WACE Ancient History cheat sheet

Primary sources are artefacts, texts, inscriptions and sites produced in the period studied; secondary sources interpret them later and must be distinguished in any answer.

Source classification: written (literary, documentary, epigraphic), material (archaeological, numismatic, artistic) and environmental (pollen, ice cores, sediment) each answer different questions.

Literary texts survive mainly through medieval manuscript copying; the further from the original, the greater the risk of interpolation, omission and scribal error.

Inscriptions and papyri are usually contemporary and unedited, making them high-reliability for names, dates and administrative detail but narrow in scope.

Archaeology is non-intentional evidence: it records what people discarded or buried rather than what they wished remembered, so it corrects elite literary bias.

Stratigraphy and relative dating (seriation, typology) establish sequence; absolute dating relies on radiocarbon, dendrochronology and coin or pottery horizons.

Corroboration rule: a claim is strengthened when independent sources of different types agree; a single-source claim must be flagged as provisional.

Bias analysis separates the author's access (eyewitness or hearsay) from their interest (patron, faction, genre conventions such as encomium or invective).

Ancient economies are best described as agrarian and embedded: most production is household-based, with limited markets and redistributive palace or temple centres.

Social hierarchy markers include legal status (citizen, metic, slave), property in land, liturgical or tax obligations, and access to burial and civic dining.

Dependency categories differ: chattel slavery (Athens, Rome), helotage (Sparta), debt bondage (early Solonian Athens) and serfdom are not interchangeable.

Women's legal position varies by polis: Athenian women were represented by a kyrios, while Spartan women controlled land and were famed for economic independence.

Citizenship was typically descent-based and exclusionary; naturalisation was rare and honorific, as in Athenian decrees granting proxenia and later citizenship.

Taxation and liturgies (trierarchy, choregia) show that elite status carried compulsory public expenditure rather than only privilege.

Population estimates rely on tribute lists, grain imports, census fragments and cemetery counts, and carry wide margins of error.

Colonisation and trade networks moved grain, metals, oil and slaves; staple goods dominate bulk trade while luxuries mark elite exchange.

Athenian democracy after Cleisthenes (508/7 BC) rested on the Ekklesia, Boule of 500 (50 per tribe, sortition), and jury courts of 6,000 sworn dikasts.

Ostracism required a quorum of 6,000 votes and exiled a named individual for ten years without loss of property or citizen rights.

Sparta's mixed constitution combined dual kingship, the Gerousia (28 elders plus kings), the five annually elected ephors and the Apella assembly.

Roman Republican authority was distributed: consuls held imperium, tribunes of the plebs held sacrosanctity and veto, and the Senate controlled finance and foreign policy.

Charismatic autocrats (Peisistratus, Dionysius I, Julius Caesar) converted military or popular support into personal rule, often retaining republican forms.

Hellenistic kingship was legitimised through victory, benefaction, dynastic cult and the title Soter, Euergetes or Epiphanes.

Institutional legitimacy depends on accountability mechanisms: euthynai and audit at Athens, the provocatio appeal at Rome, and the ephorate's power to prosecute kings.

Succession crises are a structural weakness of hereditary monarchy; the Roman principate never solved the transfer of power, producing civil wars in 68-69 and 193-197 AD.

The Persian Wars (490 Marathon, 480 Thermopylae and Salamis, 479 Plataea and Mycale) checked Achaemenid expansion and enabled the Delian League.

The Delian League (478 BC) began as an anti-Persian alliance with tribute (phoros) and ships, and became an Athenian empire enforced by cleruchies and garrisons.

The Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) ended with Athens' surrender after Aegospotami (405) and the loss of empire, fleet and Long Walls.

Alexander's campaign (334-323 BC) defeated Persia at Granicus, Issus and Gaugamela; his death triggered the Wars of the Successors and the Hellenistic kingdoms.

Roman expansion used alliances, coloniae, roads and citizenship grants; the Social War (91-88 BC) ended with citizenship for Italian allies.

Punic Wars: Rome defeated Carthage in 264-241, 218-201 (Hannibal, Zama) and 149-146 BC, the last ending in Carthage's destruction.

Conquest transformed economies through tribute, slaves and land confiscation, and cultures through syncretism, bilingual administration and new cults.

Naval power depended on trireme crews of about 200, mostly rowed by thetes or allies, making sea power a democratic and financial instrument.

Evaluate reliability on four axes: date of composition relative to events, author's access, author's purpose, and corroboration by independent evidence.

Herodotus writes enquiry (historia) with ethnographic breadth and explicit attribution of competing versions; Thucydides claims autopsy and precision but selects and composes speeches.

Speeches in ancient historians are literary constructions reflecting plausible motives, not verbatim records; they reveal the author's interpretation.

Invective and encomium are genre conventions: Suetonius, Tacitus and the Historia Augusta moralise, while panegyric (Pliny on Trajan) flatters.

Silence is evidence: absence of a topic may reflect genre, lost sources or deliberate omission, not necessarily historical reality.

Numismatic and epigraphic evidence often corrects literary chronology, since coins carry dates, magistrates and imperial titulature.

Modern interpretations differ by framework (imperialist, Marxist, feminist, postcolonial); identify the framework before accepting a claim.

A strong evaluation states what a source can and cannot establish, then offers a calibrated conclusion rather than labelling a source simply 'biased'.