History of Ideas: Western World Exam Review
Course Introduction
This course explores the major intellectual currents that have shaped the Western world from antiquity to the modern era. Through the study of influential philosophers, scientists, writers, and political thinkers, students will trace the development of concepts such as rationalism, empiricism, humanism, individualism, and democracy. By examining primary texts and historical contexts, the course analyzes how ideas about knowledge, society, morality, religion, and the self have evolved over time and influenced Western culture, institutions, and identities. Students will gain a deeper understanding of the interplay between thought and historical change, fostering critical engagement with the legacy of Western intellectual traditions.
Recommended Textbook
Western Heritage The Volume 1 11th Edition by Donald M. Kagan
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14 Chapters
1118 Verified Questions
1118 Flashcards
Source URL: https://quizplus.com/study-set/1198
Page 2
Chapter 1: The Birth of Civilization
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80 Verified Questions
80 Flashcards
Source URL: https://quizplus.com/quiz/23714
Sample Questions
Q1) For people of the Mideast, humanity as a group was viewed as ________.
A) able to control nature
B) needing to serve themselves
C) having been the cause of most disasters
D) inseparable from and unable to understand nature
Answer: D
Q2) The Israelites lost to history became known as the ________.
A) twenty lost tribes
B) ten lost tribes
C) scattered groups
D) lost groups
Answer: B
Q3) Egyptian history is traditionally divided into thirty-one royal dynasties, starting with that of Menes and ending with the one established by ________.
Answer: Alexander the Great
Q4) The most famous colony founded by the Phoenicians was that of ________, near modern Tunis in North Africa.
Answer: Carthage
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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) Which of the following is a long-lasting contribution that tyranny made to the development of Greek civilization?
A) increased communication with the rest of the Mediterranean world
B) cultivated arts and literature
C) broke the grip of the aristocracy and gave power to talented citizens
D) All of these are correct.
Answer: D
Q2) Which of the following is true of the tyrant of Miletus, Aristagoras?
A) He urged a Persian expedition against the island of Naxos.
B) He turned to the mainland states for help.
C) He organized the Ionian rebellion of 499 b.c.e.
D) All of these are correct.
Answer: D
Q3) The highest virtue in Homeric society was ________.
Answer: arete
Q4) ________ was the writer of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Answer: Homer
Q5) The Greek polis was thought of as a community of ________.
Answer: relatives
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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 Empedocles, what two primary forces move the four basic elements, fire, water, earth, and air that compose our universe?
A) love and strife
B) gods and magic
C) chaos and order
D) humans and gods
Answer: A
Q2) Dramatists such as Aeschylus and Sophocles are considered prime examples of what genre of Greek writing?
A) drama
B) Old Comedy
C) tragedy
D) New Comedy
Answer: C
Q3) When the great Theban general ________ was killed at the Battle of Mantinea, Theban dominance died with him.
Answer: Epaminondas
Q4) ________ was considered to be the ablest king in Macedonian history.
Answer: Philip of Macedon
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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) Because they thought he was trying to make himself into a king and abolish the Republic, a conspiracy led by Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Brutus assassinated ________.
Q2) Julius Caesar's assassins included ________.
A) Brutus
B) Crassus
C) Cleopatra
D) Pompey
Q3) Censors had an important role in the early Republic.They had the power to ________.
A) black out passages from private communication
B) destroy books
C) light fires for incense in the temple
D) remove senators for moral impropriety
Q4) Upper class Roman women had ________ compared with women in classical Greece.
A) less power and influence
B) more power and influence
C) more incentive to bear twins
D) more responsibilities to the state
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Q5) Was Rome part of the Hellenistic world? Support your answer with details.
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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) In 311, Galerius issued the Edict of Toleration, permitting Christian worship.He was perhaps influenced by ________.
A) divination at Delphi
B) his Christian wife
C) Jewish advisors
D) Christian music
Q2) Jesus of Nazareth was named christos by his followers, meaning "________."
Q3) Diocletian and Decius attacked Christians for what reason?
A) Christians threatened internal security.
B) Christians threatened imperial authority.
C) Christians sparked several small uprisings.
D) Christians were already declining in numbers.
Q4) ________ was a cruel and vicious emperor whose bizarre actions made many suspect he was insane.
A) Caligula
B) Claudius
C) Nero
D) Nerva
Q5) 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) The Viking Leif Erikson traveled as far west as ________.
A) Jamestown
B) New Brunswick
C) Newfoundland
D) Nova Scotia
Q2) For centuries, the major texts on medicine in the Western world were compilations of work by ________ scholars.
Q3) Charlemagne created a center of learning in ________, where pure scholarship was taught alongside administrative skills for royal bureaucrats.
A)Aachen
B)Paris
C)Arles
D)Rome
Q4) ________ wrote Rule for Monasteries, which laid out a schedule that accounted for every moment in a monk's day.
Q5) ________ is defined as the opposition to the use of images in Christian worship.
Q6) What were the main contributions of the Franks to Western civilization?
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Q7) St.Cyril and his brother developed the Cyrillic alphabet, which was used for the written language of the ________.
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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) Annates were a ________.
A) tax on land
B) type of pilgrimage
C) yearly tribute paid by the popes
D) fee paid to the church
Q2) Which of the following measures did the Constitutions of Clarendon impose?
A) They put limits on judicial appeals to Rome.
B) They absolved the clergy from the civil courts.
C) They stripped the king of control over the election of bishops.
D) They established a "clerical tax."
Q3) What distinguished the Franciscans from the heterodox movements?
A) their focus on living simply
B) a desire to follow Christ's example
C) their emergence from a backdrop of intense religiosity
D) Franciscan operation within the church hierarchy
Q4) The High Middle Ages witnessed the peak of Romanesque art and the transition to ________.
