Western Civilization I / Unit 18 WC1 1712 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Sample Question Five: The Principate
The idea
The fifth sample question asks what best describes the Roman Principate, offering Caesar's dictatorship after Pompey, Antony and Cleopatra's plan for Egypt, Sulla's settlement after the Social War, imperial government under Augustus retaining republican features, and a buffer state of Marcus Aurelius. The method is to match the word to its origin: princeps, first citizen, Augustus's title.
In practice
Caesar was dictator for life, not princeps, and died in forty-four before the Principate existed. Antony and Cleopatra's arrangement ended at Actium in thirty-one. Sulla's dictatorship of eighty-one predates Augustus by half a century and the Social War is a different matter. Marcus Aurelius created no buffer state. The Principate is the system Augustus built after thirty-one: one man holding tribunician power and imperium maius for life while consuls, Senate and assemblies went on existing as forms. The answer is imperial government retaining republican features, and unit 07 teaches it at 0602 and compares it with the Republic at 0627.
Where people slip
The trap is the word republican: every distractor names a real late-Republican figure, and only one describes the system that kept the Republic's institutions while emptying them. Augustus abolished nothing; that is why the sample question's phrase is retained.
Your place on the trail
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Builds on
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