HH215 MIDTERM EXAM STUDY GUIDE AND ESSAYS FOR TAKE-HOME (Abels)

Spring 2007

PARTS A & B WILL BE DONE IN CLASS ON THURSDAY, 3/1. THE ESSAY PORTION (PART C) MUST BE HANDED IN AT THE BEGINNING OF CLASS ON THURSDAY, 3/1. FAILURE TO DO SO WILL RESULT IN A GRADE OF 0 FOR THAT PORTION OF THE EXAM.

PART A. Chronology/Dates. 16 points. I will give you at least twelve of the following events and require you to place EIGHT of them under their proper dates on a timeline. 2 points for each right answer.

1. Darius’s Behistun Decree (online); Rome becomes a republic (approx date)/Cleisthenes establishes Athenian democracy (Craig, handout)

2. End of the Persian Wars; Confucius’s and (approximately) Buddha’s deaths (from Craig)

3. Beginning of Peloponnesian War/Pericles' 'Funeral Oration'

4. Socrates's trial and death (Craig, posting, handout, Morgan)

5. Death of Alexander the Great (year before death of Aristotle)/beginning of Hellenistic era (Craig)

6. Asoka ascends Mauryan throne (Craig)

7. China united by king of Qin who takes title Shi Huangdi (First Emperor); around beginning of Second Punic War (Craig)

8. Han Wudi comes to the throne of China (Craig); five years after end of the Third and final Punic War and destruction of Carthage (Craig)

9. Milindapanha composed (online posting); Marius opens Roman army to poor volunteers (leads to professionalism and political instablility as Roman generals become patrons to their client soldiers) (Craig; Abels online)

10. Caesar crosses Rubicon after conquering Gaul (Craig, online)

11. Julius Caesar killed/Cicero begins writing On Duties (Craig, online)

12. Octavian/Augustus 'restores' Republic. Beginning of the Roman Empire/Principate (Craig)

13. Beginning of Jewish Revolt/ two years after St. Paul's martyrdom during Nero's persecution of Christians (online Chronology of Christianity)

14. Agricola serves as governor of Britain during reign of Domitian (Tacitus intro)

15. Pliny writes to Emperor Trajan about Christians/Epictetus teaches Stoicism/height of the Pax Romana/a decade after Tacitus wrote Agricola (posting)

16. End of Han dynasty in China (Craig)

17. First general persecution of Christians under Emperor Decius in the midst of a period of political, military, economic, and social crisis in the Roman Empire (Chronology); highpoint of Sassanid dynasty in Persia (Craig); spread of Buddhism in China (Craig)

18. Constantine the Great converts to Christianity/year before Constantine's Edict of Milan legalizes Christianity and ends the last official Roman persecution of Christians (Chronology)

19. Constantine presides over the Council of Nicaea, defining orthodox definition of the Trinity (Chronology); around time Chandra Gupta establishes the Gupta dynasty in India (Craig)

20. Theodosius the Great prohibits celebration of pagan cults (same emperor who allowed Visigoths to settle within the empire after Roman defeat at Adrianople) (Chronology)

21. Alaric, a Visigothic chieftain (and Roman general), sacks Rome; Augustine begins writing City of God (Chronology)

22. Traditional date given for the end of the Roman Empire in the West

23. Law Code of Byzantine Emperor Justinian / end of the “barbarian” Northern Wei state in China (Craig)

PART B. Geography. 14 points: 1 for naming and 1 for locating on a map. Name and locate SEVEN (7) places on the attached map. I will give you ten from which to choose.

E.g.
Polis that lost Peloponnesian War/where Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle taught___________

Buddha’s and Asoka’s homeland ____________

Confucius’s homeland _____________

Emperor Constantine refounded Byzantium, a Greek city on the Bosporus, and renamed it ____________

Agricola was governor of this island province_______________

PART C (70 POINTS). TAKE HOME ESSAY PORTION OF THE EXAM.

You must hand in the essay at the beginning of class on Thursday, 1 March. Failure to do so will result in a grade of 0 on the essay and an F for the midterm. You may either type or handwrite the essay in a blue book. If you choose to do the former, plan on devoting roughly one and a half to two hours writing the essay. If you handwrite it, plan on about 60-75 minutes. (This assumes that you can write more quickly than you type.) If you do write, please do so legibly. You may discuss the topics with classmates before you begin writing or outlining your essay. Once, however, you have begun to write, you are to consult no one. The product is to represent your own understanding of the material.

