Strengthen
Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Not so sure about this theory that C was a cruel and insane tyrant.
Evidence: There's little documentation of his crazy reign, and the history we DO have comes from his enemies (so presumably may be biased and unfairly negative).
Answer Anticipation:
If we were trying to defend the traditional view, can we think of any rejoinders we'd make?
We might say, "Yes there's little documentation, but that's cuz nothing had a paper trail back then, not because C's cruel reign didn't happen. We have ORAL history that tells us about it!"
Or we might say, "Yes the only reports of his cruel reign we have came from his enemies, but maybe the enemies were telling the truth. And maybe C's subjects were all too afraid of him to write their own damning history."
Since our job is to strengthen the challenge, the correct answer might go the opposite direction of one of these possible objections. Or, it might just provide independent evidence that makes it less plausible that C was a cruel and insane tyrant.
Correct Answer:
C
Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This would probably Weaken. If C's reign is unusually deprived of documentation, then "a lack of documentation of his badness" is not a great way to doubt "his badness".
(B) It's not clear how this would affect anything. We don't know if C was regarded as a cruel tyrant back when people were still living under him.
(C) THIS IS THE CORRECT ANSWER. Please tell me why.
I think they're trying to go for some notion of "you can't trust the little documentation that exists, because the specific events described are too similar to those of previous tyrant-documentation ... it's unlikely that a bunch of evil rulers all performed the same specific outrageous acts, so it's more likely that these documents are a copy of something that happened before or that they are not actual reports but just recycled stories." (D) This seems to weaken. It sounds like C really WAS cruel.
(E) Modern tyrants seem out of scope, but this at least promotes the idea that "it is POSSIBLE for there to be documentation of horrible tyrants. It's not like horrible tyrants always destroy the paper trail. Thus, if C really were a horrible tyrant, wouldn't we expect to see more documentation?" However, it could just be that modern tyrants have more documentation because they're modern. And it's also making it seem like these tyrants were worse than C, so that could be the reason their awfulness was better documented. The best version of this answer would have been "There is ample documentation of other contemporaneous tyrants being responsible for acts similar to those attributed to Caligula."
Takeaway/Pattern: LSAT, what are you doing to me? We used to be besties. I knew exactly what made you tick! I have no idea what they're going for here.
I'm guessing they think that (C) further undermines the credibility of the little documentation that does exist. But I don't get why a similarity to other purported tyrants diminishes the credibility. It certainly would make Caligula sound less original, as a cruel tyrant, but I don't see why it makes it less credible that Caligula was a cruel tyrant. Couldn't he have gotten his specific ideas for evil from stories of past tyrants? He read about them as a kid and dreamed, "One day ... I'LL be the one chopping off everyone's ring finger and feeding it to my private tank of piranhas!"
#officialexplanation
