CLST 277: The World of Late Antiquity Spring Semester 2011 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 a 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 and how you can best use it to pursue historical inquiry (each passage will yield a medium-sized quantum of credit, but the passages 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. (Of course you have to have studied the realities and formed the ideas for the talk to have any validity, but that's what course-work entails: the exam is an instrument for verifying your labors in the course.) 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. By explaining, on an exam, how the relationship between evidence, fact, and understanding works, you demonstrate you can draw the connections that make your knowledge matter. Information that doesn't strengthen that explanation only gets in the way.
  • 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. Extra credit for extra answers, beyond the number of questions required, is very small compared to the benefit of improving your answers to the number of questions that are required. Only after you are sure you have answered the required questions well will it become truly worthwhile to go back and add on bonuses.
• Technical terms are handy, but the concepts technical terms label are what's truly important about them. Focus on the facts of the late-antique world and on understanding (for the purposes of an exam, on explaining) how historical ideas, events, and forces functioned.
• 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, the consulate
• 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), asceticism, 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
• 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, the Itinerary of Egeria, and Claudian's Panegyric for Probinus and Olybrius
• documentary and material sources we have used and information that helps assess them: e.g., imperial laws, conciliar rulings, funerary inscriptions, the Bordeaux Itinerary
• 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 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: 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 27 April 2011 by jlong1@luc.edu
http://www.luc.edu/classicalstudies/