1. (E) The Paleolithic Age, or Old Stone Age, extended from the time the first hominids appeared until about 8000 BCE. Paleolithic humans were not settled people. They acquired their food supply through foraging, or hunting and gathering. Agriculture and the domestication of animals are hallmarks of the Neolithic Age. As far as it can be determined, Paleolithic society lacked established social classes; however, recent research has cast doubt on the theory that Paleolithic societies were matriarchal.
2. (C) About 18,000 to 7,000 years ago, many Neolithic societies around the world developed agriculture. The degree to which aboriginal Australians practiced agriculture has been a recurring subject of debate for archaeologists. In general, the Australians did not engage in agriculture until the arrival of Europeans in the late 1700s. The other answer choices include some of the earliest agricultural cultures such as the Indus Valley in southern Asia, Sumer in southwestern Asia, and Egypt in northern Africa. In the Andean highlands, natives extensively cultivated the potato.
3. (B) Cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation is thermal radiation that fills the observable universe almost uniformly. It is thought to be radiation left over from an early stage in the development of the universe, and its discovery is considered a landmark test of the big bang model of the universe. In archaeology, typology classifies things according to their characteristics. Typology can measure the stages of one culture against another by comparing tools found at both archaeological sites. Paleontology can compare human remains with animal remains of the time, while paleobotany does the same thing with plants.
4. (E) Anthropologists have assumed that women were probably the first farmers because men were usually preoccupied with hunting. Men roamed far from camp to hunt and scavenge dead animals, but women seldom accompanied them on hunting expeditions. However, women were probably responsible for the “gathering” component of hunter-gatherer societies in the Paleolithic Age. Based on modern hunter-gatherer societies, women probably stayed closer to an established site to tend children and forage for edible plants and firewood nearby. However, comparisons to modern-day hunter-gatherer societies suggest that the sexual division of labor may have been relatively flexible. Men may have participated in gathering plants, firewood, and insects, and women may have caught small animals and assisted men in driving herds of large game animals off cliffs. Although women were probably the first farmers, it’s not clear whether their status increased or decreased as a result of the momentous transformation to agriculture.
5. (E) Archaeological eras are obviously imprecise and vary wildly from place to place. For example, some Neolithic cultures continue to exist today. In addition, the sequence is not necessarily true everywhere; there are areas, such as the islands of the southern Pacific, the interior of Africa, and parts of North and South America, where the peoples passed directly from the use of stone to the use of iron without an intervening age of bronze. However, there is a general chronological progression. Here is a rough chronology and approximate starting date of each era:
6. (B) Agricultural settlements arose in about 7000 BCE in many parts of the world such as eastern Asia, southwestern Asia, and Africa. Modern scholars believe these cultures probably developed agriculture independently, especially given the large distances separating early agricultural communities. Although many of these communities developed in river valleys, there are exceptions, such as the famous Neolithic settlements of Çatal Hüyük and Jericho. Agriculture tended to develop later in Mesoamerica and South America than in the eastern hemisphere.
7. (E) Somewhere between 15,000 and 30,000 years ago, humans (Paleo-Indians) crossed the Bering land bridge from Asia to North America. They followed herds of large mammals, many of which are now extinct, to hunt for food. The term land bridge probably gives an inaccurate image. The Bering Strait, the Chukchi Sea to the north, and the Bering Sea to the south are all shallow waters. The Bering land bridge was actually about 1,000 miles north to south at its widest point. Local conditions meant snowfall was light, so the land bridge was probably not covered by glaciers. Instead, it would have been mainly a grassland steppe. The disappearance date is unclear, but melting glacier water probably completely submerged the land bridge about 14,000 years ago.
8. (A) The Lascaux cave paintings, in present-day southwestern France, are estimated to be about 17,000 years old and reflect the culture of Paleolithic humans. The nearly 2,000 images consist mainly of large animals, most of which are known from fossil evidence to have lived in the area at the time. The cave was discovered in 1940. The Paleolithic era is distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools; it extends from the earliest known use of stone tools about 2.6 million years ago to the end of the Pleistocene era around 10,000 years ago.
9. (D) The Neolithic Revolution was the first agricultural revolution, when humans made the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture and settlement. Archaeological data indicate that various forms of domesticating plants and animals arose independently in several different places in the world—including the tropical and subtropical areas of southwestern and southern Asia, northern and central Africa, and Central America—from about 10,000 to 5000 BCE. Neanderthals disappeared about 30,000 years ago; tool-making capabilities and the ability to create fire are also developments from the Paleolithic Age.
10. (C) Neolithic cultures did not measure precise hours of the day. Prior to the invention of agriculture, spring and fall were migration periods. As agriculture replaced nomadic life, spring became planting time and fall became harvest time. However, preindustrial societies are usually task oriented rather than time oriented. The earliest sundials were Egyptian obelisks (c. 3500 BCE) and Babylonian shadow clocks (c. 1500 BCE). Neolithic cultures did possess tools, religious beliefs, and artwork.
11. (B) The Piltdown hoax is arguably the most famous archeological hoax of all time. Piltdown Man comprised a collection of bone fragments from a skull and jawbone that were presented as the fossilized remains of a previously unknown early human. These fragments were said to have been collected in 1912 from a gravel pit at Piltdown, England. The specimen became the subject of immediate controversy, but it was not until 1953 that it was exposed as a forgery. Piltdown Man actually consisted of the lower jawbone of an orangutan that had been deliberately combined with the skull of a fully developed modern human. Who perpetrated the hoax is still a subject of debate.
12. (A) Humans probably first evolved in Africa in the Pleistocene era, beginning about 2 million years ago. The early hominid population lived in Africa and migrated first to the Fertile Crescent and then to Europe and Asia. The Pleistocene followed the Pliocene era; the Pleistocene era dates from about 2.5 million years ago until about 10,000 BCE. The end of this era corresponds with the retreat of the last continental glacier; this is also the unofficial end of the Paleolithic Age in archaeology.
13. (B) The earliest species to be classified in the same Homo species as modern humans was Homo habilis (“handy man”). The skeleton was discovered by Louis Leakey in the early 1960s in the Olduvai Gorge in modern-day Tanzania. The specimen was found with tools he had fashioned for hunting and butchering animals. About one million years ago, Homo habilis was supplanted by an upright hominid, Homo erectus. A skull of Homo erectus was found by Richard Leakey in Kenya in 1984. Java Man and Peking Man are examples of Homo erectus. Homo sapiens did not appear until about 100,000 to 500,000 years ago.
14. (C) The Neolithic era was responsible for the first developments in the domestication of animals and plants. Therefore, it is not surprising that there was an emphasis on agricultural fertility. The other answer choices did not exist in the Neolithic era. Glyphs were developed at a later date in the river valley cultures and Mesoamerica. Iron tools were developed by the Hittites, and plows came later. A codex is a Mayan book. Aqueducts were typical of Roman culture.
15. (C) Lucy is the common name for several hundred pieces of bone representing about 40 percent of an individual Australopithecus afarensis. This hominid specimen was discovered in 1974 in Ethiopia by Donald Johanson. Lucy, named after the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” is estimated to have lived about 3.2 million years ago. Her discovery was significant because the skeleton seems to show evidence of small skull capacity (like apes) but a bipedal upright walk (like humans). This implied that bipedalism preceded an increase in brain size in human evolution. However, other findings have suggested that perhaps Australopithecus afarensis was not a direct ancestor of humans. In 1994, a new hominid (Ardi) was found, pushing back the earliest known hominid date to 4.4 million years ago.
16. (B) Geochronology is a scientific technique to measure the chronology of the earth’s history as determined by geologic events. Geochronology can be used to determine the age of ancient cultures by counting the layers created by melts of water from a receding ice sheet. Dendrochronology measures climatic change by viewing the thickness in the layers in branches and around tree trunks. Carbon 14 dating tests the decay of a radioactive isotope of carbon found in artifacts. Aquachronology is a made-up term.
17. (E) In 1856, laborers working in a limestone quarry in a cave in the Neander Valley in Germany dug out the first Neanderthal bones. Neanderthals were initially considered dimwitted, brutish cavemen. However, studies of their fossils show that they walked upright like modern humans; the slouched caricature was caused by an inaccurate reconstruction of Neanderthal remains in the early 1900s. The first Neanderthal traits appeared in Europe somewhere between 600,000 to 350,000 years ago. By 130,000 years ago, complete Neanderthal characteristics had appeared. These characteristics disappeared in Asia by 50,000 years ago and in Europe by about 30,000 years ago. Neanderthals and Homo sapiens sapiens coexisted with modern humans for at least 10,000 years; the nature of their relationship has been the subject of much scholarly debate.
18. (D) The Iron Age occurred after the Bronze Age. It was characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel, especially for cutting tools and weapons. The use of iron coincided with other changes in society, including differing agricultural practices, religious beliefs, and artistic styles. The Iron Age is dated from approximately 2500 BCE to 500 CE. This age left many artifacts, because iron erodes slowly.
19. (C) The exact time of the first appearance of a distinct species, Homo sapiens, is disputed. Estimates range from 500,000 to 100,000 years ago. The oldest Homo sapiens fossil is approximately 400,000 years old, an occipital bone from the base of a skull found in Hungary. Although the skull had a crest at the outer neckline like Homo erectus, the shape was otherwise essentially modern. Homo sapiens first migrated from their homeland in Africa into southwestern Asia and Europe about 40,000 BCE.
20. (E) The Neolithic Revolution transformed the small, mobile groups of hunter-gatherers that had dominated human history into sedentary societies based in built-up villages. This process presumed the existence of a steady food supply if not a food surplus. The Neolithic Revolution provided the basis for concentrated, high-population-density settlements and a specialized, complex division of labor.
21. (A) The domestication of sheep, pigs, and goats took place approximately between 10,000 and 8000 BCE. It is unknown who invented the wheel and when it was invented; some archaeologists believe it was about 8000 BCE in Asia. However, clear evidence of wheeled vehicles does not appear until about 3500 BCE, almost simultaneously in Mesopotamia, northern Caucasus, and central Europe. Venus figurines are prehistoric statuettes of women portrayed with similar physical attributes from the Upper Paleolithic era. They are found mainly in Europe but also in Eurasia. Most of them date from about 25,000 BCE, although some are even older.
22. (E) The date humans achieved fire-making capability is disputed. The earliest evidence suggests that fire was used in Africa 1.5 million years ago. The problem of when humans first developed the capacity to make fire instead of “capturing” natural fires is probably unsolvable; the earliest fire-making technology would have been based on friction created by perishable wood. The evidence seems to imply that between 500,000 and 1 million years ago, humans had figured out how to make and transport fire. There is considerable evidence that they used fire as a technological instrument for firing clay, heat-treating flint, and “storing” heat in stones to roast or boil food between 20,000 and 60,000 years ago. All of these examples greatly predate the Neolithic Revolution.
23. (D) Çatal Hüyük was a large Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement in present-day southern Turkey. It existed from about 7500 to 5700 BCE and is the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site to date. The archaeological remains of Çatal Hüyük reveal how Neolithic communities built permanent housing, diverted streams for crops, and engaged in trade. The prehistoric mound settlements were abandoned before the Bronze Age. Neolithic culture may date as far back as about 10,700 to 9400 BCE in Tell Qaramel in northern Syria. However, the widely accepted beginning of the Neolithic culture is considered to be in Jericho at about 9500 BCE. Neither site is as well preserved as Çatal Hüyük.
24. (B) Jericho is a city located near the Jordan River. As of 2012, it is in the West Bank of the Palestinian territories. Situated below sea level about 10 miles north of the Dead Sea, Jericho is often cited as the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Plentiful springs in and around the city have made it a desirable site for human habitation for thousands of years. Archaeologists have discovered the remains of more than 20 successive settlements in Jericho, the first dating to about 9000 BCE. Around that time, the town had grown to more than 70 dwellings and was home to more than 1,000 people. The most striking aspect of this early town was a massive stone wall, probably used for defense against floods as much as people.
25. (C) Bronze is a metal alloy made mainly of copper with a little tin as the main additive. Hard and brittle, it was extremely important in ancient times. The discovery of bronze allowed people to create improved metal objects. Tools, weapons, armor, and various building materials made of bronze were harder and more durable than those made of stone and copper. The change was so dramatic that the alloy gave its name to the time period known as the Bronze Age. The earliest tin-alloy bronzes date to the late fourth millennium BCE in present-day Iran, Iraq, and China.
26. (A) The earliest cities developed in Mesopotamia during the Bronze Age from approximately 4000 to 1000 BCE. An organizational system became necessary to maintain the intricate network of canals that the Mesopotamians had built to irrigate farmlands. The people developed a political unit known as the city-state, in which the urban area exercised political and economic control over the outlying agricultural areas. Law codes, trade routes, and ceremonial centers resulted from control of irrigation. (Mediterranean polyculture is associated with Minoan Crete, c. 2200–1400 BCE.)
27. (B) Neo-Assyria was an ancient empire of western Asia. It developed around the city of Ashur on the upper Tigris River and south of the later capital, Nineveh. The neo-Assyrian Empire began in 934 BCE and ended in 608 BCE. Assyrians were masters of polychrome, carved stone relief used to decorate imperial monuments. The minutely detailed reliefs often concern royal affairs such as hunting and war making. Minutely detailed human figures are depicted in triumphal scenes of sieges, battles, and individual combat. The Assyrians were not good administrators and were harsh rulers of the people they conquered. They often deported subject peoples from their homelands to work on building projects in Assyria. The Assyrians established a library at Nineveh and spread Sumerian culture throughout the area.
28. (E) The Epic of Gilgamesh is an example of epic poetry from Mesopotamia and is one of the earliest known works of literature. Scholars believe that it originated as a series of Sumerian legends and poems about Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk. These were probably combined into a longer Akkadian epic at a much later date. The most complete version is preserved on 12 clay tablets from the library of the seventh century BCE Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. The Epic of Gilgamesh contains a Sumerian account of the flood similar to that of the Hebrews’ Genesis account.
29. (A) At the battle of Megiddo, Pharaoh Thutmose III defeated the king of Kadesh, who ruled over Canaan-Syria and Palestine. The battle was the first to be reported by eyewitnesses in relatively reliable detail. Thutmose III’s victory reestablished Egyptian dominance in Palestine and began the centuries of Egypt’s greatest expansion. All details of the battle come from Egyptian sources, especially hieroglyphic writings at Karnak and Thebes. The other answer choices all incorrectly mix kings with nations, empires, or city-states.
30. (D) The first purely phonetic alphabet was invented by the Phoenicians sometime before 1050 BCE. This alphabet, in which a single letter stood for only one sound in the language, proved more efficient than pictographic scripts. It gradually replaced writing systems such as cuneiform, hieroglyphics, and Linear B and became the basis for the Greek, Roman, and modern alphabets.
31. (E) Sumer was a collection of city-states around the lower Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in present-day southern Iraq. Each of these cities had individual rulers, but as early as the middle of the fourth millennium BCE, the leader of the dominant city-state was considered the king of the region. Egypt was located on the Mediterranean; the Yellow River valley culture was found in China; the Nubian culture was located close to the Red Sea; and the Indus Valley culture was near the Arabian Sea.
32. (C) Religion was extremely important in ancient Mesopotamian society; the priest or priestess of a city’s main deity enjoyed extremely high status. Perhaps the most important duty of a Mediterranean priest was to discover the will of the gods through divination. The priest would study natural signs by tracking the patterns of the stars, interpreting dreams, and examining animal entrails. The priest’s proclamations helped the ancient Mesopotamian people decide when and how to please the gods. Ma’at was an Egyptian concept that can be roughly translated as “justice”; ancient Egyptians believed that it was a divine force possessed by their rulers.
33. (E) At the battle of Carchemish (c. 605 BCE), the neo-Babylonian army—led by Nebuchadnezzar II—smashed the combined forces of Egypt and neo-Assyria. As a result, neo-Assyria ceased to exist as an independent power, and Egypt retreated and was no longer a significant force in Asia. Neo-Babylonia reached its economic peak after the battle and became the dominant military power in the region until its defeat at the hands of Cyrus the Persian at the battle of Opis in 539 BCE.
34. (B) The Phoenicians settled along the Mediterranean coast in present-day Lebanon in about 2000 BCE. They did not adopt Hebrew monotheism, although they traded with the Hebrews, especially in cedar. The Phoenicians are famous for their alphabet, which came to the Romans via the Greeks. They were great traders, producing purple dye for export and making textile fabrics from wool and linen yarn. Glass was probably first created around 3000 BCE; Egyptian glass beads date back to about 2500 BCE. The Phoenicians imported glassmaking techniques from the Egyptians but added improvements of their own and helped develop it as an export item.
35. (A) Religion played an important part in the lives of Egyptians. Egyptian religion was polytheistic, except during the reign of Akhenaton. The Egyptians had as many as 2,000 gods. Some, such as Amun, were worshipped throughout the whole country, while others were worshipped only in specific locations. Religious authority was a crucial element in validating the power of the king. Elaborate tombs reveal the ancient Egyptians’ strong belief in an afterlife. Egypt is now primarily Islamic, which is a strongly monotheistic religion.
36. (B) Sumerian city dwellers first invented the technology of writing in a script called cuneiform to record business transactions and financial accounts. Around the fourth millennium BCE, trade and administration became too complex for people to remember, and writing became a more dependable method of recording and presenting transactions in a permanent form. Although professional scribes first used writing mainly for business purposes, it also became useful for recording religious beliefs and traditional stories and for keeping genealogical records. Writing made literature an important cultural element for the first time. About 2300 BCE, the Akkadian princess Enheduanna composed the oldest known written poetry, establishing a tradition of royal Mesopotamian woman writers.
