The Greek and Roman World: Historical, Social and Political Context
This domain tests your working model of Greek and Roman society - who held power, who laboured, how status and money worked, and how institutions changed. Questions typically ask you to explain a development, compare two states, or judge how far a source reflects political reality rather than idealised description.
Chronology you must control
- Archaic (c. 800–480 BC): the polis, colonisation, tyrants, early lawgivers.
- Classical (480–323 BC): Persian and Peloponnesian Wars, Athenian democracy, Alexander.
- Hellenistic (323–31 BC): successor kingdoms; Roman intervention in the Greek east.
- Rome: Republic (traditionally 509–27 BC); Principate from 27 BC; western Empire to AD 476.
Institutions to compare
Athens: ekklesia, Council of 500, jury courts, sortition, liturgies; citizenship limited to Athenian-born males, with metics, women and slaves excluded. Sparta: dual kingship, gerousia, five ephors, agoge, helots. Rome: consuls, senate, tribunes of the plebs, comitia, cursus honorum, patron–client networks; Augustus' position rested on auctoritas, accumulated offices and army command rather than a new legal title.
Worked example
Augustus, Res Gestae 34: 'I excelled all in auctoritas, but I possessed no more potestas than my colleagues in each magistracy.' Reasoning: first fix genre (autobiographical commemorative inscription erected after his death) and audience (citizens, provinces, posterity). Then separate the keywords: potestas is the legal power of an office, auctoritas informal weight. The sentence is evidence for how the Principate was presented as a restored Republic; it is not proof that Augustus' power was legally modest, since the same document lists continuous commands.
Traps
Anachronism ('emperor' for a Republican general); treating Athens as typical of all Greece; forgetting non-citizens.