Lesson Plan: The Sweep

Subjects: History (Late Roman Republic, classical antiquity), Civics (war powers, executive authority, the separation of powers), Economics (chokepoint trade, energy markets, supply shocks), Current Events (the 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis), Geography (Mediterranean and Persian Gulf maritime geography).

Recommended grade: 10–12 (high school) and undergraduate History, Political Science, and International Relations electives.

Duration: Two 50-minute sessions, or one 90-minute block.

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Learning Objectives

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

1. Explain the lex Gabinia of 67 BCE and why it represented a constitutional innovation for the Roman Republic.

1. Describe the trade-and-grain crisis that pushed Rome to grant Pompey extraordinary command of the entire Mediterranean.

1. Identify the geographic and economic features that make a maritime chokepoint (Cilicia in 67 BCE, the Strait of Hormuz in 2026) strategically decisive.

1. Compare and contrast Pompey's three-month suppression of Cilician piracy with the United States' 2026 "Project Freedom" operation.

1. Reason about the long-run consequences of granting extraordinary emergency powers to a single executive, using Pompey's career as a case study.

1. Explain the function of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and what it means for a president to declare that hostilities have "terminated".

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Session 1: The Cilician Pirates

Warm-up (5 minutes)

Show a map of the Mediterranean with three points marked: Ostia (the port of Rome), Alexandria (Egyptian grain), and the rocky coast of Cilicia (modern southern Turkey). Ask: "If pirates control the sea around the third point, what happens to the first point?" Solicit answers. Steer toward "the city stops eating."

Define chokepoint: a narrow passage of sea (or land) through which most trade in a region must flow, and which can be closed by a relatively small naval force.

Reading (10 minutes)

Distribute the first half of "The Sweep" (Aulus Gabinius in the Forum to Pompey resettling the survivors at Pompeiopolis). Students read silently, marking any unfamiliar term or place name.

Discussion (15 minutes)

Whole-class:

• Why did the Roman Senate object to the lex Gabinia? (It granted one man more power than any individual Roman had ever held; the optimates feared the precedent.)

• What changed in the 70s BCE that pushed Rome to act? (Pirate raids on Italian coastal towns, the burning of a Roman fleet at Ostia, kidnapping of praetors, and above all the disruption of the grain supply from Sicily, North Africa, and Egypt.)

• Who was Quintus Lutatius Catulus and what was his question? (The senior conservative who asked whom the people would replace Pompey with if he were killed in battle. The crowd shouted back "Thyself", which was politely meant but practically a vote of no confidence in any alternative.)

• Why did Pompey resettle the pirates as farmers instead of executing them? (Plutarch records his reasoning: men do not turn pirate by nature, they turn pirate when the land cannot hold them. Removing the cause removes the symptom.)

• What single fact made the eastern campaign especially fast? (Pompey divided the entire Mediterranean and Black Sea into thirteen zones, assigned a legate to each, kept a flying squadron of sixty ships under his own flag, and worked west to east in three months.)

Hands-on activity: chokepoint mapping (15 minutes)

Working in pairs, students annotate a printed map of the Mediterranean with:

1. The three main grain-producing regions that fed Rome (Sicily, North Africa, Egypt).

1. The Cilician coast (the pirate base).

1. The route a grain ship would take from Alexandria to Ostia.

1. The point at which a Cilician pirate galley could most easily intercept that route.

Then they answer in two sentences: why was the geography of Cilicia ideal for piracy? (Mountainous coast with hidden coves, close to the main east-west shipping lanes, far from Rome's centre of naval power.)

Exit ticket (5 minutes)

One sentence: "Why did the price of bread in Rome fall before Pompey was even back from the campaign?"

(Expected answer: the markets reacted instantly to news that the grain ships would now arrive, the way modern oil futures react to news of a chokepoint reopening.)

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Session 2: The Strait of Hormuz

Warm-up (5 minutes)

Show a map of the Persian Gulf with three points marked: Ras Tanura (the largest Saudi oil terminal), the Strait of Hormuz, and the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. Ask: "If shipping cannot pass through the second point, what happens to the world price of oil?" Solicit answers. Steer toward "it goes up sharply, very quickly."

Reinforce the chokepoint concept by comparing: the Strait of Hormuz is roughly 21 nautical miles wide at its narrowest. About one-fifth of the world's seaborne oil passes through it.

Reading (10 minutes)

Distribute the second half of "The Sweep" (from "Now look at this week"). Students read silently.

Discussion (20 minutes)

Whole-class:

• What event closed the Strait of Hormuz on 28 February 2026? (A combined United States and Israeli air war on Iran and the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei; Iran retaliated by mining the strait and forbidding passage.)