37. (E) The Hittites established a kingdom in north-central Anatolia around the 18th century BCE. They were one of the first groups to smelt iron and used many iron tools and weapons. This helped the Hittite Empire reach its height around the 14th century BCE. At that point, it covered a large part of Anatolia, northwestern Syria, and upper Mesopotamia. In warfare, the Hittites made particularly successful use of chariots. After about 1200 BCE, the Hittite Empire disintegrated into independent neo-Hittite city-states.
38. (D) Saul (c. 1079–1007 BCE) was the first king of the united kingdom of Israel. His story is told in the biblical book of Samuel. Before the united monarchy, the Hebrew tribes lived as a confederation under informal leaders known as judges. In about 1020 BCE, under threat of invasion, the Hebrew tribes united to form the kingdom of Israel. Samuel, a judge, anointed Saul as the first king, although it was David—Saul’s successor—who created a powerful monarchy.
39. (D) The Code of Hammurabi, compiled about 1700 BCE, is one of the earliest known legal codifications. It recorded the king’s decisions in commercial disputes and crimes. This code also tried to protect less powerful members of Babylonian society; however, it is divided into categories of free persons, commoners, and slaves. Many laws expressed the king’s view of justice; in everyday life, people determined most cases by their own judgment.
40. (E) The Hebrew Bible established a new kind of religion based on a single deity who made a series of formal and informal covenants with the Hebrews. These covenants guaranteed that the Hebrews would receive protection if they worshipped only God and lived by God’s laws. However, the choice to obey those laws is not deterministic; it is instead left up to the free will of society (the collective of God’s people) and each person within it.
41. (A) One of the best-known 18th-Dynasty pharaohs is Amenhotep IV (d. c. 1336 BCE), who changed his name to Akhenaton in honor of the god Aten. Akhenaton’s exclusive worship of Aten is often considered to be an example of monotheism. Under Akhenaton’s 17-year reign, Egyptian art flourished. However, his changes to traditional religion were not accepted by most Egyptians, and after his death, traditional religious practice was restored. When later rulers founded a new dynasty, they tried to discredit Akhenaton and his immediate successors, referring to Akhenaton as “the enemy” in archival records.
42. (D) In 721 BCE, the neo-Assyrian army captured the Israelite capital at Samaria and carried the citizens of the northern kingdom away to captivity. In Jewish tradition, these people are known as the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The neo-Assyrian victory left Judah, the southern kingdom with its capital at Jerusalem, as the only independent Hebrew kingdom. About 688 BCE, Jerusalem was besieged by a neo-Assyrian army under Sennacherib. The results of this siege are not clear, because both sides claimed victory. However, the kingdom of Judah did not fall until Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the city and the First Temple in about 597 BCE. Approximately 15 years before, the Medes (an Iranian people) and the Chaldeans (a Semitic people who had driven the Assyrians from Babylonia) had overthrown the neo-Assyrian Empire by destroying the capital at Nineveh.
43. (E) The kingdom of Kush was an ancient Nubian state with its center at the meeting place of the Blue Nile and White Nile in present-day Sudan. Its capital was originally Napata. After King Kashta invaded Egypt in the eighth century BCE, the Kushite kings ruled as pharaohs of the 25th Dynasty of Egypt for a century, until they were expelled in 656 BCE. Around 600 BCE, the Kushite capital was moved to Meroë. This site contains more than 200 pyramids in three groups. They are identified as Nubian pyramids because of their distinctive size and proportions.
44. (C) The metallurgical technology that developed during the Bronze Age indirectly led to the creation of the first empire. The search for bronze, lead, silver, and gold led King Sargon of Akkad to use force to take over access to these ores. In 2200 BCE, Sargon initiated a series of conquests that created an Akkadian empire with secure trade routes. Supplies of wood and metals could be floated safely down the Euphrates to Akkad.
45. (A) Although ancient Egypt had a very structured social hierarchy, men and women possessed relatively equal legal rights; women in ancient Egypt had more rights than did women in other ancient cultures. For example, an Egyptian woman could not be forced into marriage. Women were free to work outside the home or run a business if they desired. They could own, buy, and sell property. They could make wills and leave their personal goods to whomever they chose, including their daughters. If a woman was unhappy with her marriage, she could get a divorce and then remarry someone else or remain single.
46. (C) Ma’at can be roughly translated as “truth” or “justice.” Egyptians believed it was a divine force possessed by Egyptian kings or pharaohs. Their rule on earth represented the supernatural eternal force that created harmony and stability in human life. A king who ruled according to ma’at ensured the annual flooding of the Nile.
47. (D) One of the earliest recorded peace treaties was concluded between the Hittite and Egyptian Empires after the battle of Kadesh (c. 1274 BCE). The peace treaty was recorded in two versions: one in Egyptian hieroglyphics and the other in Akkadian, using cuneiform script; the latter version is currently in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum. Although the majority of the text is identical, the Hittite version claims that the Egyptians came suing for peace, while the Egyptian version claims the reverse. This treaty is considered so important in the field of international relations that a reproduction of it hangs in the United Nations’ headquarters.
48. (C) In the 1600s BCE (18th Dynasty–New Kingdom), Queen Hatshepsut proclaimed herself a female king and became co-ruler with her stepson after her husband’s death. Hatshepsut commissioned hundreds of construction projects in both Upper and Lower Egypt. Her most famous building was the lavish complex of Deir el Bahri near Thebes, where a cult was established after her death to worship her as a god. She is generally regarded as one of the most successful pharaohs, reigning longer than any other woman of an indigenous Egyptian dynasty. The other answer choices are less important historical or mythical female pharaohs.
49. (D) The neo-Babylonian Empire lasted from about 626 to 539 BCE. At the battle of Carchemish, fought in about 605 BCE, the neo-Babylonians drove the Egyptians out of Syria. Neo-Babylonian rulers pursued a very conservative cultural policy but were also famous for their advances in astronomy and mathematics. The astonishing Ishtar Gate was a gate of the inner city of Babylon, constructed about 575 BCE by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II. It was made of blue glazed tiles with alternating rows of low-relief dragons and bulls (aurochs). A reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate was built at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, Germany.
50. (E) The empire of Akkad collapsed around 2200 BCE, within about 200 years of its founding. The cause was an invasion of people from the Zagros Mountains known as the Gutians. Scholars know little about the Gutian period; cuneiform sources suggest that the Gutians did not maintain irrigation systems, written records, or public safety. A dark period of high grain prices and famine followed. Despite their military success, the Gutians did not assimilate Sumerian lands into a large kingdom. Akkadian poetry explained both the rise and the fall of the Akkadian Empire as the will of the gods.
51. (A) King Hammurabi’s law code was written about 1700 BCE because of the increase in property ownership and private commerce. The Code of Hammurabi is one of the earliest known legal codifications that has been preserved. Hammurabi’s code divided society into hierarchical categories but tried to protect less powerful citizens from exploitation. Hammurabi considered this role to be part of a king’s sacred duty.
52. (D) The New Kingdom of Egypt dated from about 1567 to 1070 BCE, a time period that covered the 18th, 19th, and 20th Dynasties. The New Kingdom was ancient Egypt’s most prosperous time and marked the peak of its power. The warrior-pharaohs of this period rebuilt central authority and engaged in foreign wars. The 18th Dynasty included some of Egypt’s most famous pharaohs including Ahmose I, Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Amenhotep II, Akhenaton, and Tutankhamen. The later part of this period, under the 19th and 20th Dynasties (c. 1292–1069 BCE) is also known as the Ramesside period after the 11 pharaohs who took the name of Ramses. The New Kingdom was followed by the Third Intermediate Period (c. 1070–664 BCE).
53. (D) The neo-Assyrian’s harshness caused rebellions from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean. The empire, whose power had been feared for centuries, crumbled astonishingly quickly after the death of Ashurbanipal in 627 BCE. In the seventh century BCE, the Medes and the Chaldeans combined forces to invade the weakened kingdom. In 612 BCE, they destroyed Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, after a long siege followed by house-to-house fighting. There was still some resistance, but the Assyrians and Egyptians met a final defeat at Carchemish in about 605 BCE. The giddy excitement caused by the overthrow of Assyria by people long subjected to its yoke is captured brilliantly in the biblical book of Nahum. Nahum, a minor Jewish prophet, writes of the assault and sack of Nineveh in ecstatic language.
54. (D) Indo-European languages comprise a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Anatolia, Europe, southern Asia, and the Iranian plateau. Indo-European has been written since the Bronze Age in the case of the Anatolian languages, especially Hittite. Indo-European languages are currently spoken by almost three billion native speakers, the largest number for any language family. Some Indo-European languages include Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, German, French, Italian, Punjabi, and Urdu.
55. (B) King Menes was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the early dynastic period and is credited with uniting Upper and Lower Egypt. He is therefore considered the founder of the first dynasty. Menes is almost never mentioned in the archaeological record. Yet there is a comparative wealth of evidence regarding Narmer, a person also credited by posterity with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. This has resulted in a theory identifying Menes with Narmer.
56. (D) The Hyksos were a Semitic people from the Syria-Palestine region who took over the eastern Nile delta during the 12th Dynasty. This ended the Middle Kingdom (c. 2050–1786 BCE) and began the Second Intermediate Period of ancient Egypt. The Hyksos introduced new technologies such as bronze making to Egypt, as well as horses, war chariots, and olive trees. It is not clear whether the Hyksos invaded Egypt forcibly or migrated there peacefully.
57. (A) The first five books of the Hebrew Bible are called the Pentateuch, or Torah. These books told the history of the Hebrew people, both mythical and historical. They also declared the religious and moral codes the Hebrews were supposed to follow. These codes were similar to many Mesopotamian law codes, but they applied equally to all Hebrew people, regardless of social class.
58. (D) The Euphrates and Tigris form the basis of the major river system of southwestern Asia. Both rivers have their sources within 50 miles of each other in present-day eastern Turkey, and both travel southeast through northern Syria and Iraq to the head of the Persian Gulf. The total length of the Euphrates, the more western of the two, is about 1,740 miles; the Tigris is about 1,150 miles in length. Baghdad, the capital of present-day Iraq, stands on the banks of the Tigris. In ancient times, many great Mesopotamian cities— including Nineveh, Ctesiphon, and Seleucia—stood on or very near the Tigris.
59. (C) The neo-Assyrian Empire began in 934 BCE and ended in 608 BCE, when it was conquered by the Chaldeans and other Babylonians. It was replaced by the neo-Babylonian Empire, which lasted from about 626 to 539 BCE, when this empire was destroyed by the Persians. This Persian Empire is known as the Achaemenid Empire and lasted from about 550 to 330 BCE. It would eventually control Egypt and stretch from the Indus Valley to Thrace and Macedonia on the northeastern border of Greece. The Achaemenid Empire is covered in Chapter 3.
60. (E) By 2500 BCE, the cities of Sumeria personified the end of Neolithic (New Stone Age) culture. They were the first to practice intensive, year-round agriculture, including large-scale cultivation of land, monocropping, organized irrigation, and the use of a specialized labor force. A surplus of storable food allowed people to settle in one place instead of migrating after grazing land. Sumer was also the site of early developments in writing, especially cuneiform. This script used a mixture of phonetic symbols and pictographs expressed by wedge-shaped marks. Ziggurats are the Mesopotamian equivalent of the Egyptian pyramids; large, artificial, square mountains of stone in the form of a terraced step pyramid of successively receding stories or levels. It is unclear why ziggurats were built or how they were used, but they were constructed by the Sumerians, Babylonians, Akkadians, and Assyrians until the 17th century BCE. (Ashur was the chief god of the neo-Assyrian Empire.)
61. (A) Minoan Crete flourished from about 2200 to 1400 BCE. The Minoans developed sophisticated crafts, elaborate architecture, and an extensive trade system. The general population lived clustered around the palaces and sprawling homes of the rulers. The palaces were the center of civil life as well as distribution centers for goods. Minoans developed their own script, known as Linear A. They also had an advanced agricultural system, known as Mediterranean polyculture, that enabled them to produce an agricultural surplus.
62. (D) The Minoans frequently traded with the Mycenaeans and, through these interactions, passed on aspects of their culture. Both the Minoans and the Mycenaeans engaged in maritime trade, which led to economic prosperity. Both cultures produced a written language; the Mycenaeans developed pictographic scrip called Linear B that was based on the Minoan Linear A. The Mycenaean burial chamber, called a tholos, contains architectural patterns similar to those in Minoan tombs. However, the chief deities of Mycenae were gods of war, and men were often buried with their weapons and armor. Minoan artifacts seem to show a lack of military weapons or fortified city walls.
63. (A) The philosopher Socrates (469–399 BCE) is considered one of the most famous philosophers in world history. All information about him is secondhand, most of it from the writings of Plato, his equally famous student. In Plato’s The Apology, he presents an account of Socrates’s defense at his trial for impiety in 399 BCE. Although Socrates believed in acquiring knowledge through asking questions, he rarely took a definitive position. In fact, in The Apology, Socrates claims to know nothing at all except that he knows nothing. Socrates and Plato refer to this method of constant questioning as elenchus, which means something like “cross-examination.” The elenchus is the basis of many of Plato’s most famous dialogues involving Socrates. The idea developed into the dialectic, the idea that truth can only be pursued by questioning and conflict with opposing ideas. Most Athenians thought Socrates was a Sophist, because he seemed to tear down every ethical position without offering many constructive alternatives of his own.
64. (C) Zoroastrianism, once one of the world’s largest religions, was founded in Persia. It is a religion and philosophy based on the teachings of the prophet Zoroaster (also known as Zarathustra), who lived sometime between 1750 and 500 BCE (most scholars place him in about the 11th or 10th century BCE). Some form of Zoroastrianism was the state religion of many Iranian people for centuries. It is a dualistic religion; good and evil are believed to have distinct sources. The most important religious texts are known as the Avesta. The religion collapsed with the triumph of Islam after 700 CE. However, small communities continue to exist; one 2004 estimate placed the number of Zoroastrians worldwide between 145,000 and 210,000.
65. (E) The Persians decisively defeated the neo-Babylonians at the battle of Opis (539 BCE). The Persian army was led by Cyrus the Great, and the Babylonians were led by Nabonidus. At the time, Babylonia was the last major power in western Asia that was not under Persian control. As a result of his victory, Cyrus was proclaimed king of Babylonia. This incorporated the Babylonian Empire into the Persian Empire, making the latter the greatest in the world.
66. (A) The Achaemenid Empire, also known as the Persian Empire, lasted from about 550 to 330 BCE. It eventually expanded to rule over almost one million square miles, the largest empire the world had yet seen. At the height of its power, the Achaemenid Empire spanned Asia, Africa, and Europe, and it included present-day Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, parts of central Asia, Anatolia, Thrace, Macedonia, Iraq, northern Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and all significant population centers of ancient Egypt. The empire was named after its first official monarch, Achaemenes.
67. (D) The most dramatic example of political equality in a Greek city-state was the practice that allowed all free, adult male citizens to share in government. They did this by attending and voting in a political assembly where the laws and policies of the community were ratified. Women in many city-states had certain protections under the law and were counted as citizens legally, socially, and religiously. However, they were barred from participation in politics because men claimed that female judgment was inferior to male judgment. Regulations governing female sexual behavior and control of property were also stricter than those for men. But women citizens had legal protection against being kidnapped and sold into slavery, and they could use the courts for property disputes, although they usually had to have a man speak for them. Women could control property in fifth-century Athens through inheritance and dowry. However, Greek society was paternalistic. Before her marriage, a woman’s father served as her legal guardian; after marriage, her husband assumed the same role.
68. (B) Only Athenian citizens voted directly on all issues before the city-state, and only free men over age 20 who had completed military training were considered citizens. The Athenian courts used juries with judges whose decisions were subject to appeal. Athens had an assembly, not a chief executive.
69. (B) The groundbreaking Histories of Herodotus of Halicarnassus (c. 485–425 BCE) attempted to explain the Greco-Persian wars as a clash between differing worldviews and cultures. This book was unique for its wide geographical scope, relatively critical approach to evidence, and lively narrative. Herodotus was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically and to test their accuracy at least partially; by Roman times, he was called the “father of history.” He is known for his digressions; for example, the whole of Book II is one enormous digression on the geography, customs, and early history of Egypt.
70. (C) Darius I (550–486 BCE) ruled the Persian Empire at its peak, when it controlled Egypt and parts of Greece. Darius greatly extended Persian power, advancing as far eastward as the Indus Valley and westward to Thrace. He organized this vast territory into provinces and then assigned taxes payable in the medium best suited to each region’s economy, whether precious metals, grain, horses, or slaves. He also required each region to send soldiers to man his royal army. A network of roads and a courier system aided communication and the movement of the army among the distant provinces. Darius was a Zoroastrian, but he generally allowed his subjects to worship as they pleased as long as they remained peaceful. Darius also sponsored large construction projects in Susa (the capital of the Persian Empire), Babylon, Egypt, Pasargadae, and Persepolis.
71. (B) Solon (c. 638–558 BCE) was a politician and poet who was appointed magistrate of Athens in 594 BCE. He is remembered for his attempts at reform in archaic Athens. He canceled the debts of the poor and created a four-part ranking of citizens by wealth to balance political power between rich and poor. Solon also created the Council of 400, chosen by lottery, which would decide the issues to be discussed in the general assembly. He reformed the judicial system, allowing any male citizen to bring a charge on behalf of any victim and to appeal the case to the assembly if necessary. To balance these judicial reforms, Solon granted broader powers to the Areopagus, a council consisting of former archons that judged the most serious cases. Solon’s reforms failed in the short term, yet he is often credited with laying the foundations for Athenian democracy.
