Assessment and exam practice.

Try this with Ancient History

1. Check the task format, time limit and permitted materials with your school.
2. Start with one timed section or task and record where you spent the most time.
3. Review errors before attempting another section. Separate missing knowledge from timing problems.

View Ancient History resources on ATARMAXXING ↗

Practice paper focus areas

• Exam 1 — Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico as primary source; personal prestige and dignitas in the late Roman Republic; army loyalty and the role of donativa and shared spoils
• Exam 2 — Unit 4 Topic 2 – Julius Caesar personality study; The First Triumvirate: formation, political purposes, and distribution of power among Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus; Primary source comprehension, analysis, evaluation, and synthesis
• Exam 3 — Caesar's crossing of the Rubicon (49 BCE) and the constitutional crisis it represented; Julius Caesar as Unit 4 Topic 2 personality study; Primary sources: Plutarch (Life of Caesar), Suetonius (Divus Julius), Appian (Civil Wars)
• Exam 4 — Caesar as dictator perpetuo: constitutional powers and their nature; Caesar's relationship with the Senate as an institution; Primary source perspectives on tyranny versus necessary reform
• Exam 5 — Caesar's assassination, Ides of March 44 BCE; Motives of the Liberatores conspirators; Immediate political consequences of Caesar's death
• Exam 6 — Julius Caesar's use of propaganda and public image; Triumphal processions as instruments of power; Divine genealogy claims and Venus Genetrix
• Exam 7 — Cleopatra VII's accession and co-regency with Ptolemy XIII; Ptolemaic dynastic legitimacy; role of the Egyptian priesthood in legitimising royal authority
• Exam 8 — QCAA Ancient History Units 3 and 4 — Unit 4 Topic 2 personality study; Cleopatra VII and Julius Caesar: political and military dimensions of their alliance; Roman literary sources and the problem of Roman bias in reconstruction
• Exam 9 — Cleopatra VII and Mark Antony: political nature of the alliance (34 BCE); The Donations of Alexandria and Ptolemaic imperial ambition; Octavian's propaganda war against Antony and Cleopatra
• Exam 10 — Battle of Actium 31 BCE — military engagement, causes of defeat, primary source reliability; Cleopatra VII and Mark Antony — power, authority, propaganda, and public image; Competing ancient explanations for the outcome at Actium — Plutarch, Cassius Dio, Propertius, Velleius Paterculus
• Exam 11 — Cleopatra VII as a personality study (QCAA Unit 4 Topic 2); Roman ideological hostility toward Cleopatra in literary and poetic sources; Horace's Odes as propagandistic Roman poetry
• Exam 12 — Cleopatra VII's dual royal identity as Hellenistic queen and Egyptian pharaoh; Coin imagery as evidence of political self-presentation; Temple reliefs at Dendera as evidence of Cleopatra's Egyptian pharaonic identity
• Exam 13 — Caesar's popularis programme; Land redistribution and veteran settlement; Grain supply and debt relief as political strategy
• Exam 14 — Julius Caesar's cultivation of personal loyalty in his legions; The Roman army's role in Caesar's political career; Plutarch's Life of Caesar as a primary source: authorship, purpose, reliability and usefulness
• Exam 15 — Caesar's reforms as dictator — calendar reform, Senate expansion, public building, and colonial settlement; Evaluating the coherence of Caesar's political programme through primary source analysis; Unit 4 Topic 2: Julius Caesar — nature and exercise of power and authority
• Exam 16 — Julius Caesar — death, assassination narrative, political and moral construction by subsequent Roman writers; Cleopatra VII — death, suicide narrative, Roman literary construction and propaganda; Reliability and usefulness of primary sources for historical reconstruction of famous deaths
• Exam 17 — Julius Caesar — nature and exercise of power and authority; Cicero as a hostile contemporary source: usefulness, limitations, and political agenda; Evaluation of primary source reliability and usefulness
• Exam 18 — Cleopatra VII as a historical personality (Unit 4, Topic 2); Egyptian versus Roman presentations of Cleopatra's significance; Survival and bias of ancient primary sources
• Exam 19 — Julius Caesar and Cleopatra VII: propaganda, power consolidation, and authority; Synthesis of literary biography, coinage, inscriptions, and official records as primary source types; QCAA Unit 4 Topic 2 personality study: nature and exercise of power and authority, public image and propaganda
• Exam 20 — Julius Caesar — long-term political legacy for Rome; Cleopatra VII — long-term legacy for the Ptolemaic world; Primary source comprehension and contextual analysis