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QLDAncient HistoryQuick questions
Unit 4: People, power and authority (sources, historiography and the External Assessment)
Quick questions on Sources, historiography and evaluating power: source analysis skills for QCE Ancient History Unit 4 and the External Assessment
2short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is the problem of the sources for figures of power?Show answer
The evidence for ancient figures of power is unusually difficult. Most surviving literary accounts were written decades or centuries after the events, by authors with their own agendas, and frequently from the perspective of the side that won. The losers rarely got to write the record. For the late Republic and early Empire, this means the dominant tradition reflects the victory and propaganda of Octavian, who needed Antony to look enslaved and Cleopatra to look a dangerous seductress.
What is distinguishing the figure from the legend?Show answer
Famous figures accumulate legend that obscures the historical person. Cleopatra the seductress, Caesar and the rolled-in-a-carpet story, the deathless one-liners (the die is cast, you too Brutus) are often later, dramatised or invented. The historian's task is to separate what the evidence supports from what the tradition has added. This means tracing a famous detail back to its source, asking how close that source was to the event, and being willing to say that a vivid story is legend rather than established fact.
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