- PowerScore Staff
- Posts: 105
- Joined: Feb 09, 2024
- Tue Apr 02, 2024 6:15 pm
#105855
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.
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.