History 1001 Ross Test 1

Aside from Homer's poems, the earliest Greek writing consists of:

Curses, official dedications, and lists.

For Thucydides, what was the meaning of the Peloponnesian conflict?

History was a contest for power, and the Peloponnesian conflict a case study of its abuse and the dire consequences of bad policies.

What role did Persia play in the Peloponnesian War?

It lent naval support to Sparta and financed the continuing Spartan war effort.

How did the Lycurgan code of life shape Sparta?

It militarized Spartan society.

What was the purpose of the Egyptian Book of the Dead?

It prepared the living for their encounter with the god Osiris after they died.

Why should Athenian democracy always be qualified as Athenian democracy?

It was complex and quite different from democracy today.

How did the economic basis of Greek life change During the Dark Age?

The Greeks relied less on sea trading and more on farming.

Why did the Persian incorporation of Lydia launch the Persian Wars?

The Persians needed clear access to the Mediterranean Sea.

The main religion of the Persian Empire at the time of its invasion of Greece was

a dualistic religion eventually systematized by the prophet Zoroaster.

Traditionally the first fixed date of ancient Greece is 776 BCE, when

a pan-Hellenic festival was convened at Olympia.

The Neolithic period connotes the move to what kind of society?

agricultural.

Which of the following best describes tyrants?

autocrats who seized power by force.

Çatal Hüyük was a

community of nearly a thousand rectangular houses in Anatolia.

What reforms did the statesman Solon institute in his attempt to deal with the social tensions in Athens?

debt relief and broader participation of the different Athenian orders in the political system.

Ostracism, which the Athenians introduced during the interwar years (489-481 BCE), was a

democratic technique for expelling dangerous individuals.

The first domesticated animal was the

dog.

The Assyrian and Babylonian attacks marked the beginning of the Diaspora, or

emigration of Hebrews from Israel to other lands.

Sumer was at the mercy of its

great rivers.

The original Egyptian script is called

hieroglyphics.

The soldier who stood in line with his fellows in the rectangular formation of infantry was called a

hoplite.

Sophocles' Antigone explores the nature of power and the danger of pride, or

hubris.

The Dark Age of Greece is so-called because

the Greece of this period left few material traces.

What important clue strongly suggests that Homer's poems really culturally belonged to the Greek Dark Age rather than the Mycenaean era?

the cremation of Homer's heroes.

Where did our species, homo sapiens sapiens, reach its basic form?

Africa.

Why did the Peloponnesian cities led by Sparta fight Athens in the Peloponnesian War?

Athenian imperialism threatened the city-state system of Greece.

What was the great Athenian mistake that led to the Peloponnesian War?

Athens thought it could rise above the balance of powers that produced the polis system of the many Greeces.

Why was Egypt more politically stable, confident, and self-sufficient than Mesopotamia?

Egypt's geography left it isolated and protected from frequent turmoil.

What is the chief characteristic of the "Mesopotamian model" of civilization?

Empires emerge from important cities and dominate and incorporate other cities and lands.

Why did the festival to the god Dionysus in Athens become another opportunity for civil and political discourse?

In the hands of the great playwrights, these tragedies probed universal human problems and, under their guise, contemporary Athenian crises.

Which of the following statements about the Greek alphabet is TRUE?

It appeared early in the eighth century BCE, adapted from the Phoenician alphabet.

In what way did Greece remake itself locally after the Mycenaeans?

Powerful extended families established themselves.

What happened after the cities of Mycenaean Greece were attacked and destroyed?

Some people still lived in the same locations, but not in the same style.

For the Greeks, the polis was what three things?

a built-up physical place, a territory, and a political community of citizens

After the death of King Solomon:

The kingdom was divided into two independent kingdoms

Why was Europe well behind the Near East culturally and economically?

The warmer Fertile Crescent blossomed while Europe still felt the effects of the Ice Age.

Why was there a rise in blood feuds between families in Greece after the time of the Mycenaeans?

There were few economic outlets and no larger governments or legal systems.

Why did the Hebrew civilization endure and remain largely immune to assimilation, unlike the other civilizations of the early ancient world?

They developed a singular religious identity and core beliefs.

Why were archaic Greek institutions like the Olympic Games or the sanctuary of the god Apollo at Delphi so important?

They mediated local differences between rivals, for the Greeks were deeply divided.

What was the purpose of the building of the Pyramids?

They were tombs for the rulers, to receive their bodies for the journey to the afterlife.

Why was God's renewal of the covenant with the Hebrews a defining moment in Jewish religious history?

With it the Hebrews had their own legally based and religiously sanctioned legal and moral code.

The most celebrated document to survive from the reign of Hammurabi is his famous

law code.

European hunter-gatherers of the period from about 35,000 to 15,000 years ago began to produce

objects with symbolic meaning.

In Mesopotamian society, writing was a tool that empowered

priests and rulers.

The Athenian demos held Pericles in high esteem because he

provided jobs, food, and diversions, and stroked their pride in their polis.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is not only the world's first great literary work, but an example of the meshing of

royal and religious persons.

Herodotus indirectly warned Athens about the dangers of

straying beyond its native land.

At the battle of Marathon in 490 BCE,

ten thousand heavily armed Athenian hoplites defeated the Persian force.

By studying Indo-European words, scholars have concluded:

that the original Indo-European speakers came from a northern region.

The wealth of the Mycenaeans came primarily from

trade and war.

The great epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey,

were retellings of older oral stories from the preceding Mycenaean Age.