答案 [Recent Tests- VOL] - Looking at daily life in ancient Rome

答案和详细解释 [Recent Tests- VOL] - Looking at daily life in ancient Rome

Answer Table

1. D

2. B

3. C

4. B

5. NOT GIVEN

6. YES

7. NOT GIVEN

8. YES

9. YES

10. NO

11. I

12. H

13. E

14. C

Explain

[Recent Tests- VOL] - Looking at daily life in ancient Rome

11In this preface to a history the writer explains the factors affecting the scope of his study.

If our ideas on Roman life are not to become lost in confusion, we must study it within as strictly defined time. Nothing changes more rapidly than human customs. Looking at our own more familiar world, apart from the great scientific discoveries of recent centuries which have turned it upside down – steam, electricity, railways, motor cars and aeroplanes, for example – it is clear that even elementary forms of everyday life have been subject to increasing change. Potatoes, for example, were not introduced into Europe until the sixteenth century, coffee was first drunk there in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth, and the banana was used in desserts in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth. The law of change was not less operative in antiquity. It was a commonplace of Roman rhetoric to contrast the crude simplicity of the Republic (509 BC–27 BC) with the luxury and refinement of the imperial times which followed. There is no common measure whether of home or house or furniture. Between ages which are so different.

12Since a choice of time must necessarily be made, this history will confine itself to studying the generation which was born about the middle of the first century AD, toward the end of the reign of Claudius (41–54 AD) or the beginning of the reign of Nero (54–68 AD), and which lived on into the reign of Trajan (98–117 AD) and of Hadrian (117–138 AD). This generation saw the Roman Empire at its most powerful and prosperous. It was witness to the last conquests of the Caesars: the conquest of Dacia, in modern-day eastern Europe, which brought vast mineral wealth into the Empire, and 5the conquest of Arabia, which helped to bring the riches of India and East Asia flooding into Rome. 1In the material domain, this generation attained the pinnacle of ancient civilization.

6By a fortunate coincidence – all the more fortunate in that Latin literature was soon to run nearly dry – this generation is the one whose records combine to offer us the most complete picture of Roman life that we possess. We have a profusion of vivid and picturesque descriptions, precise and colourful, in such works as the Epigrams of Martial, the Satires of Juvenal and the Letters of Pliny. 7In addition, the Forum of Trajan in Rome itself and the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii, the two prosperous resorts buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, supply an immense fund of archaeological evidence. 2-3Later excavations have also restored to us the ruins of the city of Ostia, which date in the main from the time when the Emperor Hadrian created this great commercial city as a realization of his town planning ideas. Fortune has favoured the historian of this time.

It is not enough to focus our study of Roman life only on a fixed time. It would lack foundation and consistency if we did not also focus it in space – in the country or in the town. Even today when the facilities for communication bring something of the city into the smallest and most isolated country cottage, 4there remains a significant difference between rural existence and the excitement of city life: a much greater difference than ever existed in the townsman of antiquity. So large was the gulf separated the peasant from the townsman of historian Rostovtzeff, it pitted one inequality between them that, according to the historian, protected the wall protecting against the other in a fierce and silent struggle which pierced the north. 8When the Roman privileged classes from the barbarian flood from the north, the peasants decided to fight alongside them.

The townsman, in fact, enjoyed all the goods and resources of the earth. 9-10The peasant knew nothing but unending labour without profit and was unable to enjoy the activities available in even the poorest of cities: the liveliness of the sports field, the warmth of the public baths and the magnificence of public spectacles. In a work on the history of everyday life, we must give up any attempt to blend two such dissimilar pictures into one and must choose between them. 13The time which we have chosen to describe day by day is that of those Roman subjects who spent their time exclusively in the town, or rather in The City, Rome, which they regarded as the hub and centre of the universe, proud and wealthy ruler of a world which seemed at that time to have been pacified forever.

To perform our task well, we must first try to form an adequate picture of the surroundings in which our subjects lived, and by which their lives were coloured, freeing ourselves from any misconceptions concerning it. We must seek to reconstruct the physical nature of the great city and the social milieu of the various classes of the hierarchy by which it was governed. 14We must also investigate the moral background of thought and sentiment which can help explain both its strength and its weaknesses. The way in which the Romans of Rome employed their time can only be studied satisfactorily after we have plotted out the main lines of the framework within which they lived and outside of which the routine of their daily life would be more or less unintelligible.

Questions 1–4

Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D
Write the correct letter in boxes 1–4 on your answer sheet.

1What does the writer say about the period mentioned in the second paragraph?

A. There was a high level of immigration into Rome.

B. The export of minerals made Rome rich.

C. Rome sent armies to control trade with India and East Asia.

D. The Roman standard of living reached its highest level.

2Ostia is mentioned as

A. a city which often features in literature.

B. an important area for archaeological research.

C. the birthplace of a Roman Emperor.

D. a city whose layout was similar to that of Rome.

3The statement that Fortune has favoured the historian of this time refers to the fact that

A. historians of this period have become wealthy as a result of their discoveries.

B. works on this period are popular among the reading public.

C. a wide range of sources is available for this period.

D. this period has been less studied than many others.

4In comparing urban and rural life in the Roman Empire, the writer states that

A. rural Romans were largely illiterate.

B. rural life and urban life had little in common.

C. little information is available concerning rural life.

D. most readers of history are more interested in city life.

Questions 5-10

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 3?
In boxes 5–10 on your answer sheet, write:
YES – if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO – if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN – if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

Rome’s conquest of Arabia resulted in large-scale immigration from the east into Rome.

Correct answer: NOT GIVEN

More can be learned about Roman life from the literature of the period studied in this book than from later Latin literature.

Correct answer: YES

Discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii showed that certain beliefs about Roman life were wrong.

Correct answer: NOT GIVEN

Roman peasants provided assistance to the Empire when it was attacked.

Correct answer: YES

Rural inhabitants of the Roman Empire had a difficult life.

Correct answer: YES

Entertainment facilities were limited to the city of Rome itself.

Correct answer: NO

Questions 11-14

Complete the summary using the list of words, A–I, below.

Write the correct letter, A–I in boxes 11–14 on your answer sheet.

A. emperors
B. setting
C. values

D. peasants
E. city-dwellers
F. social classes

G. myths
H. period
I. investigation

The scope of the writer’s study

It was important for the writer to limit several aspects of his 11 (I) . He decided to focus on a limited 12 (H) in Roman history, and to concentrate on the section of the population who were 13 (E) . The writer was interested in the physical environment, the people that ruled the country and the 14 (C) that contributed both to Rome’s strength and to its weaknesses.