own words.  Do not copy words or phrases from your textbook, or from any other book.  Copying is plagiarism and will result in a failing grade on the assignment.  The essay should be about 500-600 words, that is, about two double-spaced pages.  The essay must be passed through both a spell-checking program and also a grammar-checking program on the word processor before it is turned in.  The university network offers several different word-processing systems, which contain both spelling and grammar checking-programs.  The wise approach to doing this essay would be to use the university computer network for the essay, and to write the essay from a very spare outline, with all books, including the text, closed during the writing.  Essays, without spelling and grammar checking, or double-spaced typing, will be returned to the author for corrections, and will not be read until the corrections are made.

The essay is due in class on 3 February at class time.  The paper loses one full grade each day it is late.  Don=t be late with this essay since it counts ten percent of the course grade.

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