Western Civilization I / Unit 6 WC1 0524 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Sequencing the Republic, 509 to 31 BCE
The idea
The exam gives four Republican events and asks their order, and the span is nearly five centuries. The method is three anchors and two eras: five oh nine, the Republic's birth; one forty-six, Carthage and Corinth destroyed; thirty-one, Actium. Before one forty-six is the era of conquest; after it is the era of crisis.
In practice
Place seven events. The Twelve Tables in four fifty-one: conquest era, early. Cannae in two sixteen: conquest era, the Punic middle. Pydna in one sixty-eight: conquest era, shortly before one forty-six. Tiberius Gracchus in one thirty-three: crisis era, first. Sulla's dictatorship in eighty-one: crisis era, after the Gracchi. The Rubicon in forty-nine: crisis era, after Sulla. Caesar's death in forty-four: crisis era, after the Rubicon, before Actium. Read in order: Tables, Cannae, Pydna, Gracchus, Sulla, Rubicon, Ides, Actium.
Where people slip
The trap is the Conflict of the Orders. It ends about three sixty, with plebiscites law in two eighty-seven, both in the conquest era and before the Punic Wars. A question that puts plebeian gains after Hannibal is wrong. And the First Triumvirate in sixty precedes the Rubicon by eleven years.
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