Q5) The ________, introduced into southern France by Pope Gregory IX, created a formal tribunal to detect and punish heresy.
Q6) ________ were the least secularized and most spiritual of the church's clergy. Page 9
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Page 10
Chapter 8: Medieval Society: Hierarchies, Towns,
Universities, and Families (1000 1300)
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80 Verified Questions
80 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Refer to "The Joys and Pains of the Medieval Joust" and "Encountering the Past: Children's Games, Warrior Games." Why did the medieval nobility play warlike games? How did medieval women and children participate in these pastimes?
Q2) The first recognizable university in Europe was at ________.
A) Paris
B) Oxford
C) Berlin
D) Bologna
Q3) Which of the following social groups emerged after the revival of towns in the eleventh century?
A) the landed nobility
B) the clergy
C) the peasantry
D) long-distance traders and merchants
Q4) Compare the functions and status of the nobility and clergy in medieval society.Were the two comparable?
Q5) How did economic and intellectual change introduce challenges to the traditional concept of medieval society? How did elites respond to these challenges?
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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
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of these was true of the impact of the Schism and the Black Death?
A) They occurred a century apart and were unrelated.
B) Both had the effect of undermining the church.
C) Both fatally weakened monasticism.
D) They both tended to strengthen the peasantry.
Q2) The nobles lost power relative to other groups in the wake of the plague because they were the ______.
A) largest landowners
B) most devout Christians
C) most malnourished
D) most influenced by the famines of the early 1300s
Q3) Centuries of Christian propaganda had bred hatred toward _________, and they were therefore cast as scapegoats for the spreading plague.
Q4) How did the Hundred Years' War contribute to the growth of nationalism and the centralization of political power in both France and England?
Q5) 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 12
Q6) The _____________ was a French tax, levied directly on the peasantry.
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Chapter 10: Renaissance and Discovery
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80 Verified Questions
80 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) Between the newly acquired Burgundian lands and his own inheritance, King Louis XI was able to end his reign with a kingdom almost ________ the size of that he had inherited.
Q2) ________ is a reaction to the simplicity of High Renaissance art and made room for the strange and the abnormal, giving freer reign to the individual perceptions and feelings of the artist, who now felt free to paint, compose, or write in an "affected" way.
Q3) King Louis XI shared conquered Burgundian lands with ________.
A) Habsburg emperor Maximilian I
B) Isabella of Castile
C) Ferdinand of Aragon
D) Charles the Bold
Q4) The term "Machiavellian" has become synonymous with ________.
A) tools made by machinists
B) ruthless political expediency
C) welfare policies
D) slow decision-making
Q5) In Jiménez's Complutensian Polyglot Bible, Hebrew, Greek, and ________ appeared together.
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Chapter 11: The Age of Reformation
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78 Verified Questions
78 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) 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.
Q2) The Reformation in Zurich was led by ________.
A) Ulrich Zwingli
B) John Calvin
C) Philip III
D) Blaise Pascal
Q3) Established in mid-sixteenth-century Geneva, ___________ believed strongly in both divine predestination and the individual's responsibility to reorder society according to God's plan.
Q4) The Jesuit order, which was essential to the Counter-Reformation's success, was founded by __________.
Q5) Luther's ninety-five theses ________.
A) earned him a position teaching at Wittenburg University
B) had little real impact
C) sparked the Reformation in Germany
D) expressed his belief that salvation could be bought and sold
Q6) The __________ first met in 1545 to reform the Catholic Church, but made no doctrinal concessions to the Protestants.
Page 14
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Chapter 12: The Age of Religious Wars
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80 Verified Questions
80 Flashcards
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Sample Questions
Q1) 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
Q2) Examine in detail the balancing act the French monarchy performed between the French Catholics and the Huguenots.What position did each monarch take? Why? What can you conclude as you examine the link between politics and religion? How did these events lead to the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre? Could this incident have been avoided? Explain.
Q3) How did religious conflict in Europe evolve over the course of the second half of the sixteenth century?
Q4) The ruler of Spain for most of the later 1500s was _________.
A) Philip II
B) Ferdinand I
C) Charles V
D) Carlos I
Q5) Many French aristocrats found ______________ religious convictions useful to their political goals.
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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) When James II became king, he immediately demanded the repeal of the
Q2) The Militia Ordinance gave the English Parliament the power to ________.
A) raise its own army
B) raise or lower taxes
C) dissolve the monarchy
D) house soldiers in the homes of citizens
Q3) Charles I might have ruled indefinitely without Parliament had his religious policies not provoked war with ________.
A) France
B) Ireland
C) Spain
D) Scotland
Q4) According to advocates of the "divine right of kings," kings could be judged only by ________.
A) God
B) the nobility
C) the people
D) fellow kings
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Q5) Under Hohenzollern rule, ________ were allowed almost complete control over the serfs on their estates.
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Page 17
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) Which of the following is Tycho Brahe's major contribution to science?
A) He created a vast body of astronomical data from which his successors could work.
B) He did groundbreaking scientific research in which he suggested that Mercury and Venus revolved around the sun.
C) He proved Copernicus's research incorrect and published his own geocentric findings.
D) He proved that the moon and other planets revolved around the earth.
Q2) The greatest example of empiricism is shown by the work of ________.
A) Blaise Pascal
B) Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler
C) Thomas Hobbes
D) Ptolemy
Q3) Maria Winkelmann made her contributions in the field of ________.
A) natural history
B) medicine
C) astronomy
D) biology
Q4) The assumption that the earth moved about the sun in a circle is known as the ________________ model.
Page 18
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