72. (C) After Athens’s defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404 BCE, Sparta became the dominant power among the Greek city-states. Spartan rule was extremely dictatorial, and other city-states resented Spartan domination. At Leuctra in 371 BCE, 6,000 Theban hoplites and 1,500 cavalry defeated 10,000 Spartan hoplites. Some military historians claim that this is the first battle in which tactics, rather than mere strength or luck, played a part. The battle altered the Greek balance of power, as Sparta was reduced to a second-rate city-state. Thebes’s supremacy in Greece was short-lived, and it soon fell to the Macedonians led by Philip II.
73. (D) The Greeks were Indo-European speakers whose ancestors moved into the region by 8000 BCE. Mycenaean Greece (c. 1800–1000 BCE) takes its name from the hilltop of Mycenae in the Peloponnese peninsula, which had a fortified settlement dominated by a palace and dotted with rich tombs. The Mycenaeans engaged in farming and maritime trade. Their language, art, and buildings show a close relationship with the Minoan culture of Crete. Unlike the relatively peaceful Minoans, however, Mycenaean culture was dominated by a warrior aristocracy and spread through conquest. Linear B tablets found in Cretan palaces reveal that the Mycenaeans eventually took control of Crete about 1400 BCE.
74. (D) After the fall of the Mycenaean culture (c. 1000 BCE), Greek society entered a period of poverty and population decline that is sometimes called the Dark Ages. Greeks cultivated less land, lost their knowledge of writing, and created no great works of art or architecture. However, herding animals became more common, and the population became more mobile. Trade did not disappear, and it eventually brought new iron technology as well as exposure to the Phoenician alphabet and Asian art and fine goods.
75. (A) Aristophanes (c. 450–385 BCE) was the greatest writer of the Old Comedy that flourished in Athens in the fifth century BCE. He wrote at least 36 comedies, of which 11 still exist. Aristophanes used many forms of comedy, from slapstick to satire. He was noted for making fun of snobbishness and arrogance in politics, social life, and literature. Many of his plays continue to be performed today, including The Clouds (423 BCE), Lysistrata (411 BCE), and The Frogs (405 BCE). In The Clouds, a dishonest farmer tries to convince Socrates to give him a sophistic education to avoid paying his debts. Lysistrata tells the story of how the women of Greece stop the Peloponnesian War by banding together and refusing to sleep with their husbands until they have made peace. In The Frogs, Dionysus, the patron god of Athenian drama, descends to Hades to bring Euripides back and ends up refereeing a poetic dispute between Euripides and Aeschylus. Phrynichus (fl. 500 BCE) was one of the earliest of the Greek tragedians and is sometimes regarded as the founder of Greek tragedy.
76. (C) Hesiod was a Greek poet who lived between 750 and 650 BCE. Hesiod and Homer are the earliest Greek poets whose work has survived, and they are often paired together. Hesiod’s two most famous works— Theogony and Works and Days— are a major source of Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought, and astronomy. In Theogony (Genealogy of the Gods), Hesiod describes the birth of the gods from the union of primeval Chaos and Earth. For Hesiod, the life of the gods, like that of humans, was filled with sorrow, struggle, and violence. Works and Days includes the famous description of the five “Ages of Man”; advocates a life of honest labor; and attacks idleness, unjust judges, and usury.
77. (B) Pre-Socratic philosophers developed new explanations for the human world and its relationship to the gods. Philosophers such as Thales, Anaximander, Anaxagoras, and Heraclitus were from the region of Ionia on the western coast of present-day Turkey. These Ionian philosophers theorized that the universe was not arbitrary but instead based on natural laws. Most of them believed that although matter can change from one form to another, all matter has something in common that does not change. They did not agree what it was that all things had in common. Thales thought it was water; Anaximenes, air; and Heraclitus, fire. None of them experimented to find out. They are noteworthy for using abstract reasoning rather than religion or mythology to explain themselves. In this way, the Ionian school pioneered rationalism, the idea that a person could support an argument through evidence and logic.
78. (C) Ancient Greek city-states such as Athens, Sparta, and Thebes celebrated love between men as a guarantee of military efficiency and civic freedom. Male love was a source of inspiration in art and poetry, applauded in theaters and assemblies, and praised by philosophers like Plato. Sappho, a female poet, wrote about passion and love involving both genders. The word lesbian derives from Lesbos, the island of her birth, while her name is the origin of the adjective sapphic (meaning “relating to lesbianism”). In Plato’s Symposium, all the major characters assume that serious love will be between men, generally the love of an older man for an adolescent youth. The older man’s role is to educate, protect, love, and provide a role model for his lover; the man’s reward lies in his lover’s beauty, youth, and promise. According to theorist Michel Foucault, the ancient Greeks did not think of sexual orientation as a form of social identity. Acts, not people, were described as homosexual. However, some scholars believe that homosexual relationships were common only among the aristocracy and not widely practiced by the common people. Nonetheless, male love in ancient Greece was often a crucial element in war and politics, and it had a major impact on art, literature, and philosophy.
79. (D) The geography of Greece made sea travel extremely convenient. When Greek men needed or wanted more land, they boarded ships for foreign lands. Soon, Greeks had settled throughout the Mediterranean, negotiating for or kidnapping wives in areas they settled. By 580 BCE, Greeks had settled in present-day Spain, southern France, southern Italy and Sicily, North Africa, and the Black Sea coast. This process is usually called Greek colonization. It increased communication and trade among Mediterranean peoples and spread Greek culture and politics. Greek settlements in southern Italy and Sicily became so large that the region was called Magna Graecia (“Great Greece”). The Greek culture of these colonists, who began arriving in the eighth century BCE, had a lasting effect on Italy, particularly on the culture of ancient Rome. Greece consisted of disparate city-states even after colonization (c. 800–400 BCE) expanded its borders and culture.
80. (B) In 490 BCE, the Persians had numerical superiority over the Athenian army at Marathon (no Spartans were present). However, the Athenian hoplites charged the Persians and engaged them in hand-to-hand fighting, neutralizing the Persian archers, the most effective part of the Persian infantry. The defeat of Persia temporarily stopped a major invasion of Europe. The Greek army was based on the heavily armed Greek hoplite—an infantryman with spear, armor, and discipline. The Greek military formation, the phalanx, would dominate the battlefield until the Roman Empire modified it to the cohort. However, the Greek victory at Marathon was not decisive; 10 years later, an even larger Persian invasion would be defeated on sea at Salamis and on land at Plataea.
81. (B) Ancient Greece was located on Aegean islands, the Peloponnesian peninsula, and the southern Balkan peninsula. Although language and religion united the Greek peoples, the mountainous terrain isolated the city-states. This resulted in competition and made it difficult to create a unified central government. Greece’s geography also restricted agriculture, which limited the size of each city-state’s population. Barley, grapes, and olives were the most important crops. Annual rainfall could be extremely erratic, making farming a risky business. In most areas, flat land was scarce, limiting the large-scale raising of cattle and horses.
82. (A) In male-dominated ancient Greece, bearing male children brought special honors to a woman, because sons meant security for parents. Sons could appear in court to advocate for their parents in lawsuits, and Athenian law required sons to support elderly parents. Greek men worried obsessively about the paternity of their children, because citizenship defined the political structure of the city-state and even a man’s personal freedom. Male children were not automatically assumed to be legitimate, but neither were female children regularly sold into slavery. Women were counted as citizens legally, socially, and religiously; however, they were barred from participating in politics. In 451 BCE, Pericles sponsored a law making citizenship more exclusive by conferring it only on children whose mother and father were Athenian by birth. Before this, even if Athenian men had married foreign women, they could still pass citizenship on to their children.
83. (B) The Peloponnesian League is a modern name for Sparta and its allies from about the sixth century to the fourth century BCE. By about 500 BCE, Sparta had become the most powerful state in the Peloponnesian peninsula. It acquired allies such as Corinth, Elis, and Tegea; sometimes they joined with Sparta voluntarily, and other times they were threatened with military force. The league eventually included all Peloponnesian states except Argos and Achaea. Most towns in the league swore to follow Sparta’s lead on foreign policy in exchange for military protection. Sparta could also call for a percentage of a town’s soldiers to serve under Spartan command. The Peloponnesian League had no permanent institutions, and the member states only met when the Spartans wanted. It appears that every ally had one vote in the Congress of Allies, but the decisions of the congress had no binding power on Sparta.
84. (A) Zoroastrians worship Ahura Mazda as the highest and supreme god. They believe human beings are essentially divine in nature and share the same spiritual nature as Ahura Mazda. Human beings have a choice in the material world: they can either follow the teachings of Ahura Mazda and remain righteous, or they can follow the ways of evil and be damned. The other answer choices are all basic beliefs of Zoroastrianism, a religion founded sometime before the sixth century BCE in Persia.
85. (C) Hippocrates of Cos (c. 460–c. 370 BCE), an ancient Greek physician, influenced the Hippocratic school of medicine, which made little or no mention of a divine role in sickness and cures; nor did it depend on magic or ritual. Little is actually known about what Hippocrates thought, wrote, and did. Nevertheless, he is credited with greatly advancing the study of clinical medicine (as opposed to theory), compiling the medical knowledge of previous schools, and prescribing practices for other physicians. Many Hippocratic medical theories lasted into the 19th century; for example, the idea that four humors made up the body. Another long-lasting concept was the idea of a crisis, a point in the progression of disease at which either the patient would die or natural processes would make the patient recover. Modern medical graduates take an ethical oath before they enter practice based on the ancient Greek oath attributed to Hippocrates.
86. (A) Greek colonies were not colonial enterprises in the modern sense. They were not established and administered by their home city-states. Instead, daring men (women were rarely involved), with almost no governmental involvement, initiated most overseas Greek settlements. City-states then claimed settlements as colonies if they became economically successful.
87. (A) Pericles (c. 495–429 BCE) was an important politician and general in Athens between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. He influenced Athenian society by turning the Delian League into an Athenian empire. He also helped turn Athens into an educational and cultural center of the ancient Greek world. He began an ambitious project that built most of the surviving structures on the Acropolis, including the Parthenon. Pericles’s most important reform was to pay men who served in public office and on juries. This made it possible for poor men to serve. It was Ephialtes who reduced the court role of the Areopagus Council around 461 BCE.
88. (C) In the fifth century BCE, Athenian democracy became more inclusive than most other governments of the ancient world. Its basic principle was majority rule through the direct and widespread participation of male citizens in the assembly to make laws and policy. Only adult male Athenian citizens who had completed their military training had the right to vote in Athens. This excluded a majority of the population such as slaves, freed slaves, children, women, and foreigners. However, there were no real property requirements limiting voting and no reference to economic or social class. Once a year, all male citizens could vote to ostracize one official from the city for being a danger to democracy.
89. (C) Sappho was born on Lesbos, a large island in the Aegean near present-day Turkey. Details of her life are sketchy; she was born about 620 BCE and was probably from an aristocratic family. She may have married and had a daughter, and she may have spent some time in exile in Sicily. Her surviving work suggests that she was the center of an extremely close group of women. Her poetry seems to have comprised songs to be sung or recited to the accompaniment of a lyre. Only about 200 fragments of Sappho’s poetry remain, and many of these are only one or a few words. One poem, usually called the “Hymn to Aphrodite,” may be complete. Instead of addressing the gods or recounting epic tales as Homer did, Sappho’s verses have one individual speaking directly to another about the bittersweet difficulties of love. She was already considered a great poet in antiquity; Plato called her “the tenth Muse,” and her likeness appeared on coins.
90. (B) The Delian League is a modern name for an alliance of city-states led by Athens. Most of these city-states were in the areas most vulnerable to Persian retaliation, such as northern Greece, the islands of the Aegean, and the western coast of Anatolia. Theoretically, every member had an equal vote, but in reality, Athens made all the decisions. Each member city-state was supposed to pay dues based on its size and prosperity. However, these dues turned into compulsory tributes to Athens. Larger member states were supposed to supply entire triremes and paid crews; smaller states could share the cost or just pay cash. Over time, most members paid their dues in cash because of the difficulty of constructing and manning triremes. The decision of member states to let Athens supply warships left them no navies of their own and cleared the way for Athens to dominate the league. Athens justified its dominance by claiming it needed to keep the league strong enough to protect Greece from the Persians.
91. (C) The ancient Greek Olympic games were a celebration that included a series of athletic competitions held for representatives of various city-states in honor of Zeus. The games apparently began in 776 BCE in Olympia (Greece). They were celebrated until 393 CE, when they were suppressed by Theodosius as part of his campaign to impose Christianity as a state religion. The games were usually held every four years. The Olympics also featured religious celebrations and artistic competitions. They welcomed any socially elite, Greek male competitor and any male spectator. Although women were banned, they created their own separate Olympic festival on a different date in honor of the goddess Hera. During the games, a special truce was in effect so that athletes could travel from their countries to Olympia in safety.
92. (B) The History of the Peloponnesian War was written by Thucydides (c. 455–399 BCE). This book emphasized political motives rather than divine intervention as the motivating force in history. Because he served in the war as a politician and military commander, his narrative is particularly vivid. Thucydides has been called the “founder of scientific history” because of his relatively strict standards of evidence gathering and his analysis of cause and effect. The other answer choices are all famous ancient Greek historians.
93. (A) In 399 BCE, Socrates was tried and found guilty of both corrupting the minds of the youth of Athens and of “not believing in the gods of the state.” He was sentenced to death by drinking a mixture containing poison hemlock. Most of what is known of the trial comes from The Apology by Plato. The degree of accuracy of this work has been disputed for centuries. The Greek historian Xenophon, a contemporary of Socrates, also wrote a brief account of Socrates’s actions at his trial. The philosopher’s death is described at the end of Plato’s Phaedo; Socrates turns down Crito’s pleas to attempt a relatively easy escape from prison and instead drinks the poison. According to Plato, Socrates’s last words were, “Crito, we owe a rooster to Asclepius. Please don’t forget to pay the debt.” Asclepius was the Greek god for curing illness, and Socrates’s words are often interpreted to mean that he was glad to be “cured” of the disease of life and that his ethereal soul would now be free of the restrictions of his corporeal body.
94. (C) Although the ancient Greeks are popularly credited with the invention of democracy, slaves were an important part of their world. The glories of the Greek city of Athens could not have existed without the slaves who worked as house servants, craftspeople, miners, farmworkers, and sailors. In Athens’s golden age, slaves probably made up almost one-third of Athens’s population of 300,000. Slaves had no rights and could be beaten or killed. However, some slaves did gain their freedom and mixed into the noncitizen population. No one in ancient Greece is known to have called for the abolition of slavery; Aristotle considered it a basic component of society.
95. (E) Soldiers in densely packed battle lines were common in the ancient Near East in the third millennium BCE. However, the word phalanx is usually used to describe Greek armies. The phalanx was a rectangular military formation composed entirely of heavy infantry (hoplites) armed with long spears, pikes, or similar weapons. The hoplites would lock their shields together, and the first few ranks of soldiers would project their 6- to 12-foot spears out over the first rank of shields. The phalanx presented a shield wall and a mass of spear points to the enemy, making frontal assaults extremely difficult. It also allowed more soldiers than just those in the front rank to engage actively in combat. It was revolutionary because it required a foot soldier to forsake the acts of individual valor so beloved by Homer and stand shoulder to shoulder with fellow soldiers in a battle square. The Spartan phalanx used a short spear, but the Macedonian phalanx that Alexander the Great commanded used a heavy sarisa, a 12- to 20-foot-long pike that required the use of two hands. The Greek phalanx dominated the battlefield until the Roman Empire adapted and modified it into the cohort.
96. (E) The Parthenon is a temple on the Athenian acropolis, the rocky hill at the center of the city. It is dedicated to Athena, the patron goddess of the city. Its construction began in 447 BCE and was completed in 438 BCE. Its design followed standard Greek temple architecture—a rectangular box on a raised platform. However, it was much larger (230 feet long and 100 feet wide) than the average temple. The columns were carved in the simple Doric style. The Parthenon was meant as a house for Athena, not as a gathering place for worshippers. Only priests and priestesses could enter the temple; public religious ceremonies took place in the front. The elaborate frieze portrayed Athenian men, women, and children in a parade in the presence of the gods. The decorative sculptures are considered some of the best examples of classical Greek art.
97. (A) Aeschylus (c. 524–c. 456 BCE) is often considered the “founder of tragedy.” Traditionally, characters in plays interacted only with the chorus; Aeschylus expanded the number of characters to allow for conflict among them. Only 7 of his estimated 70 plays have survived. Aeschylus was a hoplite in the Persian War and wrote about his experiences in his plays. The earliest of his surviving plays is The Persians, performed in 472 BCE. It is based on Aeschylus’s experience at the battle of Salamis and is unusual because it describes a recent historical event. The Persians focuses on the popular Greek theme of hubris by blaming Persia’s loss on the pride of King Xerxes.
98. (A) The spread of democracy in Greece meant that persuasive speech (oratory) became a valuable skill. Sophists (wise men), skilled in public speaking and philosophical debates, taught ambitious young men from upper-class families these new skills. They thus filled the growing demand for education in Greece in the fifth century BCE. Protagoras, one of the most famous Sophists, argued that there was no absolute reality and no absolute truth. Instead, he believed that the divine was unknowable and that truth was subjective. Leucippus and other Sophists denied the power of the gods by using physics to argue that natural laws regulated the universe. These philosophers alarmed many Athenians by challenging their traditional beliefs, undermining their political traditions, and possibly angering the gods.
