Set #1

Question 1

Describe the origins of the Persian Empire.

Answer 1

The Medes and Persians started out as two of many peoples on the border of Mesopotamia. The Medes first built an empire to rival the Mesopotamian civilizations’, but a Persian king named Cyrus began his own conquests in the mid-5th century BCE. Cyrus gradually conquered lands surrounding Mesopotamia before moving on the heartland itself. First to fall was the Lydian kingdom in the west of modern Turkey, then Babylon under king Nabonidus and his capital. Cyrus’ son Cambyses also annexed many territories, including Egypt in 524 BCE. Cyrus also conquered extensive areas in central Asia. These conquests set up a new world empire that put huge pressures on its leaders.

Question 2

Describe the power struggle inside the Persian Empire after the death of king Cambyses.

Answer 2

After Cambyses died, his brother Bardiya was widely recognized as the new king. However, a man named Darius seems to have usurped the throne, claiming on monumental inscriptions that Bardiya was an imposter whom Darius had removed.

Question 3

Describe the Greek “Dark Age” that came before the rise of the city-states and after the fall of the Mycenaeans.

Answer 3

This was a period from 1100 to 750 BCE when little history was recorded. The Mycenaeans had collapsed at the end of the Bronze Age and the elites of Greek culture ceased to keep written records.

Question 4

Who was Draco?

Answer 4

After the Greek Dark Age, Athens began to rise as a major city-state in the 7th century BCE. Around 621 BCE, the magistrate Draco laid down a series of strict laws (probably the city’s first ever law code). The harsh punishments within were designed to stop the aristocrats from taking the law into their own hands.

Question 5

Who was Solon?

Answer 5

After the law code established by Draco, the Athenian statesman Solon (c. 630 - 560 BCE) established a new set of laws that helped protect the rights of “ordinary” people in Athens. In 594 BCE, defeat by the city of Megara and growing social tensions led to Solon’s appointment as supreme “archon” (magistrate). Since rural impoverishment had caused an agrarian and military crisis in Athens, Solon abolished slavery caused by debt, freed the peasants from feudal servitude, and made wealth rather than birth the prerequisite of political office, reducing the power of the aristocracy. To ensure good governance (“eunomia”) he created a council (“boule”) to prepare the weekly business of the citizen’s assembly (“ecclesia”), and a popular court of appeal (“heliaia”) for redress against abuses of power. He divided citizens into four classes: aristocrat, “horseman”, hoplite, and the poor (“thetes”), each of which elected 100 members to the council. Poor citizens could only vote at this stage.

Question 6

Who was Cleisthenes?

Answer 6

An Athenian magistrate (c. 570 - 508 BCE) who instituted major reforms in the system of rule. In place of the “eunomia” of Solon, he promised “isonomia”, or equality. He changed the Athenian tribal system and permanently altered Athens’ political structure. He divided citizens into ten “tribes” (phylae) named after heroes. Annual membership of an extended council of 500 was chosen by lot from each of the 10 tribes, which supplied the smaller 50-member group of council leaders (“Prytaneis”) to administer the daily affairs of government. Its composition was changed regularly so that no one remained in power too long. Jury members for the courts were also selected randomly to avoid corruption. The 6,000-strong “ecclesia” met on the Pnyx (a site near the Acropolis) to vote on matters presented by the Prytaneis and elect the 10 generals (“strategoi”), who could be removed from office and reelected. As a further safeguard, ostracism was introduced to banish any “dangerous” leaders from the city for 10 years. Attica (the area around Athens) was divided into the three regions of coast, highlands, and city, and the tribes were made up of citizens from each of these three areas. These areas were further subdivided into “demes”, the smallest voting districts of the polis. All of these reforms helped decrease the power of the aristocracy and create a unified body of men loyal to Athens above all else.

Question 7

Who was Pericles?

Answer 7

An Athenian statesman (c. 495 - 429 BCE) who moved Athens further toward a new kind of democracy. He set up juried courts, moving judicial power from the city council to citizens. He also made the assembly a democratic council where all male citizens had an equal vote.

Question 8

How did hoplite warfare lead to an increased demand for democracy in ancient Greece?

Answer 8

Soldiers who fought for their state expected a say in politics in return.

Question 9

What accomplishments did Philip II of Macedon pass on to Alexander the Great that helped Alexander’s campaigns?

Answer 9

Philip II created an army of heavy cavalry and pike-wielding infantry that Alexander used to great effect. Philip also conquered Greece and gave Alexander a secure base from which to mount invasions into Asia.

Question 10

When was Alexander born?

Answer 10

July 356 BCE.

Question 11

When was Philip II assassinated?

Answer 11

336 BCE.

Question 12

When did Alexander cross the Hellespont to begin his invasion of Asia?

Answer 12

334 BCE.

Question 13

When was the Persian Empire fully conquered by Alexander?

Answer 13

330 BCE.

Question 14

When and where was Alexander forced to turn back from his campaign into India?

Answer 14

In 326 BCE, after invading the Punjab, Alexander defeated king Porus. His soldiers mutinied when he reached the Hyphasis River and forced him to turn back, following the Jhelum, a tributary of the Indus River, to the sea.

Question 15

When and how did Alexander die?

Answer 15

Alexander died on June 11th, 323 BCE, apparently from a fever.

Question 16

When did Alexander’s closest friend and lover Hephaestion die?

