Western Civilization I / Unit 18 WC1 1709 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Sample Question Two: Persia Against the Poleis
The idea
The second sample question asks for a significant difference between Classical Greece and Achaemenid Persia, offering Islam against polytheism, nomadism against agriculture, absolute monarchy against popular participation, slavery pervasive in Persia and outlawed in Greece, and Persian isolation against Roman influence on Greece. The method is to reject anachronism first, then the false contrast, then choose the one the course taught.
In practice
Islam did not exist for a thousand years, so the first option is anachronistic. Persia was an agrarian empire with cities and a road system, so it was not entirely nomadic. Rome influenced Greece after the Classical Age, not during it, so the last option is backward. Slavery was pervasive in the Greek city-states, more than in Persia, so the fourth option inverts the record, and unit 03's entry names it as the distractor. That leaves absolute monarchy under a king of kings against poleis where citizens voted, held office and fought as equals: the answer, and the contrast unit 03 teaches at 0219.
Where people slip
The exam wants the political contrast and offers the slavery inversion to catch students who think freedom-loving Greeks had no slaves. Persian leniency was a method of absolute rule, not participation, and Greek participation excluded women, foreigners and slaves; both halves hold.
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