The traditional view of the Roman emperor Caligula as a cruel and insane tyrant has been challenged by some modern hi...

SamA on October 16, 2019

Hello @lerondagates,

First, let's identify the challenge given by modern historians.

Challenge: The traditional view is that Caligula was a cruel and insane tyrant, but maybe this is not true.
Support 1: There is little documentation of his cruel or outrageous behavior.
Support 1: The history of Caligula was written by his enemies.

We need an answer choice that supports the possibility that Caligula was not cruel or insane.

A. We've already acknowledged limited documentation about Caligula's cruelty. It doesn't help our argument that other types of documents are limited as well.

B. We do not have history written by Roman citizens under Caligula. We only have the history written by Caligula's enemies. This doesn't help us.

C. This answer choice makes Support 1 even stronger. We have some, but little, documentation about Caligula's specific cruel acts. C suggests that even the documents we have are questionable. These may have been stories about other cruel leaders that were retold, or simply lasting myths that do not accurately depict Caligula's actions. Reinforcing Support 1 is what makes C correct.

D. This supports the idea that Caligula was cruel, which weakens the modern historians' argument.

E. Modern tyrants have nothing to do with this passage.

lerondagates on December 8, 2019

Perfect! Thanks so much!

Sam1292 on April 17, 2020

I find this to be a very difficult question because I dismissed C thinking that the answer choice was too broad. Just because "The specific outrageous acts attributed to Caligula in Roman documentation are very similar to acts attributed in earlier writings to other rulers alleged to be cruel tyrants." Doesn't mean that he didn't/couldn't have committed them.

on June 13, 2020

How do you determine that an answer such as this one is NOT out of scope? Specifically When an answer choice includes information that is not supported or mentioned in the text (the alleged cruel tyrants).

SawyerJeppson on July 30, 2021

I have the same question

SawyerJeppson on July 30, 2021

never mind, I actually understand it now. U need to compare it to other answer choices to find the best answer