Ancient history and civilization (Greece and Rome)
What the exam tests
This domain tests chronological and institutional knowledge: Greek city-states, the Roman Republic and Empire, and the social structures behind political events. Dates matter, but so do causes and functions.
Core framework
- Greek polis: citizenship, assemblies, magistrates, cults. Athens: Solon, Cleisthenes, Ephialtes/Pericles; democracy included adult male citizens, not women, slaves, or metics. Sparta: dual kings, gerousia, ephors, agoge.
- Persian Wars: Marathon 490, Salamis 480, Plataea 479. Delian League became an Athenian empire; Peloponnesian War 431–404.
- Alexander 336–323; Hellenistic kingdoms after his death.
- Rome: traditional founding 753 BC; monarchy to 509 BC; Republic with consuls, senate, tribunes, and assemblies; conflict of orders; Punic Wars 264–241, 218–201, 149–146.
- Late Republic: Gracchi, Marius, Sulla, Caesar, Pompey; Caesar killed 44 BC; Actium 31; Augustus' Principate 27 BC.
- Empire: provincial administration, legions, citizenship; Constitutio Antoniniana 212 AD; Western Empire ends 476.
Worked example
Why did the Roman Republic collapse in the first century BC?
- The army became a career under Marius; soldiers looked to generals for land and pay.
- Generals marched on Rome (Sulla, Caesar), breaking the convention that armies stayed outside politics.
- The senate's competition and the tribunate's violence made compromise hard.
- Overseas empire enriched commanders and worsened land pressure, feeding the Gracchan crisis. This is a structural answer, not a single-date answer.
Traps
- Confusing 476 (Western Empire) with the end of the Republic.
- Treating Athenian democracy as universal suffrage.
- Mixing Greek and Roman magistracies: strategoi are not consuls; ephors are not tribunes.
- Giving a date without explaining what changed.