Western Civilization I / Unit 4 WC1 0325 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Reading Pericles' Athens Against Its Own Ideals
The idea
The exam's passage questions often quote praise of Athenian democracy and ask what it assumes or omits. The method is to list who the praise includes and set it against the anchor's four exclusions: women, free non-citizens, slaves, and allies. The funeral oration Thucydides gives Pericles is the classic passage, read in translation.
In practice
Take the oration's claims one at a time. The claim that Athens is a model to others and a democracy in the hands of the many. Who is the many: adult male citizens of two Athenian parents after four fifty-one, about ten percent by the anchor's count. The claim that poverty bars no man from service. True after pay for office, and true only for men. The claim that Athens is open to the world. True for trade, and paid for by allies who could not leave the League. The claim that its citizens are self-reliant in every pursuit. Silent on the enslaved third who did the work. Now the exam's question: what does the passage assume. Answer: that the polis is its male citizens, and that the empire, the women and the slaves lie outside the account.
Where people slip
Do not answer that Pericles was lying. The anchor calls Athens among the fairest governments of its world and then names the ironies; both halves stand. The passage assumes rather than denies.
Your place on the trail
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