Great Books of the Western World Study Guide Questions
Course Introduction
This course examines key texts from the Western literary and philosophical tradition, exploring works that have significantly shaped intellectual and cultural history from antiquity to the modern era. Readings may include classics from authors such as Homer, Plato, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and others whose writings address foundational questions about human nature, ethics, society, and the cosmos. Through close reading, discussion, and critical analysis, students will engage with enduring ideas and debates, developing an understanding of the themes, contexts, and continuing influence of these seminal works. The course fosters critical thinking, interpretative skills, and an appreciation for the diverse voices and perspectives that constitute the legacy of Western thought.
Recommended Textbook
Western Heritage The Volume 1 11th Edition by Donald M. Kagan
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14 Chapters
1118 Verified Questions
1118 Flashcards
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Page 2
Chapter 1: The Birth of Civilization
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80 Verified Questions
80 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) The Akkadian Empire was the first in history having a heartland, provinces, and a(n)
A) prince
B) aristocratic council
C) absolute ruler
D) monarch
Answer: C
Q2) About 2125 b.c.e.Sumerian ________ poems were composed, glorifying the deeds of the kings of Ur's ancestors.
A) religious
B) epic
C) lyric
D) elegy
Answer: B
Q3) What was revealed in the Code of Hammurabi?
A) the King's plans to conquer the Hurrians
B) a code of honorable military actions
C) a listing of King Hammurabi's secrets
D) a society divided by class
Answer: D
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Chapter 2: The Rise of Greek Civilization
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80 Verified Questions
80 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Miltiades, who had fled from Persian service, led the Greeks to a vital victory over the Persians at ________.
A) Tempe
B) Thebes
C) Corinth
D) Marathon
Answer: D
Q2) In some cities, the crisis produced by new economic and social conditions led to the establishment of a ________.
Answer: tyranny
Q3) Explain how the traditional translation of the word polis is misleading.
Answer: The traditional translation of the word "polis" as "city-state" is misleading because it does not fully capture the complexity and significance of the term in ancient Greek society. While "polis" does refer to a city, it also encompasses the surrounding territory and the community of citizens who lived there. The concept of the polis was not just a political entity, but also a social and cultural one, with its own laws, customs, and identity. Therefore, translating "polis" simply as "city-state" fails to convey the holistic nature of the term and its importance in shaping ancient Greek civilization.
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Chapter 3: Classical and Hellenistic Greece
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80 Verified Questions
80 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) According to the citizenship bill introduced by Pericles, citizenship was limited to those who ________.
A) were willing to serve in the Athenian army
B) had at least one citizen parent
C) had been born within the empire's borders and could pass the civic exam
D) had two citizen parents
Answer: D
Q2) Because the Stoics strove for inner harmony of the individual, ________.
A) their aim was a life lived in accordance with divine will
B) their attitude was upbeat and filled with optimism
C) their goal was to maintain intense involvement and interest in things going on around them
D) they employed wild and resistant methods
Answer: A
Q3) According to the ________ theory, the world consists of innumerable tiny, solid, indivisible, and unchanging particles, or "atoms," that move about in the void.
Answer: atomist
Q4) The Macedonian cavalry was made up of nobles and clan leaders called ________.
Answer: Companions
Page 5
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Chapter 4: Rome: From Republic to Empire
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80 Verified Questions
80 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Do you believe Caesar wanted to be king? What are the implications of your answer?
Q2) Rome's defeat by Carthage in 216 proved that ________.
A) Carthage had incurred disastrous debt
B) an alliance between the two powers was inevitable
C) Carthage would control the Mediterranean
D) Rome's control of Italy was not unshakeable
Q3) King Pyrrhus of Epirus defeated the Romans twice but suffered so many casualties that his career gave rise to the term, a "Pyrrhic _______."
A) ally
B) defeat
C) war
D) victory
Q4) Julius Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey formed a private political alliance known as the First ________.
Q5) After overthrowing their king, the Roman elite established their state as a ________.
Q6) Rome borrowed mythology, aspects of religion, philosophy, and literature from the ________; educated Romans were expected to be bilingual.
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Chapter 5: The Roman Empire
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80 Verified Questions
80 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Because Rome had a large early Christian population, and because Peter was thought to be first bishop of the city, ________.
A) Christians were expected to make a pilgrimage to Rome in their lifetime
B) subsequent bishops of Rome claimed leadership of the Catholic Church
C) Paul wrote an angry letter to Ephesus
D) emperors looked upon Christians as their wards
Q2) According to Cicero, laws should be ________.
