Classical civilisation, context and background
What this domain tests
This domain tests your knowledge of the institutions, events and social practices that illuminate Greek texts. You need chronological grip and precise terminology: polis, dēmos, oikos, ekklesia, boulē, dikastēria, gerousia, ephors. Context should explain a text, not be recited separately from it.
Core rules
- Know Athenian democracy’s main organs: the assembly (ἐκκλησία), the Council of 500 (βουλή), the jury courts (δικαστήρια), sortition and pay for office.
- Know Sparta’s differences: dual kingship, gerousia, ephors, military upbringing and helotry.
- Place the Persian Wars and Peloponnesian War securely: Marathon 490, Salamis 480, Plataea 479; the Delian League’s transformation into an Athenian empire; the war of 431–404.
- Understand religion and festival as civic activity: Panathenaia, Dionysia, Eleusinian Mysteries, sacrifice and choruses.
- Distinguish citizens, metics, slaves and women, and avoid flattening their roles into modern categories.
Worked example
A passage mentions ψῆφος and ἐκκλησία. Contextual explanation: the assembly met on the Pnyx and usually voted by show of hands (χειροτονία), but secret ballots (ψῆφοι) were used for ostracism and some judicial decisions. Ostracism required a quorum of 6,000 votes. This explains why a speaker may address the dēmos simultaneously as legislature and as jury, and why rhetoric appeals to collective judgement.
Traps that cost marks
Anachronism-political parties, modern democracy, “public opinion”; treating Athens as all Greece; assuming women had no religious role; ignoring chronology; and using Greek terms loosely without definition.