Cicero's Civics: Speaking and Listening, from the Republic to Today

Student: [Name], Grade 11 Term: Spring 2027 (one semester, 16 weeks) Request: That this independent study be accepted in place of the standard one-semester Civics / American Government requirement, with equivalent credit Supervising teacher: [Name, department] Outside mentor (optional): [Name, role]

1. Request

I request approval of this independent study as a substitute for the required semester of Civics, with equivalent credit. The course covers the core content of the standard course — citizenship, the nature of a republic, the limits on power, the duties of citizens — through its classical source, Cicero, and organizes that content around a single thesis: a republic is governed by public speaking and listening, and its health depends on the health of its public speech.

The student has five years of Latin and is reading Cicero's Orator on his own initiative. This proposal converts that reading into a supervised course with defined outcomes, weekly accountability, written and spoken assessments, and original-language work.

2. Thesis, aims, and value

For Cicero the republic is the forum. Laws are made by debate in the assembly, justice by argument before a jury, and leaders are held to account in public words. His works on oratory describe what a self-governing people requires from the people who address it and what those speakers owe in return. His last work on the subject, Brutus, records the end of the republic as the end of oratory: when Caesar closed the forum, public speech lost its purpose.

The course pursues this one thesis through the semester. A two-week primer from the Greeks establishes the vocabulary — the citizen, the three settings of political speech, and Plato's charge that persuasion is manipulation. One week on Cicero's foundations establishes the three ideas the student carries through everything after: the definition of a republic (De Re Publica), speech as what binds a society (De Officiis), and law as the constraint on those who speak for the state (De Legibus). Twelve weeks then cover the theory and practice of public speech in De Oratore, Orator, and the speeches, read throughout as civics. The listener's side of the exchange has its own text in the study of the Roman assembly, where citizens could hear but could not deliberate.

The course closes on the present. The student attends a real public meeting and analyzes it with Cicero's categories, and the capstone is a deliberative speech written for delivery at such a meeting. The concluding commentary answers whether Cicero's account of speech and the republic holds today.

The value of the course over the standard one lies in three things: it teaches civics from primary sources in the original language; it requires the student to practice the civic act the course describes, by writing and delivering speeches to real listeners; and it gives him a single durable idea about political life, tested against ancient and current evidence, in place of a survey.

3. Learning objectives

By the end of the semester the student will be able to:

Define citizenship, the republic, and the rule of law from classical sources, and explain how each depends on public speech.

Describe the three settings of political speech — assembly, court, and civic ceremony — and map them to the legislative, judicial, and public functions of a modern state.

Analyze any political speech using Cicero's categories: the three styles, the three duties of the speaker (to prove, to please, to move), and decorum.

Explain the civic role of the listener, using the Roman assembly and the modern public meeting.

Explain how a republic handles emergencies and the danger of concentrated power, using the Catilinarian crisis and the fall of the republic.

Articulate the duties of a public speaker — honesty, service, restraint — from De Officiis and Quintilian.

Deliver original speeches in the deliberative and judicial forms and defend the choices made in them.

Read assigned passages of Cicero in Latin with grammatical and rhetorical commentary.

4. Texts

Greek primer (in translation)

Aristotle, Politics 1.1–2, 3.1–5

Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.1–3

Thucydides, History 2.35–46 (Pericles' Funeral Oration)

Plato, Gorgias 452–466

Cicero (Latin with facing or interlinear translation; Loeb or Oxford)

De Re Publica 1.39–45 (Latin)

De Officiis 1.11–14, 1.85–89 (Latin)

De Legibus 3.1–11 (selections)

De Inventione 1.1–3

De Oratore, Book 1 §§ 1–95; Book 2 §§ 114–216; Book 3 §§ 1–125 (Latin: 1.30–34, 3.1–6)

Orator (full; Latin: §§ 69–74, 168–174)

Brutus §§ 1–23, 330–333

In Catilinam I (Latin, full) and II

Pro Archia (Latin selections)

Philippic II, selections

Other classical

Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 12.1

Secondary

Mary Beard, SPQR, chapters on the late republic

Robert Morstein-Marx, Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic, one chapter on the contio (chosen with supervisor)

Kathryn Tempest, Cicero: Politics and Persuasion, or Anthony Everitt, Cicero — chapters on 63 BC and on Cicero's last two years

Optional American supplement (if required by the department)

Federalist 10 and 51, read alongside Week 3

5. Sixteen-week schedule

Unit 1 — Foundations (Weeks 1–3)

Unit 2 — The orator as civic function: De Oratore (Weeks 4–7)

Unit 3 — Orator: the three styles as three civic duties (Weeks 8–10)

Unit 4 — Speaking and listening in the forum (Weeks 11–13)

Unit 5 — What the speaker owes, and what is lost (Weeks 14–15)

Week 16 — Capstone

6. Assignments

Weekly reading journal (16 entries). 300–500 words. Summarize the argument, identify the civic principle at stake, and raise one question. Weeks marked "Latin" include a translation of the assigned passage with grammatical and rhetorical notes.

Unit essays (3). 1,200–1,500 words. Suggested prompts:

Plato says rhetoric is flattery; Cicero says it founded civil society. Who is right, and what does the answer require of a republic?

Cicero argues the plain style cannot do what a republic requires. Test the claim against one political speech from the last five years.

The Roman assembly could listen but not deliberate. What does a public owe its speakers, and what happens when it can only listen? Argue from Morstein-Marx and the Catilinarians.

Speeches (2). 6–8 minutes, delivered before the supervisor and at least two other listeners, with a one-page commentary identifying the style chosen, how the speech proves, pleases, and moves, and why the choices fit the audience.

Speech 1, deliberative: argue a specific policy before an imagined assembly.

Speech 2, judicial: prosecute or defend a historical figure (not Catiline) before an imagined jury.

Public-meeting report. Attend one town council, board of education, or public hearing. 1,000 words analyzing who spoke, who listened, in what style, to what effect, using Cicero's categories.

Capstone. A deliberative speech, 10–12 minutes, on a current local or state issue, written for delivery at a real public forum (town meeting, board hearing, or public-comment period) — delivered there if permitted, otherwise before a panel. With a 2,000-word commentary applying Orator and De Officiis: the style and why, the three duties, prose rhythm in key passages, the duty owed to the audience, and a concluding answer to the course's question: is Cicero's account of speech and the republic timeless only, or also timely?

7. Assessment

Rubrics for essays and speeches to be agreed with the supervising teacher in Week 1.

8. Supervision and accountability

Weekly 30-minute meeting with the supervising teacher to review the journal and discuss the reading.

Journal entries submitted every Friday.

Essays returned with written comments; one revision permitted per essay.

Speeches recorded and kept in the portfolio.

Mid-semester check-in (Week 8) to confirm pace and adjust readings if needed.

9. Coverage of standard civics content

[Supervising teacher to add the specific Connecticut Social Studies Framework or district standard codes here.]

10. Portfolio at semester end

Journal (16 entries), three essays, two speech recordings with commentaries, public-meeting report, capstone speech and commentary, and a one-page reflection on what the classical material showed about modern public life that the standard course would not have.

Student signature: ______________________ Date: ________

Parent signature: ______________________ Date: ________

Supervising teacher: ____________________ Date: ________

Department chair / administrator: ______________________ Date: ________