99. (B) At the battle of Salamis in 480 BCE, a navy from Greek city-states commanded by Themistocles defeated the Persian navy. The battle was fought in the straits between the mainland and Salamis, an island in the Saronic Gulf near Athens. Although heavily outnumbered, Themistocles persuaded the Greeks to engage the Persian fleet. As a result of a trick by Themistocles, the Persian navy sailed into the Straits of Salamis and tried to block both entrances. In the cramped conditions of the straits, the Persians’ larger numbers became problematic, as ships had difficulty maneuvering and became disorganized. The Greek fleet seized the opportunity, formed in a line, and scored a decisive victory by sinking or capturing at least 300 Persian ships. The battle of Salamis was followed by the Persian military defeat at Plataea the following year. These two battles ended the Persians’ attempt to expand their empire into Europe and made the Greeks the dominant population in the Mediterranean region.
100. (C) Mediterranean polyculture is an agricultural system that optimizes a farmer’s labor by growing crops that require intense work at different seasons. The Minoans created this system by cultivating olives and grapes as well as grain. Polyculture provided the Minoans with a more diverse diet, which in turn stimulated population growth. This method of farming also helped maintain the fertility of the soil and offered some protection against low yields in any single crop. Minoan farmers used wooden plows bound by leather to wooden handles and pulled by pairs of donkeys or oxen. The economic surplus allowed specialized artisans to produce goods such as storage jars, lamps, or clothes that they traded for food.
101. (B) The Persians usually allowed their conquered peoples to maintain their cultural identity. This contrasted with the Assyrians, who dispersed conquered peoples throughout the empire so they would lose their identity. The Persians spoke an Indo-European language. They spread Zoroastrianism across their empire. They generally oversaw their empire well and linked most parts of it through the Royal Road.
102. (D) In its golden age, Athens grew rich from its share of spoils taken from conquered Persian outposts as well as from tributes paid by Delian League members. Each Delian League city-state paid annual dues based on its size and prosperity; however, these dues were more like tributes. Over time, most Delian League members paid their dues in cash rather than by furnishing warships. In addition, Athens became a commercial center, attracting cargo, merchants, and crafts producers from around the Mediterranean world. The increased economic activity of the mid-fifth century BCE (and the taxes on such activity) helped bring Athens to the height of its prosperity. Athens’s new riches flowed mainly into public building projects, art, and festivals.
103. (D) Because of its relative durability, pottery is a large part of the archaeological record of ancient Greece. At least 100,000 vases are known to have survived. Because few Greek works in wood, textiles, or wall painting still exist, the painted decoration of the pottery has become a major source of information about life in ancient Greek cities. Between the beginning of the sixth and the end of the fourth centuries BCE, black- and red-figure techniques were used in Athens to decorate fine pottery, while simpler, undecorated wares were created for everyday household use. Athens and Corinth dominated the international market for Greek pottery from the eighth century BCE until the end of the fourth century BCE. For example, the Etruscans in central Italy imported large amounts of decorated Greek pottery for drinking wine in the Greek fashion at dinner parties. Wheel-thrown pottery dates back to about 2500 BCE, and this was the technique used for most Greek pottery. Human figures first appeared during the Archaic period and can be found on many pieces of pottery from the Classical Age.
104. (D) The Thirty Tyrants were a pro-Spartan oligarchy installed in Athens after its defeat in the Peloponnesian War in 404 BCE. The surrender stripped Athens of its walls, its fleet, and all of its overseas possessions. Corinth and Thebes demanded that Athens should be destroyed and all its citizens enslaved. However, the Spartans supposedly refused to destroy a city that had done a good service at a time of greatest danger to Greece and took Athens into their own system. They installed a pro-Spartan council headed by Critias and Theramenes, who severely reduced the rights of Athenian citizens. The Thirty Tyrants imposed a limit on the number of citizens allowed to vote. Participation in legal functions, which had previously been open to all Athenians, was restricted to a select group of 500 persons. Only 3,000 Athenians were allowed to carry weapons or receive a jury trial. The Thirty Tyrants forced many Athenians into exile and threw leaders into jail. However, their rule did not last long. The exiled Athenian general Thrasybulus seized Piraeus in the spring of 403 BCE. The Thirty Tyrants received no help from Sparta and were deposed.
105. (A) The Peloponnesian War pitted Sparta and its allies in the Peloponnesian League against Athens and its allies in the Delian League. In 415 BCE, the Athenians sent a massive expedition to try to conquer Syracuse on the island of Sicily. Their subsequent defeat there broke Athens’s naval dominance in the eastern Mediterranean. Of the approximately 45,000 men that Athens sent to control Syracuse, only 7,000 survived the final battles; 200 ships and an appreciable portion of the city’s total manpower were lost in a single stroke. The defeat proved to be the crucial turning point in the Peloponnesian War, though Athens struggled on for another decade. Some members of the Delian League seized the opportunity to break away, rebellions broke out in the Aegean, and Persian and Spartan morale improved. Eventually, the Athenian replacement navy was destroyed at Aegospotami in 405 BCE, and the city surrendered in the spring of 404 BCE.
106. (E) The Peloponnesian War lasted from 431 to 404 BCE and led to the defeat of Athens and the end of its golden age. Athenian aggression against Sparta’s allies, Corinth and Megara, ended the uneasy peace between Sparta and Athens. Under the leadership of Pericles, the Athenian assembly refused to compromise and instead hoped to destroy Sparta. However, Pericles died in 429 BCE and an epidemic from 430 to 426 BCE killed thousands of Athenians. Without Pericles’s strong leadership, the Athenians embarked on several risky military campaigns. In 415 BCE, they sent a massive force to attack Syracuse in Sicily. The attack was a total disaster, and almost the entire Athenian force was destroyed. Sparta, with the help of its former enemy, Persia, built a strong navy. The destruction of Athens’s fleet at Aegospotami effectively ended the war, and Athens surrendered in 404 BCE. Sparta became the leading power of Greece, while Athens never regained its prewar prosperity.
107. (A) In the golden age of Athens, women could control property and land through inheritance and dowry. Daughters did not inherit anything from their father on his death if he had any living sons. However, about one household in five had only daughters, and they could inherit their father’s property. A daughter’s share in her father’s estate usually came to her as part of her dowry when she married. Husband and wife then co-owned the household’s common property, which was apportioned to its separate owners only if the marriage was dissolved. In most city-states, the husband was legally responsible for preserving the dowry and using it for the support and comfort of his wife and any children she bore. A man often had to put up valuable land as collateral to guarantee his wife’s dowry. Upon her death, the children inherited her dowry.
108. (E) The Persian Royal Road was an ancient intercontinental highway that was reorganized and rebuilt by the Persian king Darius I in the fifth century BCE. Darius constructed the road to allow for rapid communication through the large Persian Empire. Mounted couriers could supposedly travel the 1,600 miles from Susa to Sardis (the capital of Lydia) in 7 days; the same journey took 90 days on foot. Some sections of the road are still intact at Gordion and Sardis; these cobble pavements on a low embankment are about six to seven yards in width. Supposedly, couriers could receive fresh horses at 111 way-posting stations on the Royal Road. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote, “There is nothing in the world that travels faster than these Persian couriers.” He also noted, “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor darkness of night prevents these couriers from completing their designated stages with utmost speed.” This is the basis for the motto of the U.S. Postal Service.
109. (B) Popular religion in Greece centered on participation in public festivals and sacrifices meant to provide divine protection from disasters. Some form of sacrifice was the focus of most cults, and there were strict rules to avoid ritual contamination of sacrifices. The feasting that followed the sacrifice provided an excuse for the community to assemble and reaffirm its ties to the divine world. Many people took part in frequent public festivals, such as the Panathenaia festival that honored Athena and featured parades, music contests, dancing, athletics, and poetry.
110. (B) Golden age sculpture was meant to be seen by the public, even if it was commissioned by private individuals. In the Archaic Age (c. 750–500 BCE), statues had a stiff posture, a straight-ahead stance, and a “goofy” smile, somewhat reminiscent of Egyptian statuary. Male statues had only one pose: striding forward with the left leg, arms held rigidly at their sides. However, in the 400s BCE, Greek sculptors began to create a variety of poses. Physiques and postures became more naturalistic. Male statues could now have bent arms and the body’s weight on either leg. Musculature was anatomically correct rather than impressionistic. Female statues also had more relaxed poses. The faces of classical sculpture were self-confidently calm. Men were usually rendered in the nude as athletes or warriors. However, women were usually portrayed in fine robes or clothing. Praxiteles, the most famous Athenian sculptor of the fourth century BCE, was the first to sculpt the nude female form in a life-size statue.
111. (B) During the Hellenistic era, Jews fought over the amount of Greek influence that was compatible with Judaism. About 167 BCE, the Seleucid king Antiochus IV converted the main Jewish temple in Jerusalem into a Greek temple and outlawed Jewish religious rites. This inspired the anti-Hellenic Jewish faction, led by Judah the Maccabee, to revolt. After 25 years of war, the Seleucids recognized Jewish autonomy. The Jews were ruled by the Hasmonean Dynasty (until 63 BCE), while Seleucid kings had formal control. The reclamation of the Second Temple was commemorated in the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.
112. (D) Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE) was the son of King Phillip II of Macedon. He was tutored by the philosopher Aristotle and first led troops at age 18. After his father’s assassination, Alexander commanded the Macedonian army and crushed the Persians. At its peak, his empire stretched from the western edge of modern-day India to Egypt (where he founded the city of Alexandria). He ruled over this empire as an absolute monarch and eventually declared himself a god. Many conquered populations liked Alexander because he included non-Macedonians in his peacekeeping outposts. However, he could be blood-thirsty and brutal when he wanted to intimidate populations. His soldiers adored him, but even their loyalty reached a limit when Alexander tried to conquer India. Exhausted by years of campaigning, his army mutinied at the Hyphasis River in western India and refused to march farther east. Alexander died unexpectedly at age 33; the cause of his death is still disputed.
113. (A) The battle of Gaugamela (Arbela) is considered one of the world’s decisive battles. Historians estimate that the Persian king Darius III had about a two-to-one manpower advantage over Alexander the Great. However, most of Darius’s troops were of a lower quality than Alexander’s. The battle of Gaugamela was a massive victory for the Macedonians and led to the fall of the Achaemenid Empire. In addition to suffering fewer casualties than the Persians, Alexander’s army captured the crucial Persian cities of Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis before continuing to the east. The battle resulted in the largest empire the world had seen to that date and allowed for the spread of Greek language, philosophy, and art in the lands from the Mediterranean to India.
114. (C) The Republic is Plato’s most famous work and has had an enormous influence on philosophy and political science. It is a Socratic dialogue written about 380 BCE; its main concerns are the definition of justice and the character of the just city and the just person. Book VII contains Plato’s famous “Allegory of the Cave,” which is an attempt to solve the problem of universals. In his ideal republic, Plato envisions a city ruled by philosopher-kings. At the end of The Republic (Book X), Plato banishes the poets from his ideal state, claiming they are unwholesome and dangerous.
115. (C) The Diadochi (“successors”) were the first generation of military and political leaders following the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE. The wars of the Diadochi framed the beginning of the Hellenistic era. Three of Alexander’s military commanders— Antigonus (382–310 BCE), Seleucus (c. 358–281 BCE), and Ptolemy (c. 367–282 BCE)— all wanted to rule the empire themselves. They killed Alexander’s son, wife, and mother and, for at least the next 25 years, struggled to determine whether Alexander’s empire should survive intact or disintegrate. The result, reached after the battle of Isus in 301 BCE, was a division into three large parts which basically coincided with Alexander’s possessions in Europe, Asia, and Egypt.
116. (C) After the Peloponnesian War ended the Athenian golden age, Athens began a slow economic recovery. People living in the devastated countryside began moving to the city. Although productivity in the silver mines declined, private business owners boosted the economy by trading and selling goods in their homes and small shops. Because so many men had died in the war, many women found work outside the home selling bread or clothing. In 393 BCE, Athens rebuilt the Long Walls that connected the port and the city’s center. The daily lives of most Athenians slowly approached the patterns they had followed before the Peloponnesian War.
117. (A) Urban populations in Egypt and southwestern Asia were the economic and social hubs of the Hellenistic kingdoms. Seleucid and Ptolemaic rulers encouraged Greeks and Macedonians to move to old cities and to found new ones. The kings adorned the new cities with the traditional features of classical Greek city-states, such as gymnasiums and theaters. However, Greek influence rarely penetrated too far into the countryside.
118. (C) Aristotle (384–322 BCE) went to study at Plato’s academy at age 17. After Plato’s death, Aristotle became a traveling scholar and served as tutor to the young Alexander the Great in Macedonia. He returned to Athens in about 335 BCE to found his own school, the Lyceum. The school originally derived its name, Peripatos, from the peripatoi (colonnades) of the Lyceum gymnasium in Athens where the members met. A similar Greek word, peripatetikos, refers to the act of walking. As an adjective in English, peripatetic means “itinerant,” “wandering,” or “walking about.” Most scholars believe that after Aristotle’s death, a legend arose that he was a peripatetic lecturer (that he walked about as he taught) and the designation Peripatetikos replaced the original Peripatos.
119. (B) Stoicism was founded by Zeno of Citium (c. 334–262 BCE). Stoics believed that fate determined everything but that human actions still had meaning through the pursuit of virtue. The term stoicism derives from the Painted Stoa in Athens where philosophers gathered to discuss their doctrines. According to Stoic philosophy, virtue can be achieved by cultivating good sense, justice, courage, temperance, and traditional participation in politics. However, it broke with tradition by supporting equal citizenship for women. Later Stoics, such as Seneca and Epictetus, emphasized that virtue was completely sufficient for happiness. Stoicism was a long-lasting philosophy, flourishing from the Hellenistic period to the Roman era. It did not disappear until the closing of all philosophy schools in 529 CE by Emperor Justinian I, who thought their pagan character contradicted the Christian faith.
120. (C) Menander is the best-known representative of Athenian New Comedy. After the Macedonian conquest, Greek comedy moved away from the personal and political satire common in Aristophanes’s plays to safer subject matter. New Comedy characters were inspired by the cooks, merchants, farmers, and slaves of the city. Menander wrote more than 100 plays. He was known for his characterizations, and his poetic style was often compared to Homer’s. Instead of writing about the great myths, Menander’s plots involved young people in love, parents concerned with misbehaving children, unwanted pregnancies, long-lost relatives, and a variety of sexual misadventures. His plays were well known for several centuries but disappeared in the Middle Ages. He is known today through a few manuscripts that have been recovered in the last hundred years and through Latin adaptations by the famous playwrights Plautus and Terence.
121. (D) Arsinoë II (316–270 BCE) was the ambitious queen of Thrace, Asia Minor, and Macedonia. She was the oldest child of Ptolemy I, the wife of King Lysimachus, and later coruler of Egypt with her brother and husband Ptolemy II Philadelphus (“the sibling-loving”). Arsinoë played a major role in the politics of the western empire after the death of Alexander the Great. When she was 16, Ptolemy I married her to King Lysimachus. They had three sons together, and Arsinoë constantly schemed to secure her own children’s inheritance at the expense of Lysimachus’s children by earlier marriages. She accused Lysimachus’s oldest son (Agathocles) of plotting to murder his father and convinced the old king to execute him in 282 BCE. The scandal led directly to Lysimachus’s death and Seleucus’s conquest of his kingdom in 281 BCE. Yet Arsinoë was not defeated. She found refuge with her brother, Ptolemy II, and then convinced him to divorce his wife (her dead husband’s daughter) and make her his wife and coruler of Egypt. This began the Ptolemaic dynastic tradition of marriages between sibling corulers.
122. (D) In the Hellenistic era, most political and economic power lay in the cities, even though most of the population lived in small villages in the countryside. Poor people and slaves performed the vast majority of the labor required to support the urban economies of this period. It is estimated that as much as 80 percent of the adult population, free and slave, had to work the land to produce enough food to feed the population.
123. (B) Euclid was a Greek mathematician best known for his treatise on geometry, The Elements. This book influenced the development of Western mathematics for more than 2,000 years; it was the main textbook used for teaching geometry from its publication until the late 19th century. Little is known of Euclid’s life, except that he taught at Alexandria in Egypt during the reign of Ptolemy I. In The Elements, Euclid deduced the principles of what is now called Euclidean geometry from a small set of axioms. It is not clear if he originated the proofs in The Elements, but the organization of the material is thought to be his work.
124. (B) Plato (c. 429–347 BCE) was interested in metaphysics, the philosophical consideration of reality that lies beyond the human senses. Around 386 BCE, he established the Academy, a philosophical school in Athens that attracted numerous students, including Aristotle. Plato believed that moral qualities in their ultimate reality are universal and absolute, not relative. He defined forms—which included goodness, justice, beauty, and equality—as the only true reality, which existed in a higher realm beyond the daily world. In the “Allegory of the Cave,” Plato suggested that everyday experiences of the senses consisted of only dim and imperfect representations of these realities.
125. (C) Hellenistic art, architecture, and sculpture differed from Greek art of the golden age. The latter emphasized balance and restraint, while the former tended to emphasize private and personal emotions. The simple Doric and Ionic temples gave way to luxurious palaces, costly mansions, elaborate public buildings, and monuments to power and wealth. Many of the Hellenistic statues and figures carved in relief were huge. Exaggerated realism and violent emotionalism were common, such as in Laocoön and His Sons. The frieze of the great altar of Zeus at Pergamum mingles giant gods, ferocious animals, and hybrid monsters in desperate combat. Because many artists and writers were paid by kings, they avoided political topics or subjects that criticized public policy.
