Western Civilization I / Unit 3 WC1 0229 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Reading a Map of the Persian Empire and the Greek World
The idea
The exam's map for this period shows the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia, and asks either what one shaded empire is or where a named event happened. The method is scale first: if the shading runs from the Aegean to the Indus, it is Persia, and everything Greek is a fringe of coast and islands on its western edge. Then place three Greek zones: the mainland with Athens and Sparta, the islands, and Ionia on Anatolia's west coast inside Persian territory.
In practice
Three questions. Where did the revolt of four ninety-nine begin: on the Anatolian coast, Ionia, the Greek zone inside Persia. Which region did Cyrus take in five forty-six, bringing Persia to the Aegean: Lydia, in western Anatolia, whose fall made the Ionian Greeks Persian subjects. Where did the Royal Road run: from Sardis in Lydia east to Susa, across the empire's whole width. Colonies dot the coasts of Sicily, Italy, the Black Sea and Gaul, never the interior.
Where people slip
A Greek map and a Persian map show the same coast at different scales. Check the scale bar before deciding whether a shaded area is an empire or a polis, and remember that Ionia is Greek in culture and Persian in rule from five forty-six to four seventy-nine.
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