AP World History Reading Guide
Chapter 4: Greece and Iran
Chapter Objectives: When you finish studying this chapter, you should
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Understand the historical development and the economic basis of the Persian Empire and be able to discuss the religious and political justifications for kingship and the mechanisms
that the Persians developed for successful administration of their extensive and diverse empire.
Understand the geographical, economic, and technological bases and the social structure of Archaic and classical civilization and be able to analyze the causes of the political
evolution that led to the polis and democracy.
Understand the causes and effects of the struggle between Persia and Greece.
Be able to analyze the significance and both the short-and long-term influence of Persian and Greek culture in the Mediterranean and western Asian worlds.
Section 1: Ancient Iran
1. What were the fundamental environmental factors in Iran?
high mountains at the edges, salt deserts in the interior depressions, and mountain streams crossing a sloping plateau and draining into seas or interior salt lakes
and marshes.
2. The Medes were the first Iranian people to do what?
The first to achieve a complex level of political organization
3. The king responsible for unifying Iran was who?
Cyrus
4. The three social and occupational classes in ancient Iran were?
warriors, priests, and peasants.
5. Cyrus and his father ruled their empires by following a practical approach of what?
cultivating local priests and notables and respecting native traditions.
6. The Persian provinces were administered by who?
Darius
7. Though Greek sources depict Persian women as political pawns, recent findings suggest that Persian women of the elite class did what?
politically influential, possessed substantial property, traveled, and were prominent on public occasions.
8. King Darius was remembered as a what? Because he created what?
Tradition remembered Darius as a lawgiver who created a body of “laws of the King” and a system of royal judges operating throughout the empire.
9. Under King Darius’ legal system, subject peoples in Persian territories were what?
decentralized characters
10. King Darius used art and sculptures to carefully craft a vision of a vast empire, where what happened?
a real event that transpired each year at Persepolis, but now they see it as an exercise in what today we would call public relations or propaganda.
11. What are the tenants of Zoroastrianism?
Darius and his successors
Section 2: The Rise of the Greeks
12. Although Greece is described as “resource poor” in this chapter, how did it prosper economically?
Greeks had access to foreign sources of raw materials and to markets abroad. Greeks were in contact with other peoples, and Greek merchants and mercenaries
brought home not only raw materials and crafted goods but also ideas.
13. What did Greek farmers find grew well in the dry environment of Greece?
Grain, grapevines, and olive trees
14. How did Greeks view the sea?
as a comfortable place
15. To ensure good crops, Greek farmers relied entirely on what?
rainfall
16. Lacking mineral deposits, the Greeks mined what?
Iron, gold, copper, tin
17. What was the Greek Dark Age?
When Greece and the whole Aegean region were largely isolated from the rest of the world.
18. When did the Archaic Period in Greece begin?
800 B.C.E.
19. Why was the Phoenician alphabetic writing system a great gift to Greece?
It was better than cuneiform and hieroglyphics and it was easy to learn.
20. What are the characteristics of the recovery of the Archaic Period?
Alphabet increases in population
21. The distinctive features of the polis were an acropolis and an agora. Acropolis and agora mean
Acropolis: top of the city, agora: gathering place
22. Hostility and jealousy between city-states led to the emergence of new types of warfare with soldiers called what?
Hoplites
23. What did the Greek population explosion lead to?
many communities sent excess population abroad to establish independent “colonies” in distant lands.
24. Why were coins significant?
Coinage allowed for more rapid exchanges of goods as well as for more efficient recordkeeping and storage of wealth
25. What is an oligarchy?
the exercise of political privilege by the wealthier members of society
26. What did the Greek concept of democracy include?
the exercise of political power by all free adult males.
27. How did the Greeks worship the gods?
States sponsored festivals and sacrifices.
28. The Greeks believed that their gods gave advice through what?
Sacred sites
29. What are the concepts of humanism, which was a lasting feature of Western Civilization?
Concepts are uniqueness, talents, and rights of the individual—which remains a central tenet of Western civilization.
30. What were pre-Socratic philosophers primarily concerned with?
They were primarily concerned with learning how the world was created, what it is made of, and why changes occur.
31. An example of the sophistication was the development of the theory that the world is composed of what?
Atoms
32. Who is the father of history in the western tradition?
Herodotus
33. What can the Spartan city-state be described as?
Military based community.
Section 3: The Struggle of Persia and Greece
34. What was the result of the Persian Wars?
Persian forces descended in central Greece.
35. What can be considered the symbol of Athenian naval success?
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
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44.
Trireme
What were wise men who provided lessons in logic and rhetoric known as?
sophist
Who are the three great Greek classical philosophers?
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle
What was an irony of Athenian democracy?
Is purpose being for the people to decide but most people weren’t allowed to
How does the Peloponnesian War reveal an inherent flaw in Greek society?
the independent polis, from one point of view the glory of Greek culture, was also the fundamental structural flaw because it fostered rivalry, fear, and mistrust
among neighboring communities.
What were the policies used by Alexander the Great to control his vast empire?
he established a series of Greek-style cities
What happened to Alexander the Great’s vast empire when he died.
the empire had been broken up into three major kingdoms
What were the “cosmopolitan” features of the Hellenistic societies?
It saw the rise of new institutions like libraries and universities, new kinds of scholarship and science, and the cultivation of sophisticated tastes in art and
literature.
What was the greatest of the cities in the Hellenistic Age?
Seleucids, and Ptolemies
What does the Hellenistic Age refer to?
the epoch ushered in by the conquests of Alexander