What America’s Founders Learned from Antiquity

Relive the discovery of ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum, which brought the classical world vividly alive for 18th-century Europeans. Learn how founding-era Americans were steeped in classical antiquity through their education and culture, and why they looked to ancient Rome and Greece to understand their own turbulent times and to create a new republic based in representation and equality.

In the 1760s, ancient Rome became politically relevant to Colonial Americans. Grasp how colonists, predominantly farmers, drew upon Roman thinkers’ notions of the farming class as the backbone of civic virtue, independence, and freedom. Note the ways in which the Roman republic became a language of opposition for Americans to oppressive taxation by the globally expanding British empire.

As of 1763, harsh taxation gradually eroded American colonists’ contentment with British rule. Here, trace the colonists’ response to British policy, as they began to view the British as a tyrannical empire, drawing on both contemporary and ancient writings. See how Americans used the contrast between the Roman republic and the corrupt Roman empire to make sense of their political dilemma.

Assess America’s associations with ancient Rome and how it became part of the national fabric of America. Within this story, look at two fundamental perceptions: the identification of America with the Roman republic—the society of simple farmers—and, in contrast, with the aggressive Roman empire. Observe how these associations have shaped the nation’s ideological dialogue and politics.

Investigate Americans’ perceptions during the founding era of ancient Greece. Note their selective admiration for Spartan military history, and their wariness of the perceived instability of Athenian democracy. Witness the gradual transformation of these perspectives into the modern view of Greece as the cradle of democracy and Western civilization.

Beyond Rome and Greece, the founders took inspiration from ancient Carthage. Learn about their view of Carthage as a break-away Phoenician colony with admirable government, whose major threats from Rome mirrored America’s own from the British. See also how American revolutionaries invoked the history of the Germanic Saxons’ subjection to British rule to criticize the British monarchy.

Uncover America’s many associations with ancient Egypt. Begin with the Puritans’ linking of their flight from religious persecution in England with the biblical Egypt of the Book of Exodus. Look into the classical Egypt Americans encountered through Greek and Roman sources, and the “Egyptomania” of the 19th century, which influenced the ideology of both pro- and anti-slavery activists.

Of all the founders, Washington’s life was the most publicly classical. Discover how Washington used Greek and Roman sources to shape and give meaning to his own path. In particular, see how he invoked the acts of the Roman general Fabius and the farmer and soldier Cincinnatus in his military and political decisions. Observe his use of classical symbols at Mount Vernon and in his public persona.

John Adams’s political life was deeply rooted in Greek and Roman history. Trace his route to the presidency, echoing his Roman hero Cicero as a lawyer, orator, and public thinker. Take account of his powerful writings denying the legitimacy of British policies, articulating the “revolution principles” of classical theorists, and proposing a framework for government that would balance power.

Classicism infused Thomas Jefferson’s public and private lives. Chart his classical education, “agrarian republicanism,” and passionate advocacy for classical architecture. Witness his use of Roman political ideology in his revolutionary role, the influence of neoclassicism in his diplomatic life in France, and his work as president to create a Roman-style republic.

Delve into the fertile mind of James Madison, and his rich contribution to the US Constitution. Assess his view of the classical world, and his faith that history could guide the present. In approaching the writing of the Constitution, track the lessons Madison took from ancient Greek political confederacies, and how he went beyond their history to propose something totally new.

Learn how Benjamin Franklin’s view of classicism differed from many other founders. Follow his youthful career as a printer and his later life in public service, highlighting his work to reform education, and his advocacy for Socrates’ prescriptions for practical living. Note that as a diplomat, Franklin became an emblem of republican virtue among the French.

America’s founders drew inspiration from three prominent Roman historians: Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus. Explore how the writings of these historians gave the revolutionaries a framework for understanding their own times, providing insights into republics and their fragility. Learn how founding-era Americans used perspectives from these historians to write their own histories of their Revolution.

Grasp how Enlightenment thinkers built on the Renaissance recovery of classicism, by adding new emphasis on knowledge, reason, and the conception of progress. Then learn about two historians who exemplify the Enlightenment approach to classical history, Montesquieu and Gibbon, and their influence on the American founders’ thinking about the design of their own government.

In fundamental ways, the education of the founders’ era synthesized the classical and Christian worlds. Observe that figures such as educator Ezra Stiles and Thomas Jefferson both mixed Christianity and classicism in their thinking and teaching. Note how Revolutionary-era thinkers, in the philosophies of Epicureanism and Stoicism, an ethical system that supplemented Christian belief.

The US Constitution has deep roots in Greek and Roman political thought. Note the influence of Aristotle’s Politics, Polybius’s Histories, and the philosopher Montesquieu on the framers’ conception of how to structure a government by the people. Take account of the ways in which the framers integrated concepts from these thinkers but went beyond them to create something truly revolutionary.

Virgil’s epic poem the Aeneid was read by all children in the Revolutionary era. Uncover the themes of rise and progress, civic duty, and patriotic devotion in the epic, which gave the founders a national story in the exile of the warrior Aeneas, who journeyed westward to found a new empire. Reflect on the poem’s theme of empire building, which has both inspired and haunted Americans.

Track the inspiration American women found in classicism, in challenging both British and male authority. Follow women’s adoption of classical personas, their efforts for broader equality and education, and their writing of histories of Greece and Rome that were also criticisms of their own society. Observe how this helped open the path to both women’s rights and global human rights.

The classical world affected even the enslaved in the Americas. See how slaveholders viewed Greco-Roman slavery in relation to their own practice of enslavement, with both pro- and anti-slavery activists invoking classical sources to argue their beliefs. Witness Black people’s use of classicism before and after the Civil War to resist slavery, gain education, and to push for universal equality.

Founding-era thinkers used the lens of classical antiquity to comprehend the Native peoples of the Americas. Study the colonists’ use of classical texts, art, political theory, and language to classify and come to terms with the unfamiliar peoples surrounding them. Then, discover how Native peoples themselves encountered the classical tradition, through schooling and Puritan proselytizing.

In the aftermath of the Revolution, Americans changed the face of their major cities. Learn how classical cityscapes expressed the republican ideals of the new nation. Examples include Boston, an old city that received a major classical facelift, and Washington, DC, a completely invented city that was the first in the world to be built from nothing, into the image of ancient Rome.

In the new republic, Neoclassicism flourished not only in architecture, but also within American homes and gardens. Study the elements of Neoclassical interior design and decoration, as practiced by major design figures of the era, as well as Neoclassical trends in women’s and men’s attire. See how these stylistic features telegraphed American ideals of simplicity, virtue, and patriotism.

Portraits and landscape paintings of the early American nation created an image for the United States as a new Rome. Learn to decode the classical symbols, imagery, and political import in the work of four major painters of the era: Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, and Thomas Cole.

The story of classicism in America did not end with the founders. Observe how Greek democracy rose as a model for the country after the Civil War, and how classicism in American education declined, replaced by the study of “Western Civilization,” a conception that is now questioned. See the legacy of classicism today in areas such as Freudian psychology, scholarship, politics, and more.