CLST 277: The World of Late Antiquity Spring Semester 2017 Dr. Jacqueline Long

Study Guide for the Final Examination

Format

• cut-and-dried identifications: basic factual information (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)

Strategy of effective exam-taking

• Remember that the goal an exam seeks is that you should display both KNOWLEDGE and UNDERSTANDING.
  • Vagueness, waffling, and obfuscatory language blur knowledge. Information in an exam-answer demonstrates that your ideas are valid because they are grounded in the realities you have studied and are being called upon to talk about. Anything that messes up the clarity of your information hurts your answer.
  • Conversely, however, an undiscriminating memory-dump of information undermines your demonstration of understanding. Information is useless until you relate it to particular concerns. On th exam, you need to draw the connections that make your knowledge meaningful. State what the evidence is. Show how you apply reasoning to it so as to identify the realities that generated that evidence. Show further how you connect facts together and reason so as to form understanding of why those facts matter: what does this ancient information tell you about how events happened and why people cared? Significance carries you both into a fuller understanding of the past and the possibility of applying your understanding to similar and related phenomena in the present and future.
  • In the demonstration of understanding as in the demonstration of knowledge, the more straightforwardly you present what you're saying, the more effectively you communicate. Keep it clear.
• Budget your time during the exam. No matter how perfectly you answer Question 1, if you don't answer Question A you can't earn any of Question A's credit.
• The exam includes more questions than you need to answer so that you can pick the questions you can answer best.
• Strategy in studying: when you are considering big historical trends and developments, think of specific facts that illustrate them, and when you are considering 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, citing concrete evidence and demonstrating its importance. Reflect on how you know what you know, so that you can always explain your historical inquiry clearly.

Things to study

Terms and items you should be able to identify, to comment upon, or to refer to in a historical essay include, for example:

• geographical locations of important events and centers of significant communities and activities: e.g., Adrianople, Rome, Milan, Alexandria, Callinicum, Thessalonica, Constantinople
• institutions of the Roman state and concepts and practices relating to them: e.g., military recruitment, "federate" status, treaties, Roman state priesthoods, the Altar of Victory, the authority of the pontifex maximus, state-supported professorships, praetorian prefects, the urban prefects of Rome and of Constantinople
• different kinds of communities within the Roman state and distinctive concepts and practices relating to them: e.g., "federate" tribes, the Roman army, the Roman and Constantinopolitan Senates, town councils, congregations (of various Christian sects and of other religions), monastic communities, ascetics and ascetic practice, pilgrimage
• important titles, terms, and concepts connected with Roman emperors: e.g., Augustus, Caesar, pontifex maximus, usurper, dynasty
• important buildings and monuments in Rome and other cities of the Empire, both specific edifices and their types more generally: e.g., amphitheater, circus/hippodrome, palace, forum/agora, temple, basilica, church, synagogue, triumphal arch, honorific column, obelisk, roads, bridges, aqueducts
• important religious terms: e.g., sacrifice, deacon, catechumen, priest, bishop, anchorite, eremitic, coenobitic, monk, proselyte, Gentile, penance
• literary texts we have used as sources, their authors, and other information that helps assess the texts: e.g., Ammianus, Symmachus's Referral 3, Ambrose's Letters XVII and XVIII and Letters XX, XL, LI, Augustine's Confessions, Athanasius's Life of Antony, and the Itinerary of Egeria
• documentary and material sources we have used and information that helps assess them: e.g., imperial laws, conciliar rulings, funerary inscriptions, the Bordeaux Itinerary, and the Acts of the Senate Concerning the Publication of the Theodosian Code
• major historical forces and actors we have traced, including social, intellectual, and cultural history: e.g., war, rebellion, ethnic difference, corruption, religious controversy (between different religions and between different varieties of belief or practice within a religious allegiance), the aspiration for holiness, Roman traditions, law, social class, gender, visual art, individual emperors, usurpers, military and civilian officials, Christians (ecclesiastics, monastics, and laypeople), pagans, Manichees, and Jews - as you review your notes from the readings and from class, make a list

Moments, fields of activity, and developments to follow - see also daily Study Questions:

• successions of Roman emperors after Julian, including mechanisms of election, dynasty, rebellion, and alliance
• usurpations and their consequences
• ideals and expectations relating to Roman rulers
• operations and relationships of Roman armies: specific campaigns and general tactics, recruitment, billeting on civilian populations, involvement in public works and enforcement of civil order
• foreign relations of the Roman state
• Rome and Constantinople as the preeminent capital cities of the Roman empire: institutions and societies
• social interactions in other cities of the Roman empire: specific incidents, and facilities and practices relating to more general types of experience
• 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
• developments in Christian asceticism and pilgrimage: ideals, understandings, and varieties of practice
• developments in structures of Christian ecclesiastical authority
• families: social organization, relationships, and expectations current in late antiquity
• gender: late antique understandings, expectations, and standards of behavior for men and women both in ordinary social contexts and in practices of religious discipline
• demands Christian and Jewish identity did or didn't put on attitudes to traditional Greek and Roman culture
• aesthetic values in late antique literature and art
• the legacy of Roman government and culture beyond late antiquity

Revised 24 April 2017 by jlong1@luc.edu
http://www.luc.edu/depts/classics/