Social Sciences and History / Unit 5 SSH 0421 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Republic to Augustus: Sequencing the Collapse
The idea
The exam asks for the order in which the Republic ended, and the anchor's chapter gives the chain. Late sixth century BCE: the Etruscan kings overthrown, a republic founded. The Struggle of the Orders ends with plebeians equal under law; the Twelve Tables about four fifty BCE. Third century: Italy united by alliance, then Carthage and the Hellenistic monarchies crushed. Mid-second century: Rome dominant, its wars breeding social problems; the Gracchi; populares against optimates. Sulla marches on Rome twice and revives the dictatorship, retiring in seventy-nine BCE. Sixty BCE: the First Triumvirate of Pompey, Crassus and Caesar. Forty-nine: Caesar marches on Rome; forty-four: he is assassinated. Forty-three: the Second Triumvirate. Twenty-seven BCE: Octavian restores the Republic in form only, takes the name Augustus, and founds the principate.
In practice
Given the items Sulla's dictatorship, the Twelve Tables, Caesar's assassination, the principate, the order is Twelve Tables, Sulla, assassination, principate. Given "what legitimized Augustus", the traditions of republican government, the anchor's definition of the principate. Given "what he failed to create", an orderly succession.
Where people slip
The trap is placing the First Triumvirate after Caesar's civil war; the alliance of sixty preceded the war of forty-nine. The second trap is reading the principate as a restored republic; the anchor's key term calls it a military dictatorship legitimized by republican forms.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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