126. (A) Hellenistic kings spent huge amounts of money to support scholarship and the arts. They believed it increased their court’s reputation to have famous thinkers, poets, and artists work for them. The Ptolemaic kings established the first scholarly research institute, along with a massive library, called the Museum (“place of the Muses”) in Alexandria. Linked to the Museum was a building in which hired scholars could dine together and produced encyclopedias of knowledge. Callimachus (c. 310–240 BCE) wrote the Pinakes (Lists), a bibliographical survey of all the authors of the works held in the library of Alexandria. The Pinakes was one of the first known documents to list, identify, and categorize a library’s holdings.
127. (C) After Alexander the Great’s death in 323 BCE, a 25-year war raged to control his massive empire. The rivals were known as the Diadochi (“successors”): Antigonus, Seleucus, Cassander, and Ptolemy. Of the four, Antigonus, based in Anatolia, probably had the necessary military skill, wealth, troops, and ambition to unify the empire. However, at Ipsus in 301 BCE, he was defeated by a coalition of his three rivals. The battle ended the struggle among the Diadochi to create one unified Hellenistic empire. Instead, Alexander’s vast holdings were carved up between the victors. In this way, the battle decided the character of the Hellenistic Age.
128. (A) Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287–212 BCE) was a Greek mathematician, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. He is considered to be one of the greatest scientists of antiquity. His advances in physics include Archimedes’s principle, which states that a body immersed in a fluid experiences a buoyant force equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces. He also explained the principle of the lever; according to legend he stated, “Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the earth.” Archimedes is credited with designing innovative machines, including siege engines and the screw pump that bears his name. He’s also considered the greatest mathematician of antiquity; his accomplishments include developing a formula to calculate the area under the arc of a parabola and accurately approximating pi. Archimedes died during the Roman siege of Syracuse, when he was killed by a Roman soldier despite orders that he should not be harmed. Greek fire was an incendiary weapon used by the Byzantine Empire, usually in naval battles; it was not invented until the seventh century CE. Archimedes may have used mirrors collectively as a parabolic reflector to burn ships attacking Syracuse.
129. (C) None of the women poets from the Hellenistic period seem to have enjoyed royal patronage. They excelled in writing epigrams, a style of short poem originally used for funeral epitaphs. Many elegant poems written by women from varying regions of the Hellenistic world still survive. Some female poets from around 300 BCE include Anyte of Tegea in the Peloponnese, Nossis of Locri in southern Italy, and Moero of Byzantium. They frequently wrote about women in their poems and expressed a wide variety of personal feelings.
130. (A) Unlike the Greek city-states, Macedonia had a powerful hereditary monarchy. However, the monarchy was checked by the landed aristocracy and often disturbed by power struggles within the royal family. Macedonian kings could govern effectively as long as they retained the support of the most powerful nobles. Monarchs demonstrated their skill by participating in some of the favorite activities of male nobles, such as fighting, hunting, and drinking. Queens achieved influence because they came from powerful noble families of the realm. Macedonians had great ethnic pride. They thought of themselves as Greek by blood but superior to the Greeks, whom they viewed as too soft to endure the difficulties of life in the north.
131. (A) Alexandria was founded about 331 BCE by Alexander the Great. The new city was intended to be the Hellenistic center of Egypt and the link between Greece and the rich Nile River valley. Alexandria remained Egypt’s capital for nearly a thousand years until the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 641 CE, when a new capital was founded at Fustat (later absorbed into Cairo). Ancient Alexandria was known for its lighthouse and for possessing the largest library in the ancient world. The city was home to the largest Jewish community in the world; the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, was produced there. In 2012, Alexandria was the second-largest city in Egypt, with a population of about 4.1 million.
132. (D) To collect taxes, urban administrations in Hellenistic kingdoms were staffed by immigrant Greeks and Macedonians. However, the Seleucids and Ptolemies also employed non-Greeks in mid- and low-level administrative positions that called for more interaction with native peoples. Local men who wanted to work in a government position improved their chances if they learned Greek. This brought the worlds of Greece and southwestern Asia into closer contact. However, Greeks and Macedonians viewed themselves as too superior to mix with locals, and non-Greeks were rarely admitted to the highest ranks of royal society.
133. (B) Laocoön and His Sons is a large marble sculpture from the Hellenistic period. The Roman author Pliny the Elder attributed the work to three sculptors from Rhodes (Athrenodoros, Agesander, and Polydorus) and described it as “a work to be preferred to all that the arts of painting and sculpture have produced.” It shows the Trojan priest Laocoön and two of his sons at the moment they are strangled by sea serpents. Laocoön was killed after attempting to expose the Trojan Horse by striking it with a spear. Athena sent the serpents, which were interpreted by the Trojans as proof that the horse was sacred. The most famous account of this story is in Virgil’s Aeneid. The work was probably sculpted between 42 and 20 BCE. Its rediscovery in the 1500s made a great impression on Italian sculptors and dramatically influenced sculpture during the Italian Renaissance. The original is now in the Vatican Museums in Rome.
134. (D) Hellenistic religious practices were quite diverse. Cults that had once held only local significance spread with the Greek language across the Mediterranean world. Worshippers in ruler cults tried to control chance by expressing gratitude or flattery to the rulers. For example, the Athenians created a cult to the Macedonian king Antigonus after he liberated the city. Other cults sought cures for physical ills from mythical healing divinities; Asclepius supposedly offered remedies to worshippers who visited his shrine. The mystery cult of the Egyptian god Isis achieved enormous popularity among Greeks and later Romans. However, Caracalla was a Roman emperor from 209 to 217 CE and not related to the Hellenistic Age.
135. (E) Aristarchus (310–230 BCE) was a Greek astronomer and mathematician who determined how to measure the distances to and sizes of the sun and moon. Because he deduced that the sun was so much bigger than the moon, he concluded that the earth must revolve around the sun. Therefore, he is famous for suggesting the first known heliocentric model of the solar system. He also put the other planets in their correct order of distance around the sun. However, his ideas were rejected in favor of the geocentric theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy.
136. (E) Epicurus (341–270 BCE) founded a school of philosophy built around philosophical materialism, the belief that all human knowledge is based on experience and perception. Epicureans believed that pleasure and pain were the sole measures of what is good and evil. They taught that death is the end of the body and the soul, and therefore it should not be feared. They broke with Greek tradition by teaching that humans have nothing to fear from the gods, because the gods do not reward or punish humans. Instead, the universe is infinite and eternal, and events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space. For Epicureans, the purpose of philosophy was to attain a happy, tranquil life characterized by freedom from fear and the absence of pain. Peace of mind came from a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends apart from the common world rather than through active citizenship. Epicureans were also unusual in admitting women and slaves as regular members of their school.
137. (C) The armies and navies of the Hellenistic kingdoms were manned by professional soldiers. The Seleucid and Ptolemaic kings enthusiastically promoted immigration by Greeks and Macedonians, who received land grants in return for military service. When this source of loyal manpower ran out, the kings had to use local men as troops. Military expenses became a huge problem for the Hellenistic kingdoms, and this led to a rise in taxation.
138. (B) By the third century BCE, the successor kings had reached a balance of power. The Antigonids ruled Macedonia and mainland Greece, the Seleucids ruled Syria and Mesopotamia, and the Ptolemies retained control of Egypt. There were frequent struggles over border areas, which left room for the establishment of smaller, independent kingdoms. One example is the kingdom of the Attalids in western Anatolia, with the wealthy city of Pergamum as its capital. In Bactria (in present-day Afghanistan), the descendants of the Greek colonies settled by Alexander broke off from the Seleucid kingdom and founded their own regional kingdom.
139. (C) Aristotle’s Politics as it exists today is probably a copy of his lecture notes. Many scholars believe it was meant to be combined with Nicomachean Ethics as part of a larger work dealing with the philosophy of human affairs. The Greek title of Politics means “the things concerning the polis.” According to Aristotle, the polis is the highest form of political association. Only citizens of a polis can fully pursue a life of good quality, which is the end goal of human existence. Politics defends private property, condemns capitalism, justifies slavery, and regards women as inferior to men. Like Plato, Aristotle criticizes democracy because it places power in the hands of the uneducated masses. After reviewing and criticizing constitutions and constitutional theories, he categorized six different kinds of cities: three good and three bad. The three good kinds are constitutional government, aristocracy, and kingship; the three bad kinds are democracy, oligarchy, and tyranny.
140. (C) The battle of Chaeronea in 338 BCE was one of the most decisive of the ancient world, in which Philip II of Macedon completely destroyed the forces of Athens and Thebes that had united against him. The Greek city-states could no longer resist Macedonia, and Philip was free to impose a settlement on Greece. He formed the League of Corinth, which made the Greek city-states allies of Macedonia and each other, with Philip as the guarantor of the peace. Although it ended Greek independence for decades, the battle of Chaeronea laid the groundwork for Alexander the Great’s attack on Persia and his support for Hellenic culture in his conquests.
141. (D) Philip II of Macedon (382–336 BCE) was king of Macedonia from 359 BCE until his assassination. He was the father of Alexander the Great and Philip III. He initially promoted peace with his neighbors, using the time to build his forces and introduce military innovations. Philip effectively used lines of soldiers armed with long spears, combined with a cavalry strike force, to crush the neighboring Illyrians and defeat his local rivals for the kingship. Then he launched an ambitious campaign of diplomacy, bribery, and military action to achieve his goal of leading a united Macedonian/Greek army against the hated Persians. By 340 BCE, he had convinced most of northern Greece to follow his lead on foreign policy. However, his ambitions provoked Athens and Thebes into forming a coalition against him. He defeated them at the battle of Chaeronea (338 BCE) and became leader of all Greece. He formed the Greek states into the League of Corinth to attack Persia but was assassinated by a Macedonian nobleman for reasons that are still disputed.
142. (D) Diogenes (c. 412–323 BCE) is considered one of the founders of Cynicism. None of his writings have survived, even though he is reported to have written more than 10 books. However, there are many anecdotes concerning his life and sayings attributed to him. Diogenes used his behavior to critique the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt society. He declared himself a “citizen of the world” and made a virtue of poverty. He begged for a living and slept in a tub in the marketplace. He became notorious for his philosophical stunts, such as carrying a lamp in the daytime, claiming to be looking for an honest man. He publicly mocked Alexander the Great and lived to tell about it. He also embarrassed Plato by disputing his interpretation of Socrates and sabotaging his lectures.
143. (A) Pergamum was an ancient Greek city in modern-day Turkey that became the capital of the kingdom of Pergamum under the Attalid Dynasty (281–133 BCE). Bactra, also called Bactra-Zariaspa (present-day Balkh, Afghanistan), was Bactria’s capital. Antioch (on the Orontes River) was an ancient city near the modern city of Antakya, Turkey. It was founded near the end of the fourth century BCE by Seleucus I and eventually rivaled Alexandria as the chief city in the area. It may once have had a population of half a million people, but it declined to insignificance during the Middle Ages. Cyrene was an ancient Greek city in the Ptolemaic kingdom, located in present-day Libya. Tyre was an ancient city conquered by Alexander the Great after a famous siege in 332 BCE; it was part of the Seleucid kingdom.
144. (D) Macedonian is a south Slavic language related to Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian; it was not the language of Hellenism. The spread of the Greek language in a form called Koine (“shared” or “common”) reflected an international culture based on Greek models. Local languages did not disappear, but Greek became the common language of politics, culture, and trade.
145. (E) Praxiteles of Athens was one of the most famous sculptors of the fourth century BCE. Ctesibius (fl. 285–222 BCE) created the scientific field of pneumatics by inventing machines operated by air pressure. He also built a working water pump and the first accurate water clock. Erasistratus (304–250 BCE) founded a school of anatomy in Alexandria where anatomical research was carried out. He distinguished between veins and arteries, described the valves of the heart, and concluded that the heart functioned as a pump. Praxagoras, of the Greek island of Cos (b. c. 340 BCE), discovered the value of measuring the pulse in diagnosing illness. Herophilos of Chalcedon (335–280 BCE), working in Alexandria, was the first scientist to systematically perform scientific dissections of human cadavers and is therefore considered the first anatomist.
146. (A) Christianity only became the official state religion of Rome when Theodosius proclaimed it so in 391 CE. The missionary journeys of Paul throughout the Mediterranean basin helped spread the new religion, as did the ease of travel on Roman roads and the Silk Road.
147. (C) Philip V, king of Macedon (the Antigonid kingdom), sided with Hannibal against the growing Roman power in the Second Punic War in 215 BCE. Their defeat in 201 BCE allowed Rome to dominate Macedonia and Greece. The Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms remained independent until the first century BCE; the Seleucid kingdom fell to Rome in 64 BCE. The Ptolemaic kingdom followed in 30 BCE, when the Egyptian queen Cleopatra chose the losing side in the Roman civil war between Marc Anthony and the future emperor Augustus. Thus, Rome became the heir of all the Hellenistic kingdoms.
148. (A) The battle of the Teutoburg Forest took place in 9 CE, when an alliance of Germanic tribes led by Arminius (also known as Hermann) ambushed and destroyed three Roman legions led by Publius Quinctilius Varus. This was a major Roman setback that, in hindsight, represented the high-water mark of the empire in the north. In general, after Teutoburg Forest, the Romans gave up trying to occupy the land east of the Rhine. The lack of obvious strongholds and a passable road network, the rugged countryside, the difficulties in living off the land, and the warlike nature of the Germans all contributed to Rome’s decision to leave Germany alone. As a result, north-central and northeastern Europe remained free of Latin law and culture for several hundred more years, which allowed the Germanic languages to survive. According to Suetonius, on hearing the news of the Teutoburg defeat, Augustus tore his clothes, refused to cut his hair for months, and for years afterward was heard to moan, “Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!”
149. (B) The First Triumvirate was the political alliance of Julius Caesar, Crassus (the wealthiest man in Rome), and Pompey. It formed in 60 BCE and lasted until Crassus’s death in 53 BCE. The name of First Triumvirate is misleading; it was never called this by contemporary Romans, and it had no official status. It was actually a secret agreement, although many leading families were involved. The alliance between Pompey and Caesar was cemented by the marriage of Caesar’s daughter, Julia, to Pompey. In 59 BCE, Caesar was elected consul and began to build a client army in Gaul. The alliance ended following the deaths of Crassus in battle (at Carrhae) and Julia in childbirth; after that, Caesar and Pompey drifted toward civil war.
150. (B) The Visigoths were a Germanic people who originally lived near the Balkans. In the fourth century CE, they fled from the Huns and asked Valens, the eastern emperor, for asylum in exchange for military service. Although Valens agreed, a famine broke out, and the empire would not supply them with the promised food or land. The Visigoths rebelled, and at the battle of Adrianople in 378 CE, they destroyed the Roman army; Valens was killed during the fighting. The results forced the Romans to negotiate with the Visigoths and settle them within the empire. Valens’s successor, Theodosius, granted them permission to establish an independent kingdom. The Visigoths eventually moved west into Gaul and had a tense relationship with the western empire between 395 and 410. Alaric, the Visigoth leader, declared war on Rome after the western general Stilicho was executed by Honorius in 408, and the Roman legions massacred the families of thousands of German soldiers serving in the Roman army. In 410, Alaric’s troops entered Rome and sacked the city. While Rome was no longer the official capital of the western empire (the capital had been moved to Ravenna in 404 for strategic reasons), its fall shocked the Roman world.
151. (A) Hypatia (c. 370–415 CE) was a Greek scholar from Alexandria; she is considered the first notable woman mathematician. Her father was the last librarian of the library at Alexandria, and she was educated in Athens and Italy. It appears she also studied and taught Neoplatonist philosophy and astronomy in Alexandria around 400 CE. Little is known of her writings; many works attributed to Hypatia may have been collaborative works with her father. Her contributions to science are reputed to include the charting of planets and the invention of the hydrometer (to determine the relative density and gravity of liquids). The Christians of Alexandria believed Hypatia was the cause of strained relations between the imperial Roman prefect and the patriarch Cyril. A group of Christian monks wanted the politician and the priest to reconcile, so they assassinated her. According to one version, the monks “took her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely stripped her and then murdered her by scraping her skin off with tiles and bits of shell. After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron and there burnt them.”
152. (A) Little direct evidence exists about the founding of Rome, but citizens of the republic believed the year 753 BCE was the mythical date. Romans at first believed that their city was founded by Aeneas, a refugee from the Trojan War. However, this legend was supplanted over the centuries by the attribution of the founding to twin brothers, Romulus and Remus (who, in some versions, become ancestors of Aeneas). According to the later legend, Romulus and Remus nearly died in infancy when Aeneas abandoned them by the Tiber River. A she-wolf discovered them and restored them to health. In 753 BCE, Romulus founded Rome and became its first king. Virgil’s Aeneid is the usual source for information about these myths. In modern times, scholars have continued to debate the date of Rome’s founding.
153. (E) Augustus (63 BCE–14 CE) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled for 41 years from 27 BCE until his death. In 27 BCE, he created the principate, a new political system. Augustus did not want to abandon the idea of the republic completely, so he constructed a government in which the old institutions and offices remained intact but he held ultimate power. His rule through widespread patronage, military power and coercion, and the accumulation of the offices of the defunct republic was the model for most later imperial governments. Augustus’s reign marked a period of relative peace that lasted for two centuries in the Mediterranean world; it was known as the Pax Romana (Roman Peace). Augustus dramatically enlarged the empire. He annexed Egypt and Dalmatia, expanded Roman possessions in Africa, and completed the conquest of Spain. However, he was emperor when the Germans crushed the Roman legions at Teutoburg Forest. Augustus reformed the Roman system of taxation, developed networks of roads, and established a standing army and the Praetorian Guard. Much of Rome was rebuilt under his rule, and he was a patron of Virgil, Ovid, Livy, and Horace. When he died in 14 CE, the Senate declared Augustus a god.