A) local
B) fair
C) different for every ethnicity
D) universal
Q3) Although differences in doctrine had the potential to splinter the early Christian church into dozens of sects, a unity of belief and ritual was maintained by a ________.
A) single religious leader known as the pope
B) group of secret nuns
C) network of bishops
D) regular publication of current thought
Q4) Diocletian divided the empire into four parts, led by a quartet known as the ________.
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Chapter 6: Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages:
Creating a New European Society and Culture (476 1000)
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80 Verified Questions
80 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) ________ wrote Rule for Monasteries, which laid out a schedule that accounted for every moment in a monk's day.
Q2) Charlemagne created special royal envoys who would make visits to different districts as auditors because ________.
A) he suspected that local counts were secret Lombards
B) he hoped different bureaucrats would develop new innovations in administration C) he wanted to unify the state
D) local counts were becoming less loyal to the crown as they consolidated power
Q3) The Visigoths defeated Emperor ________ at the battle of Adrianople in 378.
A) Diocletian
B) Justinian
C) Tiberius
D) Valens
Q4) How did relations with Christianity's top religious officials affect the ambitions of political leaders? Give two examples citing different religious traditions.
Q5) ________ is defined as the opposition to the use of images in Christian worship.
Q6) In the fourth and fifth centuries, ________ barbarian tribes invaded the Roman Empire.
Page 8
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Chapter 7: The High Middle Ages: The Rise of European Empires
and States (1000 1300)
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80 Verified Questions
80 Flashcards
Source URL: https://quizplus.com/quiz/23720
Sample Questions
Q1) During his reign, Pope Innocent gave official sanction to two new monastic orders:
A) Augustinians and Jesuits
B) Franciscans and Dominicans
C) Albigensians and Dominicans
D) Dominicans and Waldensians
Q2) Otto I's victory over the Hungarians in 955 is most important for which of these reasons?
A) It ended the period of invasions.
B) It consolidated Otto I's control of Germany.
C) It created the Holy Roman Empire.
D) The victory brought Otto to the throne.
Q3) How did his pre-papal strategizing benefit Pope Alexander III in his struggles with Frederick I Barbarossa?
A) It ensured the fealty of the German duchies.
B) It meant he could count on the support of Sicily.
C) It arranged the neutrality of the Cluny monasteries.
D) It removed the divine right of the Hohenstaufen line.
Q4) Four months after crowning Otto of Brunswick emperor, ________ excommunicated him.
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Chapter 8: Medieval Society: Hierarchies, Towns,
Universities, and Families (1000 1300)
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80 Verified Questions
80 Flashcards
Source URL: https://quizplus.com/quiz/23721
Sample Questions
Q1) The nunnery was an option for single women from ________.
A) lower social classes
B) higher social classes
C) merchants and artisan families
D) all social classes
Q2) Entrance to a monastic life and marriage were alike for women in the Middle Ages because both ______.
A) required a dowry
B) could lead to divorce
C) were available only to upper-class women
D) were seen as preferable to the single life
Q3) Germanic law treated women better than ________ law had done, recognizing basic rights that forbade their treatment as chattel.
Q4) The first important Western university, established by Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa in 1158, was in ________.
Q5) Wergild payments can be used as evidence of _________.
Q6) Compare and contrast the treatment of women under Roman and German law.What legal rights, work opportunities, and life choices did these legal systems offer women?
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Chapter 9: The Late Middle Ages: Social and Political
Breakdown (1300 1453)
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80 Verified Questions
80 Flashcards
Source URL: https://quizplus.com/quiz/23722
Sample Questions
Q1) The price of the papacy's greater centralization of authority was _________.
A) declining popular support
B) the emergence of the College of Cardinals
C) diminished secular authority
D) the end of the Crusades
Q2) Peasant revolts in the period of the Black Death were triggered by ________.
A) attempts to reimpose pre-1340s economic conditions
B) anger at the disproportionate loss of life among the lower classes
C) religious ferment
D) the rapid growth of towns
Q3) The Treaty of Troyes in 1420 disinherited the legitimate heir to the French throne and proclaimed ________ the successor to the French king, Charles VI.
A) Henry V
B) Charles VII
C) Henry VI
D) Richard II
Q4) In addition to limiting wages to pre-plague levels, the Statute of Laborers passed by the __________ in 1351 restricted the ability of peasants to leave their masters' land.
Page 11
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Chapter 10: Renaissance and Discovery
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80 Verified Questions
80 Flashcards
Source URL: https://quizplus.com/quiz/23723
Sample Questions
Q1) How did the Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola convince the Florentines to allow King Charles VIII of France to enter Florence without resistance?
A) He told them that the king's arrival was divine vengeance on their immorality.
