Rise of Rome

1. Why did the Romans expand nearly continuously throughout the Mediterranean world until the first century B.C.E.? What factors enabled this expansion? Please detail the stages of Roman expansion in your response.

2. What explains the instability that characterized Roman politics in the century following the Punic Wars? Why did republican institutions fail to produce the kinds of reforms and compromises that had resolved earlier political conflicts? How did the Gracchus brothers and Gaius Marius try to remedy this situation?

Roman Empire

3. In what ways was the power of the Roman army both the empire's greatest strength and one of its most important weaknesses?

4. What factors enabled Christianity to grow from a Jewish splinter group on the fringes of the Roman Empire to a significant religion with followers in most other regions of the Roman world by the year 300? Was this a sudden or a gradual transition?

Late Antiquity

5. Why did the Roman Empire in the East survive long after the empire in the West? Provide specific examples.

6. It is common to attribute the expansion of Christianity in the Roman Empire to the conversion of Constantine in 312. But in fact, this process was gradual rather than sudden. Why was this the case? Discuss the gradual Christianization of the Roman Empire from the reign of Constantine through the early sixth century.

Europe in the Early Middle Ages

7. What contributions did Muslim scholars and thinkers make to the development of European civilization?

8. Why did the Carolingians enter into a partnership with the Christian church? What role did Charlemagne play in this alliance? What effect did this collaboration have on western Europe?

9. What impact did the Viking invasions have on the areas in which they occurred? How were the Vikings themselves changed by their military success?