154. (C) Ovid (43 BCE–18 CE) was a Roman poet who is well known for The Metamorphoses as well as three collections of erotic poetry. He is usually ranked with Virgil and Horace as one of the three greatest poets of Latin literature. His poetry was extremely influential in Europe during the Middle Ages (more than 400 manuscripts survive). The Metamorphoses, completed in 8 CE, remains an important source of classical mythology. The recurring theme of the book, as with nearly all of Ovid’s work, is the nature and power of love, personified in the figure of Cupid. The other Roman gods, especially Apollo, are repeatedly confused, humiliated, and made ridiculous by Cupid. In a sense, The Metamorphoses inverted the accepted order by elevating humans while making the gods and their desires the objects of low humor.
155. (C) In ancient Roman society, people regarded homosexual interest and practice as an ordinary part of the range of human experience. Nearly every famous Roman poet wrote love poems to boys. However, male love did not have the same high cultural import for Romans as it did for the Greeks. It was not usually the subject of deep, inspiring personal devotion, although 14 of the first 15 emperors took male lovers, and the emperor Hadrian (reigned 117–138 CE) is famous for his relationship with Antinous. In some forms, homosexuality was criticized. Romans perceived homosexual relations mainly as a form of dominance and linked sexual passivity with the political impotence of boys, slaves, and women. Roman men viewed women as people who were there to serve them in sexual intercourse. Real sex meant penetration, and women cannot do that naturally with each other. When a man penetrated another man in anal intercourse, he used that man in the function of a woman and blurred the line between masculinity and femininity. Romans divided people into those who did sex (adult male citizens) and those to whom sex was done (women, boys, and slaves). This is one of the reasons the male writers of books and legal codes were less concerned with lesbianism; it did not seem as threatening to their gender stereotypes and the power structure. In fact, references to love between women in Roman literature are rare. As Christianity became more powerful in the Roman Empire, homosexuality came under greater attack and harsher legislation.
156. (E) The Etruscans, who may have migrated from Anatolia, moved to the Italian peninsula about 800 BCE. They remained influential for the next three centuries, especially northwest of the Tiber River (present-day Tuscany and part of Umbria). They were famed artisans and traders who were knowledgeable about ironwork. They were ruled by kings who controlled organized armies that used horses and war chariots (which the Etruscans introduced in Italy). Etruscan gold work was among the finest in the ancient world, and they were also famous for their glossy black pottery. Many Roman religious beliefs and architectural forms (such as the arch) were probably borrowed from Etruscan culture. The Romans also used a modified version of the Etruscan alphabet, which the Etruscans had learned from the Greeks. The last Etruscan king was expelled and the Roman Republic established in 509 BCE.
157. (B) Although slaves occupied the lowest place in the Roman social hierarchy, they provided the basis of the imperial workforce. Unlike Greece, Rome gave citizenship to freed slaves. This arrangement gave slaves a reason to persevere and cooperate with their masters and reduced the incentive to revolt. Conditions of Roman slavery varied widely according to occupation. In general, slaves in agriculture and manufacturing had a grueling existence and were often worked to death; household slaves (which included many women) had it somewhat easier.
158. (A) The highest officials in the Roman Republic were called consuls. Two consuls were elected each year in a symbolic show of the principle of sharing power. The consul’s most important duty was to command in battle. Winning a consulship was the highest political honor a Roman man could achieve. To gain this position, a man traditionally had to work his way up a “ladder” of offices. After 10 years of military service from about age 20 to 30, a man would begin by seeking election as a quaestor, a financial administrator. He would then move up to a position as one of the aediles who cared for the city’s streets, sewers, markets, aqueducts, and temples. Each move to a higher rung on the ladder was more competitive, and few men reached the level of the office of praetor. The board of praetors performed judicial and military duties.
159. (E) The Gracchi brothers, Tiberius and Gaius, were Roman tribunes in the second century BCE. Although they were from the upper class, they supported land reform legislation that would redistribute to the plebeians the latifundia (large estates) acquired in Rome’s many wars in Italy, Sicily, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain. People captured during these wars were often enslaved and forced to work on the latifundia raising export crops such as grain, olives, or grapes. Small landowners, unable to compete with the large estates, sold their lands. In 133 BCE, Tiberius Gracchus attempted to limit the size of the latifundia and move landless citizens to work on redistributed land. This offended the Senate, so they had Tiberius and 300 of his followers clubbed to death. In 123 BCE, Gaius used public funds to purchase grain to resell to the poor at low prices. The Senate assassinated his supporters, and Gaius committed suicide before he could be killed. The violent deaths of the Gracchi and their followers introduced factions into Roman politics for the next century. Members of the elite positioned themselves either as supporters of the people (populares) or “the best” (optimates). Insulae were Roman apartment houses or tenements, usually cheaply constructed, and sometimes as high as seven stories. (For curiales, see the answer to question 182.)
160. (C) The eastern and western sections of the Roman Empire had their own capital cities. Byzantium had been reconstructed and eponymously renamed by Constantine in 324 CE as his “new Rome.” In the west, Honorius (reigned 395–423) wanted to keep the Alps between his territory and the marauding Germanic bands to the north. However, he also wanted the capital in a more defensible location than Rome. In 404, he moved the capital to Ravenna, a port on Italy’s northeastern coast. Ravenna was an excellent choice; city walls and marshes protected it from attack by land, while access to the sea (and to the eastern empire) kept it from being starved out in a siege. Honorius’s decision turned out to be wise because Rome was sacked by the Visigoths only six years later. But Ravenna never rivaled Constantinople in size or splendor. It does, however, have a unique collection of early Christian mosaics and monuments; eight fifth- and sixth-century buildings there are listed as UNESCO World Heritage sites.
161. (D) The Edict of Milan was a letter issued in 313 CE and signed by emperors Constantine I and Licinius. The letter proclaimed religious tolerance in the Roman Empire and ordered the return of property confiscated from Christians in Diocletian’s Great Persecution of 303. The edict did not outlaw polytheism or make Christianity the official state religion. Instead, it proclaimed free choice of religion for everyone. It carefully referred to the empire’s protection by “the highest divinity”—an ambiguous term intended to please both polytheists and Christians. Constantine, although a converted Christian, wanted to avoid angering traditional believers, because they still greatly outnumbered Christians. However, he also tried to promote his newly chosen religion. In 321, he made the Lord’s Day a holy occasion each week on which no official business or manufacturing work could be performed, but he called it Sunday to blend Christian and traditional notions by honoring two divinities.
162. (E) Christianity only slowly became the majority religion in the Roman Empire. Although it benefited from the patronage of Christian emperors in the fourth century, it offered other advantages as well. In its earliest history, Christianity was more popular with the poor and underprivileged; its appeal included a strong sense of community in this world and the promise of salvation in the next. There is no indication that Roman soldiers were particularly enthusiastic about Christianity. The New Testament does mention several occasions when Roman soldiers were convinced by Jesus. However, the number of Christian soldiers in the Roman army was relatively small; Christian soldiers had sometimes created disciplinary problems by renouncing their military oath. In addition, the army placed a strong emphasis on pagan ritual (such as Mithraism), which devout Christians abhorred. Finally, Christians would have been reluctant to join an organization sometimes used to persecute their coreligionists. However, once Christianity gained official status in the fourth century, it attracted new believers in the military. Soldiers finally found it comfortable to convert and serve in the army, justifying military duty as serving Christ.
163. (D) In the earliest periods of Roman history, a married woman would be subjugated to the legal control of her husband (cum manu). The custom basically died out by the first century BCE in favor of free marriage (sine manu), which did not grant a husband any rights over his wife. Instead, it relied on the tradition of patria potestas (power of the father), which gave a father legal power over his children. In a free marriage, the wife remained under patria potestas until her father died. In the ancient world, few fathers lived long enough to supervise the lives of their married children; four out of five parents died before their offspring reached the age of 30. In a free marriage, a woman became independent on her father’s death, retaining her family rights of inheritance (although she did not gain any with her new family). Free marriage was not a traditional form of marriage, and because property was not involved, the husband could annul it simply by telling his wife that the marriage was at an end. However, free marriage was popular in noble households, so it was unlikely that one side would so openly insult the other.
164. (B) Cicero (106–43 BCE) was a Roman philosopher, politician, and writer; he is usually considered the greatest of Roman orators and Latin prose stylists. He was famous for his witty letter-writing style. Cicero tried to adapt the ideas of Greek philosophy to Roman life by creating a doctrine known as humanitas. Its principles based the value of human life on generous and honest treatment of other people and an almost Stoic commitment to morality. Cicero’s speeches and letters are important sources for descriptions of the last days of the Roman Republic. Unfortunately for Cicero, he made an enemy of Marc Anthony by attacking him in a series of speeches. Cicero was proscribed as an enemy of the state by the Second Triumvirate and murdered in 43 BCE. Medieval philosophers loved Cicero’s writings on natural law, and Petrarch’s rediscovery of Cicero’s letters helped spark the so-called European Renaissance.
165. (E) Arianism was a heterodox Christian religious belief founded by Arius (c. 250–336 CE), a priest from Alexandria. The doctrine arose over questions regarding the precise nature of the Trinity. Arius maintained that Jesus, as God’s son, did not exist eternally. Instead, he believed that God had created his son from nothing and given him special powers. This view implied that Jesus was not identical in nature to God and that Christian monotheism was not absolute. The Council of Nicaea (present-day Iznik, Turkey) was convened by the Roman emperor Constantine in 325 CE to deal with the issue. The council made the first effort to create a consensus in the Christian church through an assembly of bishops. It settled the Christological issue by condemning Arius and his doctrine. However, Arianism had many followers during the fourth and fifth centuries, especially among the Germanic tribes who had trouble understanding the concept of God’s son being identical in nature to God.
166. (E) Nero (37–68 CE) was the last Roman emperor of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty. His reign from 54 to 68 CE is notoriously controversial because of the unreliability and prejudice of most ancient sources against his actions. He had a passion for music and acting, and he built theaters and promoted athletic games. The spectacular public festivals he sponsored and the money he distributed to the masses in Rome kept him popular with the poor. His generals defeated the Parthian Empire and crushed a revolt in Britain. In 64 CE, most of Rome was destroyed in a great fire; many Romans believed Nero himself had started it to clear land for his planned palatial complex. After the fire, Nero sponsored a public relief effort as well as significant reconstruction that helped drain the treasury. As a result, he devalued the Roman currency for the first time in the empire’s history. Nero’s rule is often associated with many executions, including those of his mother and wife and the probable poisoning of his stepbrother, Britannicus. He was also an early persecutor of Christians. In 68 CE, a series of revolts drove Nero from the throne, and he committed suicide. His death ended the Julio-Claudian line, and chaos followed in the so-called Year of the Four Emperors.
167. (C) Almost no one had a stronger impact on western Christian orthodoxy than Augustine (354–430 CE); for a thousand years, his writings were the most influential texts except for the Bible. He was particularly concerned with the question of how to understand and regulate sexual desire. Augustine promoted the influential doctrine that sex automatically trapped human beings in evil, and they should therefore strive for asceticism or even celibacy. This was perhaps not surprising for a religion whose founder was supposed to have no biological father, who was believed to have no siblings, and who never married. Augustine advocated sexual abstinence as the highest course for Christians, because he believed Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden had forever ruined the original perfect harmony God created between the human will and human passions. Augustine reluctantly supported the value of marriage in God’s plan, but he noted that even sexual intercourse between loving spouses carried the taint of humanity’s fall from grace. For him, sexual pleasure could never be a human good. By the end of the fourth century, the importance of sexual renunciation and virginity as a Christian virtue had grown so strong that congregations began to call for virgin priests and bishops.
168. (B) The fall of the Roman Empire remains one of the greatest historical questions; there are more than 200 theories on why Rome declined and fell (or even if it fell), and new theories are proposed all the time. However, many modern scholars emphasize that most political institutions are not assassinated and do not collapse. They believe the words transformation and evolution are more accurate to express the complex changes in the Roman Empire. Having said that, the decline of Rome has been attributed to all the answer choices given except an increase in population. Most historians believe the empire’s population gradually decreased, especially in the western provinces. In addition, the Roman Empire suffered from the so-called Antonine Plague (also known as the Plague of Galen) that began about 165 CE. For the next 20 years, recurring waves of diseases, possibly the first epidemics of smallpox or measles, swept through the empire. According to one estimate, the plague killed five million people—as much as one-third of the population in some areas—and decimated the Roman army. Similar epidemics, such as the Plague of Cyprian, also occurred in the third century.
169. (D) Emperor Diocletian (244–311 CE) rescued the Roman Empire from its third-century crisis by replacing the principate with a more openly authoritative system of rule called the dominate. Diocletian was an uneducated soldier who rose through the ranks to become emperor in 284 after the battle of the Margus. As a soldier and an emperor, he was courageous and intelligent, and he showed a talent for leadership. Because he relied on the large army for support, he had to raise taxes to support it. Diocletian’s government tried to control the people liable for taxes by imposing oppressive restrictions. The government made many occupations compulsory and hereditary, thereby eliminating the possibility of social mobility. Coloni (tenant farmers), who had traditionally been free to move from farm to farm, were increasingly tied to a particular plot of land, and their wives and children were also restricted. The system was a precursor of medieval feudalism.
170. (A) The Anglo-Saxons were composed of Angles from present-day Denmark and Saxons from northwestern Germany. This mixed group invaded Britain in the 440s after the Roman army had been recalled from the province to defend Italy against the Visigoths. The Anglo-Saxons established their kingdoms by taking territory away from the indigenous Celtic peoples and the remaining Roman inhabitants. However, they never conquered Scotland, Wales, or Cornwall. The historian Bede, who lived in the eighth century, wrote that the Angles settled in East Anglia, the East Midlands, and Northumbria, while the Saxons moved into Sussex, Essex, Middlesex, and Wessex. The third mysterious group, the Jutes, settled mainly in Kent, Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight.
171. (C) The family formed the bedrock of Roman society, because it taught values and determined the ownership of property. The tradition of patria potestas (“power of the father”) gave a father ownership of all property accumulated by his children or slaves as long as he lived. Fathers also technically held the legal power of life and death over their children and their household. However, the power of fathers did not give husbands legal power over their wives; the wife remained under her father’s patria potestas until he died.
172. (E) Marcus Aurelius (121–180 CE) was emperor from 161 to 180; he was the last of the so-called Five Good Emperors. He is also considered an important Stoic philosopher. During his reign, he defeated the Parthian Empire but had to defend the Roman Empire from Germans and Briton invaders from the north. He wrote The Meditations in Greek while on campaign between 170 and 180. This book is still read as a paean to service and duty. It describes how to achieve self-control in the midst of conflict by following nature as a source of guidance and inspiration. Marcus Aurelius was concerned with improving the living conditions of the poor and tried to decrease the brutality of the gladiatorial shows. He also persecuted Christians as natural enemies of the Roman Empire. Marcus’s choice of his only surviving son (Commodus) as his successor turned out to be a disaster. (It was the emperor Diocletian who made the curiales spend their own money to pay for the shortfall in tax collection.)
173. (E) The battles of Lake Trasimeno (217 BCE) and Cannae (216 BCE) were brilliant victories by Hannibal over the Romans in the Second Punic War. Cannae is sometimes considered the greatest tactical victory in military history. The Carthaginian defeat at the Metaurus River in 207 BCE ended the attempt by Hasdrubal (Hannibal’s brother) to reinforce Hannibal in Italy. The Roman victory at Zama (202 BCE) brought an end to the Second Punic War and made Rome the dominant power in the western Mediterranean. Actium, on the other hand, was the battle that ended the Roman Republic in 31 BCE.
174. (D) For three or four centuries after Jesus’s death, the overwhelming majority of the population of the Roman Empire still practiced polytheism. Its deities ranged from those of the state’s cults (such as Jupiter and Minerva) to spirits believed to inhabit local groves and springs. Famous old cults, such as those that practiced the initiation rituals of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis outside Athens, remained popular. Hundreds of shrines to the mysterious god Mithras have been found, but the cult is poorly understood because almost no texts survive to explain it. In some way, the slaying of a bull was a central part of the cult’s identity; only men could be worshippers and many seem to have been soldiers. Many upper-class Romans guided their lives by the ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism. It was based on self-discipline; its most famous Roman adherents were the playwright Seneca (4 BCE–65 CE) and the emperor Marcus Aurelius. The Hellenized cult of the Egyptian goddess Isis was also popular; Isis was portrayed as a compassionate goddess who cared for the suffering of each of her followers. Her image was that of a loving mother, and a central doctrine of her cult concerned the death and resurrection of her husband, Osiris. Waldensianism was a medieval Christian social movement and heresy.
175. (B) The Roman currency throughout most of the Roman Republic and the western half of the Roman Empire consisted of coins. These included the aureus (gold), the denarius (silver), the sestertius (bronze), the dupondius (bronze), and the as (copper). These coins were generally used from the middle of the third century BCE until the middle of the third century CE. The silver denarius became the backbone of the Roman economy almost as soon as it was introduced in 211 BCE. It was valuable because it contained silver; the less silver in a coin, the less the coin was worth. When taxes and other revenues could not cover government or military expenses, Roman emperors debased the coinage by reducing the amount of silver and increasing the amount of cheaper metals. Nero was the first Roman emperor to devalue the coinage. Roman coins were 94 percent silver in 27 BCE, 89 percent in 100 CE, 64 percent in 200 CE, and 4 percent in 300 CE.
