1. Which society of the ancient world was most shaped by
actions of the state?
a. India
b. Rome
c. China
d. Persia
The answer is c. The Chinese state played an immense role in
shaping society, making it unique in the ancient world.
2. How did one become a state bureaucrat in China’s Han
Empire and later?
a. The candidate had to be the son of a state bureaucrat.
b. The candidate had to be trained as a scholar and then
pass a series of written examinations.
c. The candidate had to purchase office.
d. The candidate was chosen directly by the ruler from among
the state slaves.
The answer is b. The Chinese civil service system,
established in 124 B.C.E., required potential officials to be trained as
scholars and then pass rigorous examinations to qualify for office.
3. Which Chinese emperor ruled from 8–23 C.E. and divided up
great private estates and gave them to small peasant farmers?
a. Wang Mang
b. Wu Di
c. Po Chu-I
d. Qin Shihuangdi
The answer is a. Wang Mang tried to re-create a lost golden
age of small-scale peasant farmers, but opposition from great landowners helped
lead to his assassination in 23 C.E.
4. In which civilization did the state demand not just taxes
from peasants, but also labor service and two years of military service?
a. Rome
b. India
c. China
d. Greece
The answer is c. Chinese peasants suffered under the triple
burden of taxes, a month’s labor service every year, and two-year stints of
military service.
5. Which of the following statements is true of the Yellow
Turban Rebellion of the late second century C.E.?
a. It was a slave revolt.
b. It was a rebellion of several classes of society against government
mismanagement.
c. It was a desperate rebellion against religious
persecution.
d. It was a peasant uprising.
The answer is d. The Yellow Turban Rebellion was a massive
peasant uprising in China.
6. What was the attitude of the Chinese ruling elite toward
merchants?
a. They were regarded as an unproductive threat to society.
b. They were regarded as the most useful sector of society,
since the wealth they generated funded the state.
c. They were regarded as a pool from which to draw state
bureaucrats.
d. They were encouraged because merchants provided important
luxury goods for the elite.
The answer is a. China’s cultural elite widely viewed
merchants as unproductive people who made a shameful profit from selling other
people’s work and who threatened society.
7. Which of India’s four ranked classes (varna) was the
warrior and governing class?
a. Brahmin
b. Sudra
c. Kshatriya
d. Vaisya
The answer is c. The kshatriya varna were rulers and
warriors. (See section “Caste as Varna” in your textbook.)
8. What is an “untouchable”?
a. A member of an alien religion in India, considered as
ritually polluting.
b. A Hindu priest, regarded as so holy that commoners should
not even touch them
c. An elite warrior who had proven himself by defeating
three enemies without suffering a single wound
d. A very low caste category, whose members did unclean and
polluting work
The answer is d. The category of “untouchable” developed at
the bottom of Indian society, its members performed work so unclean and
polluting that even touching them would cause ritual pollution to other
Indians.
9. What is a jati?
a. One of the four great class divisions of Indian
civilization
b. One of the thousands of occupationally based groups in
Indian civilization
c. An Indian of such low caste that other Indians cannot
even touch him or her
d. The distinctive cord worn by members of the twice-born
castes in Indian society
The answer is b. Jatis were the thousands of social
groupings or sub-castes of India, defined by the occupations of their members.
10. Which civilization is distinctive for its emphasis on
ritual purity and pollution compared to other ancient civilizations?
a. China
b. Greece
c. India
d. Rome
The answer is c. Indian society was structured around the
notion of ritual purity and pollution in relations with members of other
castes.
11. Which of the following statements accurately describes
India’s caste system?
a. As it developed, it became impossible for an individual
to rise in caste, but entire jatis could raise their standing in a variety of
ways.
b. Castes were fluid, and people could move to a lower or
higher caste based on their wealth and moral behavior.
c. Members of most castes could interact together freely,
including eating together; the only major retraction was on marrying together.
d. The caste system was eradicated with the political
reforms of the twentieth century.
The answer is a. Entire jatis could improve their standing
by gaining wealth or land, by adopting other behaviors, or by successfully
inventing an ancestor of higher caste.
12. Which of the following was an effect that the caste
system had on India’s civilization?
a. It encouraged unification, because caste membership went
far beyond the confines of particular villages or regions.
b. Since so many people were excluded from the caste system,
it created a massive class of the unprotected and destitute.
c. It encouraged rebellion, since the lowest ranks of society
felt they had no hope of winning a better position by peaceful means.
d. It made it easy to accommodate new peoples who arrived on
the subcontinent.
The answer is d. Various peoples arriving in India were
easily able to form their own jatis, thus finding a place in Indian
civilization while maintaining some of their original identity.
13. Which of the following statements is true of slavery in
the ancient world?
a. Only a few ancient civilizations practiced slavery.
b. All the First Civilizations practiced slavery, as did
almost all later civilizations.
c. Most ancient civilizations formally granted particular
rights to slaves.
d. Early slavery was usually restricted to men, who worked
in mines and on farms.
The answer is b. Almost all societies in the Americas,
Africa, and Eurasia practiced some form of slavery.
14. Slavery in which ancient civilization was relatively
small-scale and restrained, providing religious and legal protections for
slaves and encouraging masters to free slaves?
a. Greece
b. Rome
c. India
d. China
The answer is c. In India, both religious writings and
secular law stressed the duties of a master to care for slaves and encouraged
owners to free their slaves.
15. Which of the following ancient civilizations practiced
slavery to such a great extent that their society can be said to have been
based on slavery?
a. Greco-Roman civilization
b. Chinese civilization
c. Persian civilization
d. Indian civilization
The answer is a. The Greco-Roman world practiced slavery on
a massive scale, to the extent that the institution defined the economy and
much of the society.
