Problem
I. Explain the collapse of the Roman Republic, drawing on ideas emphasized in lectures. Outline how key steps in the Republic's decline into civil war and chaos often represented a moving away from the political and military structures and ideals set up in the early Republic, when Rome was still a small city-state. Make sure you consider things like changes in the use of dictatorships and political violence, as well as the increased political competition and the evolution of the military that resulted from Rome's territorial expansion.
II. What did Romans in the Republican period think it meant to be "Roman"? To highlight how Romans thought of themselves, outline the values and virtues that Roman society emphasized, including the traditional Roman religious worldview and practices, the mos maiorum, and stories about early heroes who embodied key Roman ideals. Explain how more conservative ideas of Romanness were challenged by the adoption of foreign religious traditions like mystery cults, while at the same time the Romanization of foreign deities reflected more a conservative conception of Roman identity and appropriateness.
III. Compare and contrast the ways in which power, as defined in lectures, operates for men and women in the ancient world. Applying the lecture concepts around power, discuss the ways in which women's power and agency can be realized in ancient Athens, Republican Rome, and at least one other civilization from the lectures, using specific examples from women's home lives and marriages, and also from the female religious spheres within their societies, as shown in lectures. Discuss the contrasting modes of men's power in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds, applying the concepts from lectures to examples from individual men's lives within these civilizations.
IV. Opportunities for women in the ancient world seem to often be associated with gender and sexuality, the control and/or freedoms thereof, as defining features of these opportunities. Discuss the ways in which women's sexuality is viewed, and how it is controlled or not, in connection with property and inheritance in ancient Athens, China, and at least two other civilizations from the lectures. As well, you must include an account of the various ways in which aspects of sexuality are fundamental to the religious roles developed in lectures, including the major roles of the priestesses of Vesta and Jupiter in Rome, and the roles of the female-pronoun using priests of the Great Mother goddess.