European culture in few questions :

Briefly highlights the differences between Athenian democracy and Roman “republican” government.

In 508 BCE, Cleisthenian develop his reforms on Athens which consisted in the “deme”. In others terms, he created 30 districts and put them into 10 groups in order to gather people from different areas (polis, Paralia and mesogeia) to constituency, inorder to take decisions together.
This reform broke the power of the healthy families = Aeropagus.

Both systems are very different.
In a democracy, citizens (free men over 20 years old born of Athenian parents) are divided into 3 parts, which are themselves subdivided in tribes, so that each category of the population is represented and have their voices for votes during assemblies. Each tribeelected 50 representatives to the Ecclesia; they were in charge of that for one year.

The Roman republican government revolves around three political entities:
1. The senate
2. The comitia
3. The client system.

The judges chose the law to the healthiest class. They were selected, and not elected, and stayed in place for life. It was a system manages by the patricians, thehealthiest people of the roman society. The people, or the plebs, weren’t really represented in that corrupted system. The people who represent the people were chosen, it means not elected like in Athens.
That means political movement was extremely limited and circumscribed by a system whose roots were never attacked in the manner of the Cleisthenian reforms in Athens.

The main difference betweenthese systems is that in Athens, you vote as a citizen. The voters participate on the organization of the city. Whereas in the roman political system all Romans men can vote. Nevertheless, they are inactive citizen because they don’t take part on decisions. Finally, we can notice that the roman vote is symbolic and the Athenian vote has got real impact.

Explain and illustrate the notions of“nomos” and “phusis”. Comment

Phusis is the ancient Greek word for « nature, » cognate with the verb « to grow » (phuein); as in English, it can be used both for the natural world as a whole and for the « nature » (i.e., the essential or intrinsic characteristics) of any particular thing, which it has « by nature » (phusei). That means that physical things change. It corresponds to instability of thenature.

Nomos encompasses both law and unwritten, traditional social convention. Nomos represents the idea of the law which means stability. We can also see a new contrast between Nature and Nurture.

The contrast between the two concepts is central to ancient sophistic thought, with roots in the pre-Socratic inquiry into the underlying natures of things.

For the Sophists[1], nomos andphusis are polar terms, roughly equivalent (respectively) to the socially constructed and the universally, objectively given. The contrast was most strikingly applied in relation to justice. Antiphon’s On Truth argues that justice is a matter of nomos, and nomos and phusis conflict; one should observe the requirements of justice when there are witnesses, but follow the dictates of nature otherwise.By « nature, » Antiphon seems to understand what is physiologically given to all humans (Greeks and barbarians alike). By following it one gains what is advantageous to one’s existence: life, pleasure, and freedom. In Plato’s Gorgias, Callicles argues, with an appeal to animal behavior, that it is a matter of « justice according to nature, » as opposed to convention, for the strong to prey upon theweak.

Who is the man-woman we have met on the course?

In our course, we consider that Hector can be described as a “man-woman”.
Hector is a warrior. He was the prince of Troy. He is married and has children. All these reasons tell us that he is only a man. But if we go further, we can develop the idea that he can be compared in his action as a woman. First of all, he has to defend his…