16. Which ancient philosopher developed the idea that some
people are “slaves by nature” and should be enslaved for their own good and
that of society?
a. Confucius
b. Plato
c. Aristotle
d. Laozi
The answer is c. Aristotle’s notion that some people are
“slaves by nature” both reflected a strand of Greek thought of his time and had
a profound impact on later slave-holding societies.
17. It is estimated that in the heartland of this ancient
civilization, between 33 and 44 percent of the population were slaves.
a. China
b. Teotihuacán
c. Maya
d. Rome
The answer is d. The Roman Empire was the largest-scale
practitioner of slavery in world history until the modern slave societies of
the Caribbean, Brazil, and the southern United States, slaves amounting to
33–40 percent of their Italian homeland.
18. Which of the following led a major slave rebellion
against Rome?
a. Spartacus
b. Cicero
c. Crassus
d. Augustine
The answer is a. The slave gladiator Spartacus was the
leader of a slave rebellion against Rome in 73–71 B.C.E.; he attracted perhaps
120,000 followers and won several victories against Roman armies.
19. What effect did Spartacus’s rebellion have on Rome?
a. It led to a new philosophical questioning of the morality
of slavery.
b. It created fear in the minds of slave owners but did not
affect the institution of slavery.
c. It led to free men rather than slaves fighting as
gladiators, as Roman slave owners came to fear giving military training to
slaves.
d. It led to strict regulations limiting the number of
slaves a single master could own.
The answer is b. Spartacus and his followers just wanted to
escape slavery rather than overthrow the institution, so they had little effect
on slavery, although they certainly roused fears in slave owners.
20. In general, when were patriarchies least restrictive for
women?
a. Late in civilizations, when states were firmly
established and warrior skills were less necessary
b. Patriarchies were always restrictive to about the same
degree.
c. During times of upheaval
d. During times of peace
The answer is c. When established patterns of male dominance
were disrupted by invasion or other social upheaval, women usually were able to
obtain more prominent public roles.
21. Which civilization practiced very strong patriarchy,
believing that the yang or male principle denotes strength, rationality, and
light, while the yin or female principle was associated with weakness, emotion,
and darkness?
a. India
b. Persia
c. Greece
d. China
The answer is d. The Confucian ideology of China came to
define the cosmos in terms of the unequal male-female pairing of yang and yin.
22. Which of the following factors helped improve the
position of Chinese women?
a. At least elite women brought dowries with them to
marriage, which gave them some leverage in the family.
b. They formed political action groups and even engaged in
rebellions against male dominance.
c. Confucius taught that men should love their wives and treat
them well.
d. Several woman rulers led men to appreciate female
intelligence and ability to act.
The answer is a. In China, dowries were regarded as the
wife’s own property, giving her some leverage within the marriage.
23. At what period in Chinese history did patriarchy weaken,
giving females some property rights and giving women a growing role in both
Daoism and Buddhism?
a. Han dynasty
b. Tang dynasty
c. Song dynasty
d. Qin dynasty
The answer is b. The Tang dynasty (618–907) saw a
significant weakening of patriarchy in China.
24. Which of the following statements best describes the
position of women in ancient Athens?
a. Men played such an active role in warfare that women
undertook important tasks to run families and businesses.
b. Women were subordinate to men, but had the right to own
property and conduct legal matters.
c. Women suffered great limitations, and were not allowed to
take part in legal matters or the city’s political life.
d. Women were the legal equals of men.
The answer is c. Athenian women had to be represented by a
man in legal matters and had no role at all in the assembly.
25. Which ancient Greek philosopher described woman as an
inadequate and infertile male who plays only a passive role in reproduction and
is incapable of rational thought?
a. Aristotle
b. Plato
c. Aeschylus
d. Demosthenes
The answer is a. Aristotle believed that women are
incomplete men, incapable of rational thought and not even equal partners with
men in reproduction.
26. This woman was the mistress of Athenian statesman
Pericles; she is a rare example of an educated woman who played a public role
in Athens.
a. Cassandra
b. Aspasia
c. Hypatia
d. Lysistrata
The answer is b. The foreign-born Aspasia became Pericles’s
long-term mistress and played a surprisingly active role in Athenian cultured
circles.
27. This state created a highly militaristic regime in which
boys were removed from their families at the age of seven and raised in
military camps, where they remained until age thirty.
a. Athens
b. Rome
c. Assyria
d. Sparta
The answer is d. Sparta defeated and repressed its
neighbors, creating a system that called for constant vigilance and total focus
of the citizen population upon war, including the separation of boys from their
families at age seven for military training.
28. What did the rest of the Greek world think about Spartan
women?
a. They regarded Spartan women as the model of feminine
beauty.
b. They were shocked by how much work Spartan men made their
women do.
c. They were shocked that women controlled land, lived
luxuriously, and wore immodest clothing.
d. They were impressed at the accomplishments of Spartan
women and soon began to allow their own women similar opportunities.
The answer is c. The freedom given to Spartan women was
appalling to Greeks from other regions.
29. What was a helot?
a. A conquered, semi-enslaved subject of Sparta
b. A member of the Spartan military class
c. A lover of Greek culture
d. A Greek courtesan
The answer is a. Sparta conquered its neighbors and made her
new subjects, called helots, virtual slaves.
30. In classical Athens,
a. the growth of democracy was accompanied by the
simultaneous growth of slavery on a massive scale.
b. a slave who was freed by his or her master became a
citizen of the city-state.
c. slaves made up no more than 3 percent of the total
population.
d. slavery was criticized by the greatest of the Greek
philosophers including Aristotle, and was ultimately outlawed in society as a
whole.
The answer is a. In one of history’s great ironies, Athens
simultaneously saw the birth of ideas about democracy and human freedom that
still have resonance today as well as a massive growth of slavery.
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