STUDY GUIDE FOR HISTORY 20 FINAL EXAM

The final exam will take place on Wednesday, Dec. 17, 11:30-2:30 in Haines 39.

Please bring a blue book!

You will answer 4 short-answer questions (40 %) and an essay question (60%).

PART 1:

7 of these short-answer questions will appear on the exam (you will answer 4):

1. How did Persia maintain its empire? What role did Zoroastrianism play in the kingdom’s politics?

2. What was the Greek polis? Compare and contrast the political and social structures of Athens and Sparta.

3. Describe the Athenian Empire. How did it come to be? What tension can we identify in Athenian democratic and imperial goals? What is the significance of the Peloponnesian War?

4. How did Greek philosophers approach the understanding of nature? What position did the Sophists take? What was Socrates’ response to it?

5. Who held political and economic power in India’s Ganges plain around 500 bce? How did the caste system expand, and what drove this expansion? What were some of the consequences of the expansion of the caste system?

6. What new beliefs arose in India around 500 bce? Describe these beliefs. How did the Brahmans respond? How did Buddhism change over time?

7. Explain the dynastic system of the Zhou state in China. What is the “Mandate of Heaven”? What was its significance for Chinese politics?

8. What were three (of the “hundred”) schools of thought that appeared during the Spring & Autumn and Warring States periods in China? What was the significance of these ideas for subsequent Chinese politics within the Qin and Han states?

9. According to Polybius, what were the main features of the Roman Republic’s constitution?

10. Describe the Roman military. What was the war “ethos” of Rome? What was the significance of the Punic Wars? How did Rome organize the communities it conquered?

11. What were the Gracchi brothers’ reforms? Why did they fail?

12. How does Tacitus describe the Germans? What does this description imply about the Roman Empire?

13. How did Christianity successfully spread and what was its relationship to the Roman Empire?

PART 2:

2 of these essay questions will appear on the exam (you will answer 1):

1. Compare and contrast strategies of empire-building in Rome and Han China. How did the imperial state expand and maintain its power? Consider the role of warfare, politics, governmental administration, economics, and ideology in your answer.

For your discussion of Rome, use at least two of the following sources:Polybius, Histories, Book VIPlutarch, Life of Cato the ElderCicero, On the Laws

For your discussion of Han China, use at least two of the following sources: Confucius, AnalectsSun-Tzu, The Art of WarSsu-Ma Ch’ien, The Records of the Grand Historian of ChinaDebate on Salt and Iron

2. What do the lives and teachings of Buddha and Jesus reveal about the human being’s path to salvation? How do followers of these prophets interpret their messages in changing historical contexts?

For your discussion of Buddhism, refer to Ashvaghosha’s The Life of Buddha. For your discussion of Christianity, refer to our selections from The New Oxford Annotated Bible, and Augustine’s Confessions.

3. Discuss the transformation of the ideal human being in the Mediterranean world from Homer’s Odyssey through Plato’s The Apology to Plutarch’s Life of Cato.