Bret Devereaux

Which part of the Republic? Isn't the first part minus the tribunes and such?

Would it make sense to go bottom-up, proceeding up the ladder from the lowest elected/appointed offices to the highest ranks?

The one time I filled in for a class going over Rome, I opted to start with citizenship and the Roman ideas of it.

I am always very interested to know more about the local governance structure in the provinces!

I do what you’ve outlined. Cursus, assemblies, senate / orders. But also explain plebeians / patricians early on.

It might be interesting to run it bottom up, to emphasize that regular people also lived and contributed to politics, while also highlighting how little political power they actually had. But maybe that's just my power to the people attitude talking.

As a tangent to this, how would you go about explaining the cultural, legal and religious differences between citizens in a civilian context and (those same) citizens serving in the army?