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CLST 277-001: The World of Late Antiquity
Spring Semester 2026
Dr. Jacqueline Long
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 9:20am-10:10am
Dumbach 123 |
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Study Guide for Exam II
Format
The exam will have three parts; you will be offered some choice
within each part:
- cut-and-dried questions about basic factual information, including dates (small
credit per item, and a small component of the exam)
- primary-source selections: given an image or short passage from a late-antique
documentary or literary text we have studied, explain what knowledge and
understanding of late antique history and culture this passage helps you
to arrive at, and how - include pertinent facts about the source's
context and nature, but focus on the passage itself, the information
it contains, and your critical analysis: how you can best use the image or passage
to pursue historical inquiry (each item will yield a medium-sized
quantum of credit, but the items together add up to a major component of
the exam)
- essay: explore a historical problem, setting forth relevant, specific,
concrete evidence from late antique sources, explaining how to derive knowledge
and understanding from the evidence, and showing how the knowledge and
understanding inform your answer to the problem (the largest single item of
credit; a major component of the exam)
Things to study
We return again to where the final R, Review, of
SQ3R pays off its distinctive benefits.
Ideally, you have been preparing assigned material every meeting as the semester advances by Surveying
texts and forming preliminary Questions, then Reading, Reciting, Recording, Relating -and Reviewing too- so
that you have been ready to engage actively with class discussions and get the most out of those exchanges.
Now you come back to sort your consolidated, activated learning into a definite shape, as it has grown. For
any course, it helps you to understand what is important if you think about how the different elements of the
course-work serve the course-design. Review the objectives highlighted in the syllabus.
As you review your notes from assignments and class discussions,
think about how the things you have done each help realize goals the course is targeting:
this too is a form of Relating, and it is particularly helpful now. If you want to talk
about some of the connections, please come see me and talk. Organizing in your mind all
that we have done not only will help you on the exam, it will also carry you forward into
our new material.
Terms and items you should be able to identify, to comment upon, or to
refer to in a historical essay include, for example (and note, these lists are not exhaustive):
- geographical locations of important events and centers of significant
communities and activities: e.g., Amida, Antioch, Carthage, Cologne, Constantinople, Milan, Paris, Strasbourg, Thagaste, Thessalonica
- institutions of the Roman state and concepts and practices relating
to them: e.g., authority of the pontifex maximus, administration of justice,
public entertainment, the army, the court, high civil offices such as praetorian
prefect and urban prefect (what cities had them, when? and what did they do?)
- different kinds of communities within the Roman state and distinctive concepts
and practices relating to them: e.g., city councils or senates, riots, schools,
congregations
- important titles, terms, and concepts connected with Roman emperors: e.g.,
Augustus, Caesar, usurper, dynasty, purple, rescript
- important buildings and monuments in Rome, and their types as important
in Roman cities generally: e.g., amphitheater, circus/hippodrome, palace,
forum/agora, temple, basilica, church, triumphal arch, honorific column, obelisk
- important religious terms: e.g., libation, sacrifice, passion, martyr, confessor, deacon, catechumen, bishop
- literary texts we have used as sources, their authors, and other information
that helps assess the texts: e.g., Ammianus, Augustine,
Confessions,
Claudian,
The
Magnet and
The
Crystal
- documentary and material sources we have used and information that helps
assess them: e.g., Julian's Rescript on Christian Teachers, church canons relating
to women's religious activity, imperial laws
- major historical forces and actors we have traced, including social, intellectual,
and cultural history: e.g., religion, market-shortages, imperial paranoia, social class,
war, Neoplatonism, education, gender, visual art, individual emperors, usurpers,
warriors, Christians, and Manichees (as you review your notes from the readings and
from class, make a list)
Note: don't
hang up on memorizing technical terms. It is convenient to be able to identify
items swiftly, by name, but it is far, far more important to be able to
recognize, understand, and EXPLAIN CLEARLY how historical ideas, events, and forces
functioned in the late antique world, and how we can use the evidence that exists
in order to understand them.
Recommended
strategy: when you are thinking of big historical trends and developments, think of
specific facts that illustrate them, and when you are thinking of specific facts
and figures and pieces of evidence, think where they fit in to big historical
developments. Be able to explain how the big picture and the particular item connect
to one another. VITALLY IMPORTANT: reflect on how you know what you know, so that you can always
be ready to articulate it, and to explain your historical inquiry clearly. Consider why facts
matter, and be ready to show their consequences.
Moments, fields of
activity, and developments to follow - see also daily Study Questions from
before and after the mid-term break):
- the Constantinian dynasty after Constantine: who changed history, how, and how well did dynasty keep working?
- usurpations and their consequences; imperial fears of usurpation and their consequences
- ideals and expectations relating to Roman rulers
- operations of the Roman armies: specific campaigns, general tactics, and varieties of individual experience
- capital cities of the Roman empire and urban culture in them: specific incidents, and
facilities and practices relating to more general types of experience (geographical resources online include
AWMC Interactive map application
and ORBIS for reconstructing travel)
- social class: categories and the opportunities and expectations associated with each
- formal education in late antiquity
- Neoplatonism: fundamental concepts, intellectual background, and implications for pagans
and Christians
- families: social organization, relationships, and expectations current in late antiquity
- gender: late antique understandings, expectations, and standards of behavior for men and women
- demands Christian identity did or didn't put on attitudes to traditional Greek and Roman culture
- aesthetic values in late antique literature and art