• What is "Project Freedom" and what happened to it? (A US Navy mission launched on 4 May 2026 to escort merchant tankers through the strait; paused two days later when the White House cited "great progress" toward an agreement.)

• What is the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and why does it have a 60-day clock? (Passed over President Nixon's veto after Vietnam, it requires the president to withdraw US armed forces from hostilities within 60 days unless Congress has declared war or authorised the use of force.)

• What did President Trump's 1 May 2026 letter to Congress claim, and what did it accomplish constitutionally? (That hostilities had "terminated", which in his reading made the War Powers clock inapplicable. Practically, it preserved his ability to keep operating without seeking a congressional authorisation.)

• Where is the structural parallel with the lex Gabinia? (Both moments grant a single executive extraordinary unilateral authority over a maritime chokepoint emergency. In Rome the grant was explicit and voted; in the United States it is implicit and contested.)

Hands-on activity: Catulus's question, applied (15 minutes)

Working in groups of three or four, students stage a brief Senate-style debate. One student plays Catulus (oppose the grant of extraordinary powers). One student plays Gabinius (propose them). One or two students play undecided senators.

The debate must address three questions, in this order:

1. Is the crisis real? (Yes: bread is failing in Rome / oil prices are spiking globally.)

1. Can ordinary procedures solve it in time? (No: ordinary consular commands are limited to a single province for a single year.)

1. What happens if the extraordinary command works? (The man who wields it returns home with armies loyal to him personally, client states loyal to him personally, and a precedent that the next emergency will be solved the same way.)

After the debate, groups vote. Then the teacher reveals that the historical Roman vote passed the lex Gabinia, and asks: was that the right call? The class discusses for 5 minutes.

Exit ticket (5 minutes)

Two sentences:

1. Name one way Pompey's solution to the pirate crisis was wiser than what we usually associate with great-power responses to maritime threats.

1. Name one way it nevertheless damaged the Roman Republic in the long run.

(Expected: 1. He addressed the underlying economic grievance by resettling the pirates as farmers rather than executing them; the pirates of Cilicia did not come back. 2. The lex Gabinia was the door through which the lex Manilia walked the following year, which gave Pompey command of the Mithridatic War as well, which made him the richest and most powerful private citizen in Rome, which set up the dynamics that led to civil war with Caesar and the end of the Republic.)

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Optional extension: comparative chokepoints

Students pick one other historical maritime chokepoint crisis and write a one-page comparison with either 67 BCE or 2026:

• The Suez Crisis of 1956 (Egypt nationalises the Canal; Britain, France and Israel invade; the United States forces them to withdraw)

• The Berlin Blockade of 1948–49 (Stalin closes road access to West Berlin; the Western airlift)

• The "Tanker War" of 1984–88 (Iran and Iraq attack neutral oil tankers in the Persian Gulf; the US reflags Kuwaiti tankers)

• The Athenian Megarian Decree of 432 BCE (a trade embargo over face becomes a trigger for the Peloponnesian War)

Comparison criteria: who was the imposing power, what was the demand, what was the resolution, what were the unintended consequences?

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Vocabulary

• chokepoint: a narrow maritime passage through which most regional trade must flow

• lex Gabinia: the 67 BCE Roman law granting Pompey extraordinary command over the Mediterranean

• lex Manilia: the 66 BCE Roman law granting Pompey command of the war against Mithridates

• optimates: the conservative senatorial faction in the late Roman Republic

• legate: a senior deputy commander serving under a Roman magistrate

• quinquereme: a large Roman war galley with three banks of oars manned by five rowers in some configuration

• Cilicia: the rocky south-coastal region of Anatolia, the principal pirate base

• Pompeiopolis: the city Pompey founded by renaming Soli and settling former pirates there as farmers

• War Powers Resolution: the 1973 US law requiring presidents to seek congressional authorisation for hostilities lasting beyond 60 days

• Strait of Hormuz: the narrow sea passage between Iran and Oman through which approximately one-fifth of the world's seaborne oil normally moves

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Teacher's note on neutrality

The story takes no partisan position on the 2026 Iran war or on President Trump's exercise of executive authority. The structural parallel is offered as a historical observation: Republican constitutions have always struggled with maritime emergencies, and the temptation to vest a single executive with unilateral chokepoint authority predates the United States by two thousand years. Encourage students to debate the trade-offs honestly. The Roman vote was almost unanimous in favour of granting Pompey the command. The Romans were not stupid. They were trapped between a real crisis and an imperfect alternative.