176. (A) Spartacus (c. 109–71 BCE) was the famous leader of a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic. In 73 BCE, he broke out of a gladiatorial school at Capua and fled to Mount Vesuvius, where he was joined by thousands of fugitive slaves. Spartacus was an accomplished military leader, and his slave army defeated several Roman forces. He may have wanted to escape from Italy, but many of his followers preferred plundering the south. He was finally killed in battle by Crassus’s forces in Lucania; Pompey helped annihilate the survivors. Of the captured slaves, 6,000 were crucified along the Capua-Rome highway. In modern times, Spartacus’s struggle has often been portrayed as the story of oppressed people fighting for their freedom against a slave-owning aristocracy.
177. (B) Constantine the Great (272–337 CE) was Roman emperor from 306 to 337. He was the best general of his time, defeating his rival for power, Maxentius, at the battle of Milvian Bridge (near Rome) in 312. He also fought successfully against the Franks, Alamanni, and Visigoths during his reign. By 336, Constantine had reoccupied most of Dacia, which the emperor Aurelian had abandoned in 271. Constantine transformed the ancient Greek city of Byzantium into a new imperial residence named after himself; Constantinople would be the capital of the eastern Roman Empire for more than a thousand years. He was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity (he was baptized on his deathbed) and also issued the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed tolerance of all religions throughout the empire. During his reign, he convened the Council of Nicaea (325) to deal with the Christological issues raised by Arianism. (It was Diocletian who subdivided the Roman Empire into the tetrarchy.)
178. (A) The Essenes were a Jewish sect that flourished from the second century BCE to the first century CE. They were much smaller in number than the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Essenes gathered together in communal settings to practice asceticism and voluntary poverty. They seem to have been obsessed with ceremonial purity, including scrupulous cleanliness, the wearing of only white clothing, and extremely strict observance of the Sabbath. Josephus recorded that thousands of Essenes lived in Roman Judea. They are commonly believed, although without direct evidence, to have written the religious documents known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Essenes’ beliefs may have influenced the development of early Christianity. The sect ceased to exist after Bar Kohba’s failed rebellion in 132–135 CE.
179. (C) In the Roman Republic, the passage of laws, government policies, elections, and certain trials took place in a complicated system of differing assemblies. An assembly was an outdoor meeting of adult male citizens; they were only for voting, not discussion. Every assembly concerning laws and policies was preceded by a public gathering when speeches were made about the issues. Everyone, including women and noncitizens, could listen to those speeches. Each assembly was divided into different groups whose size was determined by status and wealth. Voting took place by group, with each group—rather than each individual—having a vote.
180. (D) Christians had always been subject to local discrimination in the Roman Empire, but early emperors did not issue general laws against them. It was not until the 250s CE, under the reigns of Decius and Valerian, that laws were passed compelling Christians to sacrifice to Roman gods or face imprisonment and execution. Diocletian was a religious conservative who attributed the empire’s problems to the hostility of Christians to Rome’s traditional religion. As a result, he launched a massive attack on Christianity in 303 that is sometimes called the Great Persecution. He expelled Christians from the government, seized their property, tore down their churches, and executed them for refusing to participate in religious rituals. In the western empire, the violence stopped after about a year; in the east, it continued for a decade. According to one estimate, about 3,500 Christians were executed, and many more were tortured or imprisoned. However, most managed to avoid punishment. The public executions of Christian martyrs were so gruesome that they aroused the sympathy of some polytheists. The Great Persecution failed to stop the spread of Christianity or placate the anger of the old Roman gods. Constantine, in the Edict of Milan, restored Christians to full legal equality and returned property that had been confiscated during the persecution.
181. (D) In the Roman Republic, the shrine of the goddess Vesta (known as Hestia by the Greeks) housed the official eternal flame of Rome. Vesta was the goddess of the hearth and a protector of the family; in a larger sense, the flame guaranteed the state’s permanent existence. The shrine was tended by the Vestals (or Vestal Virgins), six unmarried women sworn to chastity before puberty for a term of 30 years. As Rome’s only female priesthood, the Vestals were exempt from the usual social obligations to marry and bear children; they were not subject to the patria potestas and were free to own property or make wills. They were supposed to devote themselves to the study and correct observance of state rituals that were off-limits to the male priests. Their most important duty was to make sure the eternal flame did not go out. If it did, the Romans assumed that one of the women had broken her vow of chastity; the punishment was to be buried alive. Over many centuries, there were only 10 recorded convictions for breaking the vows of chastity. The Vestals were a powerful force in Rome. When Sulla proscribed the young Julius Caesar, the Vestals interceded on Caesar’s behalf and gained him a pardon. The Vestals were disbanded and the sacred fire extinguished in 394 CE by order of the Christian emperor Theodosius.
182. (B) In the late Roman Empire, the word curiales referred to the merchants, business owners, and medium-sized landowners who served in their local curia as magistrates and decurions. The unsalaried curiales were expected to collect the funds necessary for public building projects, temples, festivities, and local welfare systems. They were also responsible for providing food and board for the army and for maintaining the water supply. They were supposed to pay for any shortfalls out of their own pocket. As the economy of the empire worsened in the third and fourth centuries CE, membership among the curial class became financially ruinous to all but the wealthiest people. For centuries, the Roman Empire had counted on a regular supply of public-spirited members of the elite who would happily fill these crucial local posts to win the admiration of their neighbors. In the late days of the empire, this tradition broke down as wealthier people avoided public service to escape bankruptcy, many by taking positions that canceled curial responsibilities, such as in the army, the imperial government, or the church. At one point, compulsory service on a municipal council became a punishment for a minor crime. Efforts to remedy the situation failed, and the councils dwindled in importance through the late Roman Empire.
183. (A) Proscription was a procedure created by Sulla in the first century BCE. A list would be posted of people who were supposedly guilty of treason against Rome. Anyone could then legally hunt down and execute these proscribed people, and their property was confiscated by the state. This procedure led men on the winning side of the civil war to fraudulently add the names of anyone whose wealth they desired to the list. The Second Triumvirate was the official political alliance of Octavius, Lepidus, and Marc Anthony. It was an official, legal arrangement that was actually written into the constitution by the Lex Titia in 43 BCE. This new government was a joint dictatorship, in which the three members were essentially permitted to completely ignore republican and senatorial tradition. The Second Triumvirate revived proscription as a way to get money as well as eliminate political opposition. About 130 to 300 senators and possibly as many as 2,000 equites were proscribed. (Equites were prosperous hereditary landowners, second in wealth and status only to patricians.) Lepidus’s own brother was proscribed, as was Anthony’s cousin and one of Octavian’s distant relatives through adoption. The most notable victim of the proscriptions was Cicero, who was executed for antagonizing Marc Anthony.
184. (E) The movement of the Germanic tribes into the Roman Empire was the factor that caused the actual fall of the empire. Alaric I, king of the Visigoths, sacked Rome in 410 CE. In 476 CE, Romulus Augustus, the last emperor of the western Roman Empire, was deposed by Odoacer. This event is traditionally regarded as the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the European Middle Ages. The other answer choices are underlying causes, not immediate causes, of the empire’s decline.
185. (E) A postal service is an arrangement to send letters, packages, and magazines from one place to another. Hieroglyphics make reference to a postal service in Egypt about 2000 BCE. A postal system using mounted relay messengers was organized in China in about 1000 BCE and in the Persian Empire in about 500 BCE. Riders on horses would stop at regularly placed post houses either to get a fresh horse or to give their mail to another messenger for the rest of the trip. The same kind of relay system existed in the Roman Empire. The postal service made it possible for the government in Rome to communicate with officials and generals in distant provinces.
186. (A) Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE) was a Roman general who played the crucial role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire. Caesar was a brilliant general; his victory over Gallic forces under Vercingetorix in the battle of Alesia (52 BCE) established Roman dominance in Gaul for the next 500 years. Caesar was adored by his soldiers, and his victories created a rivalry with the Roman government. In 60 BCE, he entered into a secret agreement with Crassus and Pompey known as the First Triumvirate, which dominated Roman politics until 53 BCE. They were opposed in the Senate by a conservative elite that included Cato the Younger and Cicero. The Senate ordered Caesar to stand trial in Rome, but instead he marched from Gaul to Italy and crossed the Rubicon in 49 BCE; his soldiers followed him without hesitation. This sparked a civil war. Caesar and his outnumbered army gained a stunning victory over Pompey at the battle of Pharsalus in 48 BCE. After assuming control of the government, Caesar was proclaimed dictator for life. His office and honors pleased many Romans but outraged a narrow circle of optimates who resented their exclusion from power. A group of senators, led by Brutus, assassinated him on the Ides of March (March 15), 44 BCE, in the hope of restoring the republic. Instead, the result was a series of civil wars that ultimately led to Augustus’s establishment of the permanent Roman Empire.
187. (A) Hero of Alexandria (c. 10–70 CE) was a Greek mathematician and engineer, often considered the greatest experimenter of antiquity. He published a description of a steam-powered device called an aeolipile. He also invented a windwheel, one of the earliest examples of harnessing wind on land. Ptolemy (90–168 CE) was a famous Roman scientist living in Egypt. His works on astronomy and geography were standard textbooks in the field until the time of Copernicus in the 16th century. The so-called Ptolemaic system placed the motionless earth at the center of the universe, with all other heavenly bodies revolving around it. Galen (c. 130–c. 200 CE) was a physician who discovered that arteries carry blood instead of air. Based on his own experimentation, he added to the medical field’s knowledge about the brain, nerves, spinal cord, and pulse. Until the 16th century, his authority was virtually undisputed. Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia, an extensive compilation of facts about the natural world that became a model for all future works on that subject. Gerard of Cremona (c. 1114–1187 CE) was a medieval translator of Arabic scientific works in Toledo, Spain.
188. (C) Plautus (254–184 BCE) was a Roman playwright specializing in comedies. His plays, adapted from the Greek New Comedy, were popular representations of middle- and lower-class life. He wrote in colloquial Latin and was famous for his coarse humor. Plautus’s plays used many characters who would become standard comic figures: the braggart soldier, the resourceful slave, the young lover and his mistress, and the courtesan. About 20 of his plays survive, and their plots and characters have had an enormous influence on the history of comedic traditions. Terence (c. 195–159 BCE) was the other great Latin comedian during the Roman Republic. He was a slave who received his freedom because of his wit and manners. Six of his plays survive; all seem to be adapted to a greater or lesser degree from Greek plays by Menander and his school. Terence was more refined than Plautus, but Plautus was usually funnier.
189. (C) The baths were part of day-to-day life in ancient Rome. Thermae were large bath complexes such as those built by the emperors Caracalla and Diocletian. Balneae were smaller facilities, either public or private, that could be found everywhere in the empire. Ancient Rome had as many as 900 public baths; small baths held about 300 people, while the largest might hold 1,500. Because admission fees were low, almost everyone could afford to go daily. Roman baths were similar to modern health clubs in that they were centers for exercising and socializing as well as washing. A visitor could spend some time in a cold bath (the frigidarium), then a warm bath (the tepidarium), and finally a hot bath (the caldarium). A large complex would also contain an exercise area (the palaestra) and a swimming pool. The building of a bath complex required complex heating systems to carry the water around the establishment. Bathers usually swam naked, and women had full access to the baths, but men and women usually bathed separately. Since bathing was thought to be particularly valuable for sick people, communal baths contributed to the spread of communicable diseases. Baths fell out of style with the growth of Christianity.
190. (C) These are the opening lines of The Aeneid, the Latin epic written by the Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BCE). Virgil is usually considered the greatest writer in Latin literature. He is known for three incredibly influential works: The Eclogues (or Bucolics), The Georgics, and The Aeneid. In The Eclogues (completed about 37 BCE), he idealized rural life and set the standard for pastoral poetry for the next 2,000 years. His work had a major impact on the Middle Ages, when the fourth eclogue, concerning the birth of a boy, was often interpreted as a prediction of the coming of Christ. The Georgics (completed in 30 BCE) imitated the Greek poet Hesiod by describing the charms of real life and work on the farm. For the rest of his life, Virgil worked on The Aeneid, a national epic honoring Rome and foretelling prosperity to come. In 12 books, he told how Aeneas escaped from Troy to Carthage and became Queen Dido’s lover. At Jupiter’s command, he left Carthage, went to Sicily, visited his father’s spirit in Hades, and landed in Italy. There he founded the Roman state and waged successful war against the natives. The Aeneid was the main classical Latin literary text of the European Middle Ages; most famously, Dante made Virgil his guide in The Divine Comedy.
191. (D) Origen (c. 184–c. 255 CE) was an early Christian scholar and theologian. He argued that Christianity was both true and superior to Greek philosophy as a guide to correct living. He particularly wrestled with the idea of the preexistence of souls. Philo (20 BCE–50 CE) was a Jewish philosopher who claimed the Bible could only be understood through the use of allegory. He tried to harmonize Greek philosophy and Jewish traditions. Although he had a negligible impact on Judaism, he influenced several early Christian thinkers. Plotinus (c. 205–270 CE) developed new ideas based on Plato’s philosophy. Neoplatonism’s religious doctrines focused on the human longing to return to the universal Good from which human existence derives. By turning away from the life of the body through the intellectual pursuit of philosophy, individual souls could ascend to the level of the universal soul. Porphyry (234–c. 305 CE) was also a Neoplatonic philosopher who studied under Plotinus. His Isagoge was an introduction to logic and philosophy, and in Latin translation, it was the standard textbook on logic in the Middle Ages. Neoplatonism’s stress on spiritual purity appealed to Christian intellectuals and had a massive impact during the Middle Ages. John Scotus Eriugena (c. 815–c. 877 CE) was a medieval Irish theologian and Neoplatonist philosopher.
192. (C) The city of Pompeii was a flourishing port as well as a prosperous resort with many villas near present-day Naples. Pompeii and the smaller Herculaneum were completely destroyed during a catastrophic two-day eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. The eruption buried Pompeii under 15 to 20 feet of ash and pumice. The town was forgotten for nearly 1,700 years before its accidental rediscovery in 1748. The cinders and ash had the fortunate effect of preserving the city with incredible completeness. Its excavation provided an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city during the Roman Empire. As of 2011, it was one of the most popular tourist attractions in Italy, drawing about 2.5 million visitors every year.
193. (D) Historians often refer to the period of the Roman Republic from about 500 BCE to 287 BCE as the Struggle of the Orders. The republic’s two orders were a closed circle of elite families (patricians) and the rest of Rome’s citizen population (plebeians). Patricians made up only a tiny percentage of the population (about 130 families in the early republic), but they monopolized Roman political offices. Bitter fighting between the two orders recurred for more than 200 years following the foundation of the republic. Eventually, the plebeians united to resist patrician power. To pressure the elite order, the plebeians sometimes resorted to withdrawing physically from a city or settlement. The men then refused to do their military service. In 287 BCE, the plebeians finally won the right to make laws in their own assembly.
194. (C) Sulla (138–78 BCE) was a Roman general. He served under Marius in Africa and became consul in 88 BCE when Mithradates VI of Pontus was attacking Roman territory in the east. Sulla (the senatorial favorite) and Marius (the popular favorite) both wanted the command against Mithradates; Sulla received it by marching with his soldiers on Rome and killing or exiling his opponents. Mithradates was defeated in 84 BCE, and Sulla came back to Italy the following year with 40,000 men. He had himself named dictator in 82 BCE without any limitation of term. He then began to murder his enemies through the use of proscription. He cleverly reorganized the Roman government, making senators the only group allowed to judge a case against their colleagues and forbidding tribunes the right to offer legislation on their own. Sulla’s dictatorship was notoriously cruel; it demonstrated how the patron-client system led poor soldiers to feel stronger ties of obligation to their generals than to their republic.
195. (B) Rome’s society was based on the patron-client system. This was an interlocking network of personal relationships that morally and legally obligated people to help and serve one another. A patron (patronus) was a man of superior status and usually higher birth. He would provide his clients with benefits such as legal or political support, gifts, or loans. In return, the client (cliens) repaid the patron by owing duties, such as working for votes in the patron’s campaigns for public office or lending the patron money to support public works. The patron-client relationship was a major instrument for the public display of status. Patrons expected clients to accompany them to the forum on a daily basis to see and be seen. Most Romans believed that stability was achieved through the faithful maintenance of patron-client relationships.
196. (C) The Silk Road comprised the most famous network of trading routes in ancient China. It connected Asia with the Mediterranean world, as well as northern Africa and Europe. The Silk Road connected both land and water routes to Eurasia. The 4,000-mile route crossed China, central Asia, northern India, and the Parthian and Roman Empires. It connected the Yellow River valley to the Mediterranean Sea, passing through Chinese cities such as Kansu and Sinkiang and through present-day countries Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Caravans carried many goods, including silk, as far as the Roman Empire. Trade in silk especially grew under the Han Dynasty in the first and second centuries CE. In some areas, caravans were protected by pastoral nomads.
197. (A) The Han Dynasty was established in the third century BCE after the Qin Dynasty’s harsh laws sparked a series of civil wars. Under Han rule, feudalism was revived in China but partially combined with a centralized autocracy. There was an emperor and a centralized bureaucracy, but the government did distribute hereditary fiefs in parts of the empire. In the third century CE, the central government of the Han Dynasty degenerated into the three kingdoms ruled by warlords (the Three Kingdoms period).
