Take this test on the Scantron form provided; it is due at the beginning of the class listed on the Class Schedule.
 

1. The overall purpose of the assigned selection from Ch. 2 of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is to: (a) describe the various components of Roman society (b) narrate the stories of Egyptian religion and Druidism in the Roman empire (c) explain the causes of Roman toleration to various religions (d) argue that Roman paganism was foolish

2. Gibbon's attitude toward the Roman empire in the time of Trajan and the Antonines in the selection is: (a) disinterested (b) admiring (c) unclear (d) condemnatory

3. The word edifice means: (a) structure (b) tooth-cleaner (c) hospital (d) marriage

4. The word beneficent means: (a) swervingly (b) flexibly (c) greatly (d) kindly

5. In the opening of the last sentence of par. 1--"They enjoyed the religion of their ancestors"--they and their refer to: (a) the Roman people native to Italy (b) the Roman emperors Trajan and the Antonines (c) authors of ancient comic dramas (d) conquered peoples in the provinces

6. Gibbon's statement that policy in Rome was "seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious" (par. 2) makes use of all the following stylistic components, except which one: (a) apposition (b) balance (c) antithesis (d) parallelism

7. The word concord means: (a) swiftness (b) harmony (c) mixture (d) dictionary

8. Both the style and content of paragraph 2 lend themselves to Gibbon's tone of: (a) outrage (b) disinterestedness (c) irony (d) sympathy

9. The word rancor means: (a) high position (b) fortification (c) complexity (d) hostility

10. In his sentence "The thin texture of the pagan mythology was interwoven with various but not discordant materials" (par. 3), Gibbon uses the stylistic device of: (a) metaphor (b) understatement (c) simile (d) paradox

11. The stylistic device referred to in the immediately preceding question helps express: (a) religious reverence (b) combination of unity and variety (c) romantic quality of the past (d) allusion to classical music

12. The "invisible governors" that Gibbon refers to in "The inivisble governors of the moral world were inevitably cast in a similar mold of fiction and allegory" (par. 3) are: (a) Roman emperors or empresses (b) gods or goddesses (c) politicians making backroom deals (d) moral Roman magistrates

13. According to Gibbon in par. 3, polytheists were: (a) remarkably constant in which gods they worshipped (b) inclined toward war-making because of religion (c) easily susceptible to sexual immorality and polygamy (d) continually adding new deities to be worshipped

14 According to Gibbon in par. 4, Greek philosophers on the issue of deriving principles of morality placed more emphasis on finding these in: (a) the gods (b) the natural world (c) human beings (d) previous societies

15. Gibbon in par. 4 asserts all the following except which one about the four main philosophical schools in ancient Greece: (a) the Stoics and Platonists were more religiously oriented than the Academics and Epicureans (b) the Stoics and Platonists stressed what originated and motivated the universe (c) all four philosophical schools de-emphasized a believable divine supreme being (d) the Academics and Epicureans were more education-oriented than the Stoics and Platonists

16. In par. 4, Gibbon suggests about the gods in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey--about which he earlier says that "the elegant mythology of Homer gave a beautiful and almost a regular form to the polytheism of the ancient world" (par. 3)--that young students at the academic institutions of the time: (a) did not believe in them (b) tried to model themselves after them (c) found deep symbolism in them (d) felt them to be too old-fashioned

17. In par. 4, Gibbon implies that satire, relative to the philosophical essay: (a) was ineffective because it went over people's heads (b) was more persuasive (c) was surprisingly more logical (d) was equally convincing

18. In par. 4, Gibbon implies that satire, relative to the upperclass opinion of the time, was: (a) behind (b) concurrent (c) ahead (d) unrelated

19. As implied in par. 5, philosophers of the time could be categorized as: (a) pious (b) persevering (c) hypocritical (d) reverent (e) thieving

20. As indicated in par. 6, church (or religion) and state were: (a) contending (b) separate (c) hostile (d) united

21. As indicated in par. 6 and earlier, the government found religion to be: (a) useful (b) dangerous (c) irrelevant (d) immoral (e) amusing

22. As indicated in par. 6, idols of the gods of foreign religions in the conquered territories often were removed because of: (a) worry about the new religion's effects (b) theft and art appreciation (c) harmonizing the new gods with the old (d) immorality of the priests

23. As indicated in par. 7, government policy toward Egyptian religion was: (a) fanatic (b) compassionate (c) ineffective (d) generous

24. In the next-to-last sentence of par. 7, the "protectors of besieged cities" that Gibbon refers to are: (a) officials (b) soldiers (c) ambassadors (d) gods

25. The word candor means: (a) frankness (b) containment (c) illumination (d) passage-way

26. The word ingenuous means: (a) clever (b) childlike (c) cunning (d) creative

27. The word credulity means inclination toward: (a) riches (b) protection (c) skepticism (d) belief

28. The word salutary means: (a) sociable (b) patriotic (c) helpful (d) bitter

29. The word avarice means: (a) coldness (b) greed (c) skepticism (d) guilt

30. The word specious means: (a) misleadingly attractive (b) very roomy (c) scientifically categorized (d) selectively chosen

31. The word inundation means: (a) emptiness (b) base (c) harm (d) flood