Final Exam Greco-Roman Political Thought Spring 2026

• Short ID's: use the assigned readings (on the schedule) and the presentations to do short ID's for the following:
  
• Cicero's De Republica history of the text: what Jackson presented
• Veda and Symaira's Presentations on Aristotle's works: history of the texts both the 'public' works and the ones we actually have
• Liv on "Natural Law"
• Noor on Euthynai
• Aidan Hull on the 12 Tables
• Ashley G on Proscriptions
• Brian F. on the Cursus Honorum and "New Men" in Rome
  
• Finn C. on Cicero's philosophical works and how we date them
  

• For the following essays, choose at least one author from each of the following:
• Homer, Hesiod
• Sophocles, Aeschylus
• Plato, Aristotle
• Polybius, Cicero
• You may also choose to include Herodotus' Constitutional Debate or Thucydides' version of Pericles' Funeral Oration, but you need not do so.

• Choose one of the following:
1. Identify and explain the serious concerns about democracy that are raised in the authors who discuss it explicitly, and explain how the author's who do not discuss it explicitly nonetheless exhibit concerns about democracy and how they do so (for Homer, think of Thersites: for Hesiod, look at the social status of him and his brother versus the 'chiefs/kings' in town). Follow that up with a discussion of how the various presentation topics we have heard about relate to those concerns (e.g. sortition, euthynai, jury duty--there are others)
2. Explain how the authors we have read who present an explicit theory of justice define and discuss it as well as how the authors who do not explicitly discuss it would define it (i.e. what sort of morality do they present that could reasonably be called justice). Factors to consider might include the relation of justice to political order, virtue, and human nature; tensions between law, morality, and competing social obligations; and how justice functions differently in the soul, the polis, and commonwealth?
• Also do the following:
• Pick one theme or topic that runs through the authors you choose from the list above and explain and analyze it.
• Anything is fine that is 1. political, and 2. can be traced thru the authors we read.
  
• Examples: the rule of law, autonomy, the importance of willing subjects, citizenship (i.e. who counts as a person politically), why there are constitutions at all, the relation between morality and law and what actually happens, the role of non-citizens, distribution of good, children/offspring, greed/selfishness, human nature, etc.