AS-LEVEL CLASSICAL CIVILISATION CIV1B Athenian Democracy Report on the Examination 2020 June 2016 Version: 0.1
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CIV1B Athenian Democracy Section 1 Option A This set of questions, which followed from two short extracts from Aristotle s The Constitution of Athens, was significantly more popular than Option B, which was based on part of a speech by Philocleon in Aristophanes The Wasps. In Question 01, most students knew that Themistocles built ships, but few were able to gain the second mark by saying what he is said to have done with the surplus money to achieve this. They were often even vaguer in answering Question 03, sometimes merely quoting from the passage. However, the name Salamis was known by the great majority in Question 02, with only a few mistaking this battle for Marathon. Question 04 attracted some excellent answers which used material from the prescribed sources to support a clear argument on the link between Athens empire and both the economy and the democracy. Most students could identify at least some of the key ideas: that the Delian League allowed Athens to accumulate wealth through tribute, that this was spent on public works and funding public offices in Athens, and that the prestige accorded to the thetes by their contribution to the thalassocracy in rowing triremes led to demands for greater participation and further reform, culminating in the reforms of Ephialtes. The best students were able to identify specific points made by the three primary sources and evaluate them according to the viewpoint of the source. Some students attempted to argue that other factors, particularly the reforms of Cleisthenes, were more important in the development of the democracy. Weak responses, however, particularly from those who seemed to have prepared themselves on the 6th century only, often misunderstood the term Athenian Empire and attempted to answer the question with reference to, for example, Peisistratus foreign policy, or took Athenian Empire to mean the government of Athens. The best answers to Question 05 analysed the economic problems of Athens in the 6th century BC and gave equal weight to assessing the measures taken by Solon and the tyrants to solve them. However, some students gave very sketchy accounts of the tyrants, while others tended merely to list and describe rather than to explain by means of reasoned argument, sometimes including political innovations, such as the change to the qualifications for the classes, among Solon s economic reforms. Contrary to the views of many students, there is no evidence that Hippias allegedly harsh treatment of other nobles after Hipparchus assassination had a detrimental effect on the economy. But there were many competent, if not outstanding, essays that demonstrated a good understanding of Solon s economic reforms (despite some uncertainty on hektemorage), their weakness in practice, and the remedial efforts of the tyrants, such as taxation, loans, partial redistribution of land, building works and control of the Hellespont. Option B Answers to the factual Questions 06, 07 and 08 tended to suffer from the same weaknesses as those in Option A, that is, they were often imprecise and gave only one correct detail where two were required. There were some very good answers to Question 09 in which the significance of Solon s legal measures was fully explained, but there was a tendency to be imprecise both on the procedures of appeal and third-party redress and on their importance, with some confusion of the two. Comprehensive answers also discussed the abolition of Draco s harsh laws and the public display 3 of 5
of Solon s replacements. Students who explained, in a way that was relevant to the question, the significance of the seisachtheia in making a clear distinction between slavery and citizenship were also rewarded; those who digressed more widely were not. Many answers to Question 10 tended to adopt a descriptive approach, devoting a paragraph or two to each of the bullet points, but without using this material to support and sustain an overall coherent argument with a consistent point of view threaded through it. The claims made by Bdelycleon were often taken to be true, with no consideration of the possibility of comic inversion or exaggeration, or a sense that he might be seeking to influence his father by parodying Cleon s own rhetorical and deceptive techniques. In the end, the common conclusion was that Athenian citizens enjoyed a lot of power in the lawcourts, as they also had a lot of power in the assembly and Council, but without actually reaching a judgement on where the greater power lay as required by the question. As often in the past, these essays on the fully developed democracy of the 5th century tended to demonstrate a less secure knowledge of detail and understanding of its significance than those on 6th century developments towards democracy in the parallel Question 05. However, better answers compared the qualifications for membership of the lawcourts with those for the Assembly and Boule, and took into account the relationship between institutions, noting, for example, that the conduct of euthyna was a matter for the Boule, who then referred disputed cases to the lawcourts. Such answers typically also demonstrated a good understanding of the way the courts could be used as a political tool, and how the graphe paranomon could be used to undermine the sovereignty of the Assembly. Section 2 Option C As might be expected from the choice of questions made in Section 1, Question 11 on Cleisthenes in Option C in Section 2 attracted an overwhelmingly larger number of responses than Question 12 in Option D on Aristophanes The Wasps and the Old Oligarch. However, the difference in overall standard between the two sets of answers was less great than in the two 20-mark essays. The strongest answers used detail from Cleisthenes rise to power as evidence for the lack of unity and security that he needed to tackle, and assessed the effectiveness of his measures in remedying these weaknesses; these recognised that unity and security are different but linked, and gave equal weight to both. Weaker responses tended, after an unnecessarily lengthy narrative of events from the fall of Hippias, to repeat an all-purpose account of Cleisthenes reforms, with insufficient attention to telling details that might support any argument attempted, and with only token gestures towards the precise terms of the question. Many students did not clearly understand Cleisthenes reforms of the demes and tribes, but tended to show a better grasp of the effects of ostracism, if not of its procedure. Option D Though relatively few in number, answers to Question 12 were often good. The best tended to adopt a more analytical approach from the outset than those to Question 11. Most students here were to some extent aware of Aristophanes use of comic hyperbole, but nevertheless they tended to judge that Aristophanes portrayal of the demagogues corruption and the jurors gullibility and irresponsible vindictiveness, even if exaggerated for the sake of entertainment, could be regarded as more damning than the more even-handed discussion of the Old Oligarch, whose precise aims were more difficult to discern. 4 of 5
Mark Ranges and Award of Grades Grade boundaries and cumulative percentage grades are available on the Results Statistics page of the AQA Website. Converting Marks into UMS marks Convert raw marks into Uniform Mark Scale (UMS) marks by using the link below. UMS conversion calculator 5 of 5