#23 - The traditional view of the Roman emperor Caligula as

[Chandler H]

Hi Overthinker99,

Like others have said, answer choice (A) is weak mostly because it doesn't discriminate between what information has been passed down. If there's less documentation, it makes logical sense that little documentation of Caligula's tyranny survived, because little documentation of anything survived. In fact, since we know some evidence of Caligula's tyranny did survive, answer choice (A) almost makes the historian's arguments look worse—if we only have, say, a few dozen documents, and some number of that very small sampling do claim he's tyrannical, then that's bad for Caligula.

On top of that, as you correctly identified, we don't know how much "less" is in answer choice (A). In fact, we only know it's less than the documentation from the reigns of MOST other contemporary emperors—some emperors are even less-documented than Caligula! Does that mean we can't trust any information about those emperors, either? Presumably not.

Hope this helps.

[Halfie]

I really don't like this question. I see what LSAC was going for in answer choice (C), but even after reading the posts here, I don't think (C) strengthens the argument.

I feel like cruel tyrants and dictators have been shown to be quite unoriginal and stereotypical individuals, many of them acting in ways that seem like poorly written, unrealistic cartoon characters. They commit very similar atrocities and act in very predictable patterns. As such, the fact that one supposed tyrant's cruel acts are very similar to acts by other alleged cruel tyrants simply does not move the needle for me. I could point to dozens of cruel tyrants of history that took specific actions extremely similar to tyrants before them. Does this all hinge around the word "alleged," and we are supposed to take that as evidence that these were not actually committed?

I suppose I should be thinking of how the LSAC designs questions more. I can see that LSAC designed answer C to try and specifically strengthen the idea that his enemies were trying to smear him, but I stand by my interpretation that it doesn't actually do that. Still, it fits the "mold" of correct answers better than the other choices. I ended up picking (A), knowing it was a crappy answer, just because it at least touched on the idea that there wasn't much documentation of Caligula (but again, I know it's a bad answer and even knew it at the time). Maybe when I'm looking at a question where I think no answer is very good, I should instead start thinking from a question design perspective and think how the test writers were trying to camouflage their correct answer. I think they intended the word "specific" to convey that even the minute details of these actions were the same, but to actually strengthen the argument I think they really needed to add some extra wording like "specific actions, down to even minute details" or something.

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Halfie,

You're not alone in not liking this question. Many test takers have taken issues with it.

Unfortunately, the LSAT isn't going to change for you, so you'll want to change for it in order to maximize your performance.

You wrote:

"I feel like cruel tyrants and dictators have been shown to be quite unoriginal and stereotypical individuals, many of them acting in ways that seem like poorly written, unrealistic cartoon characters."

This is a situation where you are letting your personal views/beliefs cloud your judgement and analysis of the question.

Nothing in the stimulus provides a reason for you (or anyone else taking the LSAT) to assume this. I don't know whether you are familiar with Caligula's specific alleged acts, but I doubt that the specific details would be similar to many other cruel tyrants/dictators. For example, how many tyrants appoint their favorite horse as consul? Of course, knowledge of Caligula isn't necessary to answer the question, but assuming that he behaved just like all the other tyrants would be mistaken.