198. (B) The quotation is from Chapter 78 of the Tao Te Ching, a small book supposedly written by Lao-tzu in the sixth century BCE. The book is the main document of Taoism, an important Chinese philosophy and religion. Water is one of Lao-tzu’s favorite metaphors to explain the ultimately unknowable Tao. Water is seemingly soft and weak, yet it has the power to penetrate, dissolve, and wash away rocks. Water’s ability to yield is exactly what makes it strong. Dripping water hollows out stone. Water embraces instead of confronts and caresses instead of beats, but in the end, it subdues. Lao-tzu applies this analogy to human behavior. The wise person gains by yielding. Humility is superior to pride, which feeds temper and triggers impatience.
199. (B) For nearly as long as humans have known how to use iron, they have used it for agricultural tools. Scholars believe that the first iron plows were used in China during the Warring States period (c. 475–221 BCE). These plows were pushed by hand, not by animals. However, before the Han Dynasty (202 BCE), Chinese plows were made almost entirely of wood, except for the iron blade of the plowshare. By the Han Dynasty, the entire plowshare was made of cast iron; these were the first known heavy moldboard plows.
200. (E) Confucius, or Kung Fu-tzu (c. 551–479 BCE) was born into a poor noble family. His sayings and teachings were collected by his students in The Analects. Confucian philosophy stressed the development of virtue (jen), and the four other answer choices are basic components of the virtuous life. Confucianism, unlike Christianity, believes that human nature is essentially good. Confucius proposed that people could be taught to be virtuous, primarily through the study of literature, history, and philosophy. Therefore, education should be open to anyone, regardless of social class. When society became educated and virtuous, stability would return and the turmoil of the late Zhou Dynasty would end.
201. (D) The prosperity of the Han Dynasty produced significant population growth, as well as a great deal of advanced technology. Among the inventions and advances attributed to the Han are paper, the rudder, the compass, porcelain, the seismograph, acoustical studies, and a calendar of 365 days. The Grand Canal, a 1,200-mile-long canal that links northern and southern China, was built under the Sui Dynasty (589–618 CE).
202. (E) The Warring States period covers the time of the later Zhou Dynasty from about 475 BCE to the unification of China under the Qin Dynasty in 221 BCE. During this period, a number of local warlords claimed independence for their regions and became involved in seemingly interminable wars. Ironworking spread in China, and iron replaced bronze as the dominant metal used in warfare. Scholars developed different philosophies, including Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism, and Mohism, to try to deal with the anarchy of unending war. In 256 BCE, Qin Shi Huang came to the throne of Ch’in, the westernmost state. Between 230 and 221, he conquered his seven rivals and unified China into an empire. The development of wood-block printing is usually associated with the Tang Dynasty.
203. (A) Mencius (c. 372–289 BCE) was arguably the most famous teacher of Confucian thought. He lived during the Warring States period and defended the teachings of Confucius against other influential schools of thought, especially Mohism. One of his basic principles was that human nature is good, and he declared that morality cannot be taught to the last possible detail. That explains why external controls and governments always fail in improving society. According to Mencius, only education can awaken the innate abilities of the human mind. He denounced memorization and instead supported actively questioning the text. In politics, Mencius argued that it is acceptable for subjects to overthrow or even kill a ruler who ignores the people’s needs and rules harshly, because an unjust ruler is no longer a true ruler. His teachings have been very influential on the development of Confucianism.
204. (D) According to traditional sources, the Shang (Yin) Dynasty (c. 1600–1000 BCE) was the second Chinese dynasty (after the Hsia, or Xia). The Shang ruled in the northeastern regions in the Yellow River valley. It was during their rule that the pictographic and ideographic writing system that the Chinese still use was invented. The oldest form of Chinese writings were questions written on animal bones (oracle bones). These questions were deciphered and answered by ancient Chinese priests. Ideographs consist of two pictures placed next to each other to form an abstract concept. Phonograms, the equivalent of homonyms, were used to represent words that sound alike but mean different things. By 500 BCE, this writing system defined Chinese society; it was so complex that only the wealthiest Chinese could take the time needed to master its alphabet. Paper was invented in the second century CE and gunpowder in the ninth century CE.
205. (A) Of the five answer choices, the Hsia Dynasty (c. 2200–1600 BCE) was the first and the Han (c. 206 BCE–220 CE) was the last. The three dynastic periods in the middle were the Shang (c. 1600–1000 BCE), the Zhou (c. 1046–256 BCE), and the brief yet crucial Qin (221–207 BCE).
206. (D) The Qin Dynasty (221–207 BCE), unlike the Zhou Dynasty that preceded it, was extremely short. Yet it remains a noteworthy period in Chinese history. It was the Qin Dynasty that connected separate fortification walls into what eventually became the Great Wall of China. This demonstrates that the empire was centralized, well organized, and territorial. The Qin Dynasty also increased trade, improved agriculture, and enhanced military security. By weakening the landowning lords, the central government directly controlled the peasants, giving the Qin access to a large workforce. This dynasty also introduced several reforms: for example, currency, weights, and measures were standardized, and a better system of writing was established. The strength of the Qin state was increased by Legalist reforms, but the rulers believed that all opposing opinions were treason. This led to book burnings and the execution of scholars.
207. (C) The Shang economy had a fairly advanced system of agriculture, with plows pulled by domesticated water buffalo or humans. Peasants grew mainly rice in the hot and swampy south, where growing conditions were ideal, and millet in the arid north. Animal husbandry (pigs, dogs, sheep, chickens, horses, and oxen) was relatively insignificant compared to farming, and although trade was important, it was not the backbone of the economy. Neither hunting and foraging nor tribute played much of an economic role. However, the Shang Dynasty was advanced in metallurgy; bronze weapons and tools were common in that era.
208. (C) Legalism was a Chinese political philosophy based on the idea that a highly efficient and powerful government is the key to social order. It was developed by Shang Yang (390–338 BCE) during the Warring States period. This philosophy disagreed with the Taoist and Confucian beliefs that humans could improve through meditation or education. Instead, Legalists believed that stability depended on better police and army administrators, more efficient tax collectors, and a less corrupt legal system. They also believed that humans were essentially evil and lazy, and this made constant vigilance necessary for stability. They wanted to make laws covering many areas of everyday life and clearly state the punishment for violating each law. Legalists were convinced that a government that allowed its subjects freedom was promoting disorder.
209. (D) The Shang Dynasty lasted from about 1600 to 1000 BCE. The Shang spoke a Sino-Tibetan language, fought on horseback and in chariots, and used bronze weapons. During this dynasty, the government expanded irrigation systems on the Yellow (Huang He) River. Wheat and millet became staple crops in the area, leading to a rapid rise in population. Shang artists were noted for their skill in bronze. Silkworm cultivation also began in China during this time. However, Shang society was deeply divided between peasants and nobles.
210. (A) The concept of the mandate of heaven originated with the Zhou Dynasty’s desire to rationalize the overthrow of the Shang. The concept is first found in the written records of the words of the duke of Zhou, younger brother of King Wu. The notion was later supported by Mencius, an influential Confucian philosopher. The mandate of heaven supposedly granted a dynasty the authority to rule and explained the success and failure of emperors and dynasties until the end of the empire in 1912 CE. Whenever a dynasty fell, Chinese sages declared that it had lost the moral right to rule, which is given by heaven alone. In this sense, heaven did not mean a personal god but a universal all-encompassing power. However, unlike the European concept of the divine right of kings, the mandate of heaven depended on the conduct of the ruler in question. The idea was adopted by succeeding Chinese dynasties as a rationalization for their assumption of power from a previous weakened dynasty.
211. (B) The Han Dynasty lasted from 206 BCE to 220 CE. Its collapse was caused by many factors. Land was distributed unequally between the rich and the poor, and several peasant revolts occurred after natural disasters wrecked the agricultural economy. The late Han emperors relied on small groups of the elite and particular families to make policy; this alienated the peasantry from the government. The weak central government made military leaders and local warlords more powerful. The imperial court of Han was plagued with corruption. Gradually, central authority disintegrated. The Xiongnu were ancient nomadic peoples living along the Han borders, and the Han government paid them heavy tributes. However, the Xiongnu never successfully invaded the Han Empire to cause its collapse, which was primarily internal in nature.
212. (B) In the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, China had been dominated by aristocrats in chariots. However, chariots were not easy to produce; participation in battle was therefore limited to a small percentage of the population, mostly the ruling elite of the city-states. In the Warring States period (c. 475–221 BCE), changes in military technology gave the advantage to states with greater resources and larger populations. The casting of individual weapons allowed the states to arm masses of foot soldiers. The weapons of soldiers gradually changed from bronze to iron. Dagger-axes were an extremely popular weapon in various kingdoms, especially the later Qin, which produced 18-foot-long pikes. Leaders began using infantry and cavalry, and chariots gradually fell out of favor. From this period on, the nobles in China became a literate class rather than warrior class, as the kingdoms competed by throwing masses of soldiers at each other. This was also the period when the military strategist Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War, which is recognized today as the most influential and oldest military strategy guide.
213. (E) Sun Tzu (also known as Sun Wu or Sunzi) was an ancient Chinese military general, strategist, and philosopher. He is traditionally believed to have written The Art of War, an influential ancient Chinese book on military strategy, during the Warring States period. The book is composed of 13 chapters; each chapter is devoted to one aspect of warfare such as planning offensives (Chapter 3), incendiary attacks (Chapter 12), and employing spies (Chapter 13). The Art of War remains the most famous of the so-called Seven Military Classics of ancient China. It grew in popularity in the 20th century, and Sun Tzu’s work has continued to influence both Asian and Western culture and politics. However, some historians have questioned whether Sun Tzu was an authentic historical figure.
214. (A) The Zhou Dynasty was established in the 11th century BCE and, in its eastern form, lasted almost 800 years. Zhou rule is divided into two distinct eras: the early (Western) Zhou Dynasty (c. 1027–771 BCE) and the later (Eastern) Zhou Dynasty (771–256 BCE). The move of the capital east from Haojing to Chengzhou in 771 BCE marks the historical boundary between the Western Zhou and Eastern Zhou. Although the use of iron was introduced to China during the Zhou Dynasty, this period is also considered the high point for the creation of Chinese bronzeware. At the same time, the Chinese written script evolved into its modern form. The Zhou Dynasty officially ended in 256 BCE; Qin Shi Huang’s unification of China in 221 BCE led to the establishment of the Qin Dynasty.
215. (A) Empress Lu Zhi (also known as Empress Dowager Lu or Empress Gao) was the wife of Emperor Gaozu (Liu Bang) of Han, the founder of the Han Dynasty. They had two known children—the eventual Emperor Hui and Princess Luyan. After her husband’s death, Empress Lu seized control by naming her infant son emperor. She was ruthless and skilled enough in political manipulation to rule for 16 years. Although she was an able administrator, she made sure to remove members of her late husband’s family from positions of power and replace them with members of her own family. During her reign, the people of the empire enjoyed a respite from the turmoil that followed the end of Qin Dynasty. After her death in 180 CE, generals who had helped her husband rise to power overthrew the government.
216. (C) Some of the earliest examples of Chinese writing have been found on oracle bones from Bronze Age China. To ascertain the will of the gods, the Chinese would write questions to them on animal bones or shells. The oracle would then heat these bones and read the cracks, thereby divining the gods’ answers. Inscriptions on oracle bones suggest that Chinese writing evolved from pictographs. Later, several pictographs were combined to form an ideograph, or symbol that represents an abstract concept. Most oracle bones date from the late Shang Dynasty, somewhere between the 14th and 11th centuries BCE.
217. (D) The first Chinese civil service exam was given during the Han Dynasty. Officially, anyone who qualified could study to take the exam and join the Chinese bureaucracy. However, studying the Chinese alphabet and the intricacies of Confucian doctrine took years to complete and was expensive. Sometimes a town might pool its resources and pay for one of its brightest children to enter school. In practice, however, only well-to-do Chinese could take the time for the necessary training to work as civil servants.
218. (B) The Terracotta Army is a collection of terra-cotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang’s reign (c. 210 BCE); it was intended to protect the emperor in the afterlife. The army was unknown because of its underground location and because it was never mentioned in historical records. It was discovered in 1974 in Shaanxi province by local Chinese farmers drilling a well. The figures include warriors, generals, chariots, horses, acrobats, strongmen, and musicians. In the three pits containing the Terracotta Army, there were more than 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses, and 150 cavalry horses. Most sculptures remain buried. Both the scale of the project and the craftsmanship of each statue is astonishing. In 2005, the Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum received more than two million visitors.
219. (B) According to traditional sources, the Hsia was the first Chinese dynasty, lasting from about 2200 to 1600 BCE. Reliable information on the Hsia is archaeological, as China’s first written system—oracle bone script—did not exist until the Shang Dynasty. The Hsia Dynasty was the first to irrigate land, cast bronze, and mobilize a strong army.
220. (D) Mohism (or Moism) was a Chinese philosophy developed by the followers of Mozi (470–c. 391 BCE), also called Mo Tzu. Mohism evolved at about the same time as Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism and was one of the four main philosophical schools of ancient China. At the time, it was considered a major rival to Confucianism. In contrast to the Confucianists, who taught that devotion was particularly due to one’s family, Mohism prescribed equal love for all people. Unlike Confucius, Mozi did not accept the concept of the mandate of heaven; instead, he believed that the position of the emperor should be based solely on merit. Mohism’s rejection of offensive warfare was one of its basic doctrines. Adherents argued that “good” was whatever produced the greatest well-being among all people. Mohist doctrines also advocated the elimination of extraneous ritual and music. Mohists held that religious belief was essential to a well-ordered society and were enthusiastic believers in ghosts and spirits. Mohism declined after the Qin Dynasty adopted Legalism as the official government philosophy and persecuted all other philosophical schools. The Han and most successive dynasties adopted Confucianism as the official state philosophy, and Mohism essentially disappeared as an independent school of thought.
221. (B) Confucius believed that stability resulted from hierarchy. Thus, instead of “sibling to sibling,” Confucius paired younger brother to older brother. Women were considered inferior to men and sisters inferior to brothers. Confucianists envisioned a society of families led by virtuous males. Each family member should graciously accept his or her role and submit to the hierarchy for the sake of order. The brightest, most virtuous men would form a bureaucracy and assist the emperor in administering stable rule. For Confucianists, all members of society have specific roles, or li. The roles change as children grow to adulthood. Knowing and scrupulously adhering to one’s li ensures stability by eliminating role stress. Confucianists believe that families and groups are more important than individual self-expression.
222. (E) Liu Pang (c. 256–195 BCE) was of peasant origin and became a minor official before joining the free-for-all struggle that followed the collapse of the Qin Dynasty. His victory at the battle of Kai-Hsia (Giaxia) in 203 BCE removed his last rival for power in China and allowed him to establish the Han Dynasty. The battle took place in modern Anhui province. His rival, Xiang Yu, was killed, and most of his supporters surrendered. Liu Pang took the title of emperor (Huang-ti), and this began the Han Dynasty. He took the throne name Gaozu (spelled a variety of ways) and ruled until 195 BCE.
223. (C) The Three Kingdoms period was part of a period of disunity in Chinese history called the Six Dynasties (c. 200–600 CE). It began with the decline of the Han Dynasty in about 200 CE and lasted until about 280 CE, when it was replaced by the Jin Dynasty. The three kingdoms were Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Dong Wu (or Eastern Wu). Each state was headed not by a king, but by an emperor who claimed to be the legitimate heir of the Han Dynasty. Technology advanced significantly during this period, including advances in hydraulics and the invention of a proto-wheelbarrow, a repeating crossbow, and a nonmagnetic directional compass. The Three Kingdoms period was extremely bloody and the population decreased, although the size of the decline is a subject for dispute. The period has been romanticized in the cultures of China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam, even though it lasted for less than a century.
224. (A) According to Lao Tzu, the universe depended on a set of complementary opposites—balances between the yin (feminine forces) and the yang (masculine forces). Yang characteristics were activity, heat, and light, while those of the yin were passivity, cold, and dark. For the universe to maintain equilibrium, yin and yang needed to be equally balanced. For Taoists, these balances apply to everything from weather to meal preparation. Yin and yang explain how polar opposites are interdependent in the natural world and how each one gives rise to the other in turn. The concept that opposites only exist in relation to each other is the heart of many branches of classical Chinese science and philosophy, a guideline of traditional Chinese medicine, and a basic principle of many Chinese martial arts.
225. (E) Emperor Wu of Han (156–87 BCE), also known as Wu Ti, ruled for 54 years, from 141 to 87 BCE. He is considered the greatest emperor of the Han Dynasty, and his empire surpassed that of the Romans in size. As a military campaigner, Emperor Wu did not follow Mohism’s rejection of offensive warfare. Instead, he led Han China to its greatest expansion, from present-day Kyrgyzstan in the west to Korea in the northeast and northern Vietnam in the south. He also successfully repelled the nomadic Xiongnu who tried to raid northern China. His diplomatic missions to central Asia led to the development of the Silk Road both eastward and westward. The Silk Road trade not only introduced different cultures to China, but it also spread China’s influence to other parts of the world. Emperor Wu strongly adopted the principles of Confucianism as the state philosophy; he even founded a school to teach bureaucrats the Confucian classics. He created a strong, centralized state and appointed provincial administrators to promote government efficiency. These policies had a lasting effect for centuries and an enormous influence on neighboring civilizations.