B) He promised to ask the king to leave all the land to the Florentines.
C) He explained that Charles VIII had only the best intentions for the Florentines.
D) He delivered a heartfelt speech on the merits of good international relations.
Q2) Endemic warfare between the pope and the Holy Roman Emperor ________.
A) was a boon for the landed nobility
B) had all but ended by the year 1000
C) assisted the growth of Italian city-states
D) had little effect on Italy
Q3) In 1500, the title "duke of Romagna" was given to ________.
A) French King Charles VIII
B) Ferdinand of Aragon
C) French King Louis XII
D) Cesare Borgia
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Page 12
Chapter 11: The Age of Reformation
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78 Verified Questions
78 Flashcards
Source URL: https://quizplus.com/quiz/23724
Sample Questions
Q1) Martin Luther was ordered to recant at the ___________ in April of 1521.
Q2) What meeting did Charles V call in which Protestant and Catholic representatives addressed the growing religious divisions within the empire in the wake of the Reformation's success?
A) the Council of Trent
B) the Marburg Colloquy
C) the Diet of Worms
D) the Diet of Augsburg
Q3) The Jesuit order, which was essential to the Counter-Reformation's success, was founded by __________.
Q4) According to Leviticus (18:16, 20:21), marriage to the wife of one's brother was prohibited by both canon and biblical law.Nonetheless, Pope Julius II issued a special dispensation allowing the marriage of Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII to occur.What does this dispensation reveal about the nature of papal powers and the relationship between church and state during this period? Cite specific examples from the appropriate section of the text.
Q5) Shakespeare wrote during the _________ Age.
Q6) How did the Peace of Augsburg affect the spread of Calvinism throughout Europe? Do you believe it acted as a driving or hindering force? Explain.
Page 13
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Chapter 12: The Age of Religious Wars
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80 Verified Questions
80 Flashcards
Source URL: https://quizplus.com/quiz/23725
Sample Questions
Q1) Which analogy is most accurate?
A) Bavaria is to the Catholic as the Palatinate is to Protestantism.
B) Belgium is to the Catholic as England is to the Calvinist.
C) Italy is to Counter-Reformation as Germany is to Anglican.
D) France is to the Catholic as Prussia is to the Calvinist.
Q2) The Treaty of Westphalia finally granted Calvinists _________.
A) legal recognition
B) the power to fortify their towns
C) the authority to gather in public
D) the permission to worship within the borders of cities
Q3) The Thirty Years' War began as a ________.
A) peasant uprising in Germany
B) trade war between Bohemia and Saxony
C) revolt of Bohemian Protestant nobility against an unpopular king
D) border dispute between Bavaria and Austria
Q4) French Protestants were known as ____________ and were under surveillance in France in the early 1520s.
Q5) By 1622, _____________ had not only subdued and re-Catholicized Bohemia, but conquered the Palatinate as well.
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Chapter 13: European State -Consolidation in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries
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80 Verified Questions
80 Flashcards
Source URL: https://quizplus.com/quiz/23726
Sample Questions
Q1) King Louis XIV made life difficult for ________.
A) royal officials
B) Huguenots
C) military leaders
D) Catholics
Q2) Explain Peter the Great's motivation for westernizing his empire.What actions did he take militarily and socially to make his citizens and administration more receptive to Western ideas and customs.
Q3) The Habsburg Empire can be described as ________.
A) small but cohesive
B) large but divided
C) strongly centralized
D) disappearing by 1700
Q4) Peter I came to power in Russia with the assistance of the _______.
A) streltsy
B) boyars
C) cossacks
D) Orthodox Church
Page 15
Q5) The Glorious Revolution placed _________ on the English throne.
Q6) Peter the Great replaced the position of patriarch with the ________.
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Page 16
Chapter 14: New Directions in Thought and Culture in the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
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80 Verified Questions
80 Flashcards
Source URL: https://quizplus.com/quiz/23727
Sample Questions
Q1) The Berlin Academy of Science denied Maria Winkelmann's application to continue her husband's study because ________.
A) she was a woman
B) her husband had died
C) her work was considered inferior to the work of other scientists
D) she had angered the upper level hierarchy of the Academy
Q2) During the era of the scientific revolution, _____________ knowledge was only in the process of becoming science as we know it today.
Q3) What percentage of people accused of witchcraft in the early modern period were women?
A) 80 percent
B) 100 percent
C) 50 percent
D) 10 percent
Q4) The learned societies that emerged in the 1600s are best described as ________.
A) forums for intellectual exchange
B) political clubs
C) social gatherings
D) closely linked to universities
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