FINAL EXAM ESSAY  
Your essay for the final exam will be written in class after you do the objective/short answer section of the exam:  Tuesday morning, from 10:00 to 11:30. However,  I am giving you the questions in advance so that you can prepare and even outline a response.  You may bring to the exam a small index card with an outline (written on one side only) and/or examples you wish to discuss in further detail in your essay.  You must hand in the index card with your blue book.

*If you choose Option A or B, you should respond to the questions posed below the two scenarios: 

Option A.  The year is 476 and you have just heard news of the fall of Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman emperor in the West.  

Option B.  The year is 565 and you have just heard news of the death of Emperor Justinian.

            How might a person from the eastern Roman Empire respond to the news of either of these events in comparison with a person from the west?  Why is the event tragic, positive, important or relatively unimportant for each of the two regions in question?  Your response may consist in a straightforward essay comparing the two halves of the empire in relation to the event described, or it may be written in the form of a letter from a person in one region to a friend, relative or acquaintance in the other.

Option C.             

        The late antique world was marked by a number of theological controversies and religious developments that had serious consequences for political, cultural and even economic life.  Choose any three religious developments--events, controversies, decisions, conflicts--from 410 through the seventh century that had wide-ranging or long-lasting implications for the late antique period as a whole.  (Of the three you choose at least one must be primarily connected with the East and one primarily connected with the West.)  Explain why you consider these developments more than mere isolated events, i.e. why they are important for understanding the age we have studied this semester.