Answer 16

324 BCE.

Question 17

Describe the power struggle after the death of Alexander the Great.

Answer 17

Alexander’s wife Roxana had a son in August 323 BCE, but the boy was killed in 310 by one of the general competing for control over Alexander’s empire. Alexander on his deathbed passed on his empire to “the fittest”, and from 323 to 279 BCE there was near constant warfare to determine who that would be.

Question 18

Name the three Hellenistic states that rose from the wars following Alexander’s death and name the territories each controlled.

Answer 18

The smallest was the Antigonid kingdom that controlled Macedonia and Greece. Constantly involved in wars with Greek city-states, it eventually fell to Rome in 168 BCE. The richest and most secure was the Ptolemaic kingdom ruling over Egypt and Palestine, which lasted until 30 BCE, when, during the reign of Cleopatra VII, it was annexed by Rome. The largest successor state was the Seleucid Empire, founded in 312 BCE by Seleucus I Nicator, when he secured Babylon and with it control of Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and much of Anatolia.

Question 19

What was the Hellenistic Age?

Answer 19

The three centuries after Alexander’s death in 323 BCE when post-Classical Greek culture spread far beyond its homeland (largely due to the three successor states that emerged after the reign of Alexander the Great). Greek ideas and artistic styles were adopted in Asia, Egypt, and, most importantly, Rome.

Question 20

Describe the fall of the Seleucids.

Answer 20

In the 2nd century BCE, the Seleucids were driven from Persia and Mesopotamia by the Parthians. By 100 BCE the empire had been reduced to Antioch and a few other Syrian cities. It continued to exist only because powers such as Rome and the Ptolemaic dynasty did not see it as a serious threat. The Roman general Pompey finally put an end to the Seleucids when he annexed Syria as a Roman province in 64 BCE.

Question 21

Describe the conflict in the regions the Middle East after the fall of the Seleucids.

Answer 21

The end of the Seleucid Empire left the Romans and Parthians to contest the area. When the Romans tried to invade Mesopotamia in 53 BCE, the Parthians defeated them at Carrhae, but the Romans had the better of later clashes, sacking the Parthian capital at Ctesiphon three times in the 2nd century CE. The Parthians, originally a semi-nomadic steppe people, left much of the administrative structure of the Seleucid empire intact during their reign. All this changed when the Parthians were ousted by the Persian Sassanids in 236 CE.

Question 22

Who was Peisistratus and how did he clear a way for Cleisthenes?

Answer 22

An Athenian aristocrat who exploited incessant internal feuding to seize power in a popular coup in 560 BCE, initiating land reforms on behalf of the poor. His son was a tyrant who was increasingly harsh, eventually leading to his own overthrow by Cleisthenes in 507 BCE.

Question 23

What were some of the factors that caused Athens to become the dominant city-state in Greece during the 5th century BCE?

Answer 23

Athens invested in a powerful navy following its victory over the Persians at Marathon in 480 BCE. It also acknowledged the increasing importance of its oarsmen following an impressive naval victory over the Persians at Salamis in 490 BCE. Increasing dominance of trade routes, colonization, the discovery of silver, and the creation in 477 BCE of the Delian League made Athens the dominant power in Greece. The statesman Pericles presided over a “Golden Age” of Athenian prosperity (451 - 429 BCE) and cultural preeminence.

Question 24

What were the reforms enacted under the Athenian statesman Pericles?

Answer 24

He consolidated the democratic “constitution” by compensating the poorer citizens for their time on jury service or attending the ecclesia, and limited citizenship to those with two Athenian parents.

Question 25

What was the first example of ancient Greek script and what happened to it during Greece’s “Dark Age”.

Answer 25

“Linear B” was the first known example of Greek writing. However, during the “Dark Age” from c. 1100 to 750 BCE, the Greeks seemed to have lost their written language.

Question 26

What two key developments arose after the “Dark Age” from c. 1100 BCE to 750 BCE?

Answer 26

The Greeks developed their own alphabet and writing and began to record events as history rather than as poetry, folklore, or myth.

Question 27

Who was Homer?

Answer 27

Homer was ancient Greece’s most famous poet and an important figure in the transmission of Western history. Although he probably never personally wrote down his famous poems, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, they were later recorded after several intervening years of oral history. His poems were a mixture of folklore, myth, and (perhaps) fact. He is believed to have lived between the 8th and 7th centuries BCE.

Question 28

Who was Hecataeus of Miletus?

Answer 28

Hecataeus (c. 550 - 469 BCE) was an ancient Greek was is considered by some to be the first history writer. Breaking from previous traditions of fact mixed with folklore, one of his works is a written account of stories that had been passed down orally, while another works is a record of local family genealogies.

Question 29

Who was Simonides?

Answer 29

Simonides (c. 556 - 469 BCE) was one of the first ancient Greek writers who referred to the Persian invasion of 480 BCE in one of his poems.

Question 30

Who was Thucydides?

Answer 30

An ancient Athenian writer (c. 460 - 400 BCE) who most famously wrote “The History of the Peloponnesian War”, written in 41 books, which recounted the war between Athens and Sparta. As well as recounting the events, this work also examined the causes of the war and the moral issues it raised. A striking characteristic of his writing is the use of long speeches rewritten to express Thucydides’ own opinion. Despite such embellishments, Thucydides is largely considered a father of history alongside Herodotus.