This is an open-book exam. The essay does not need to be referenced, although it would help to tell me the work in which the idea appears, e.g. Plato’s Republic, Augustine’s City of God. If you quote verbatim, however, indicate it with quotation marks and tell me in the text whom or what you are quoting.

Write an essay on ONE of the topics.

GENERAL GUIDANCE

A) Each question requires you to analyze the worldviews of the authors you discuss. By 'worldview' I mean the basic understanding that one has of nature and its purpose, the nature of man, and man's place within the cosmos. (Part 1, chapter 2 of Craig gives a good overview of philosophy and religion in ancient China, India, Israel, and Greece which should be helpful in understanding worldviews.)

B) Each question requires you to understand the thought of the authors you discuss within their respective historical contexts. This means explaining how the values, culture, and social structure of the societies in which they lived and the historical circumstances they experienced influenced their ideas. Information on historical context can be gleaned from Craig, my postings on the web, and the introductions to the excerpts in the Andrea and Morgan readers. Essays that fail to attempt to place the authors into their historical contexts will earn a grade no higher than C+.

TOPICS

1. Plato's Republic, Confucius’ The Analects and The Great Learning, Cicero’s On Duties, Chinese Mahayana Buddhism, and St. Augustine's City of God can all be read as responses to contemporary social, political, and spiritual crises. Explain how three of the above attempted to address and solve the problems they perceived as afflicting their societies. In what ways were their solutions traditional (i.e. called upon traditional societal values)? In what ways were they revolutionary? What do these crises and solutions reveal about the basic similarities and differences among these three societies and their respective worldviews

NOTE: You may replace Confucius with Han Fei or Mencius; Plato with Thucydides (both his rendition of Pericles’ “Funeral Oration” and “the Melian Dialogue”); and Cicero's "On Duties" with Tacitus' Agricola.

2. Placing each within his historical context, explain how St. Augustine and Confucius (or Mencius) defined human excellence, good citizenship, and piety. Then compare their answers to those of ONE of the following: a) Plato, b) Asoka (supplemented by the writings of the Buddha and the Milindapanha), c) the Pirke Avot, or d) either Cicero or Tacitus.

Based on your comparison, what do you perceive to be the fundamental characteristics of and differences among the value systems and worldviews of your three authors?

3. Explain how three of the following: St. Augustine, Buddha, Epictetus, and Plato defined human happiness and virtue. For each, explain 1) how (or whether) an individual can obtain true happiness; 2) the relationship between 'happiness,' virtue, and 'human nature’; 3) the relationship (if any) between happiness, virtue, and citizenship; 4) and how the ideas of the three were influenced by their historical circumstances.  Based on your comparison of these individuals' ideas about happiness and virtue, what do you perceive to be the fundamental characteristics of and differences between these three value systems and worldviews?

4. Placing each within historical context, explain and compare St. Augustine’s, Plato’s, and the Hindu Bhagavad gita’s ideas about the causes and nature of war and the duty of soldiers. In doing so, explain what for each determined whether a war was just or not, what limits (if any) each placed on war-fighting, and what virtues each thought a good (in all senses of the word) soldier must possess. How did their ideas about war relate to their more general views about morality, politics, and religion? Finally, what does your comparison suggest about differences in the worldviews of early Christians, Classical Greeks, and Hindus?

NOTE: Your discussion of Christian, Greek and Hindu thought concerning war and soldiers must be based upon the assigned primary source readings in Morgan and on the web supplemented by Craig and other assigned secondary sources on these topics.

1) In discussing St. Augustine, you should show yourself familiar with Cicero’s ideas of just war, what the Gospel of Matthew and Paul to the Romans has to say about war and soldiers.

2) In discussing Plato (Republic, book 369b-375c, 466e-472a), you should show yourself familiar with Thucydides (the Melian Dialogue and Pericles’ “Funeral Oration”) and the poem of the Spartan Tyrtaeus, and, especially, how Plato’s ideas about war fit into his general political and moral philosophy..

3) You need to place the Bhagavad gita into historical context. The date of this text is uncertain, but most scholars would now date it to about 200 C.E., in the “post-Mauryan” period (see Craig).