CLASSICAL HERITAGE AND AMERICAN POLITICS

The American founders were steeped in the classics of ancient Greece and Rome. The Western educational system that trained them emphasized a classical curriculum that changed little from the medieval period to the late nineteenth century. Boys typically began studying Greek and Latin at around age eight, reading Cicero (106–43 b.c.), Virgil (70–19 b.c.), Homer (eighth century b.c.), Xenophon (c. 431–c. 352 b.c.), and the Greek New Testament. The founders' classical training generally continued in college, where two or three out of the four years were devoted to further study of the classics. As a result, most of the founders developed both reverence and affection for them, urging their own children to study them and soundly defeating the efforts of those who sought to eliminate the classical language requirement in the schools. Many of the founders continued to read the classics even in retirement.

classical symbols

The founders used classical symbols to communicate, to impress, and to persuade. The existence of a classical canon facilitated communication among the educated men of the Western world. With a single classical pseudonym or allusion, a gentleman could be certain of generating a chain of associations within the mind of his audience. These symbols also served a powerful legitimating function. To appropriate such emblems was to claim social status for oneself and the support of venerable authorities for one's cause. Classical symbols provided badges of class, taste, wisdom, and virtue. The most common classical symbol was the pseudonym. Drawn largely from the Parallel Lives of Plutarch (c. a.d. 46–after 119), Alexander Hamilton's pseudonyms were carefully selected to reinforce the central arguments of his essays. For instance, Hamilton used "Phocion" for a 1784 open letter to the citizens of New York opposing a state law that would confiscate Tory property. Phocion was a fourth-century b.c. Athenian general famous for his decent treatment of prisoners of war. Hamilton was suggesting that his fellow New Yorkers emulate Phocion's wise magnanimity. Similarly, anti-Federalists adopted the pseudonyms "Brutus," "Cassius," and "Cato," in order to insinuate that the supporters of the Constitution were Monarchists.

Thomas Jefferson was a leader of the neoclassical movement in American architecture, combining the Greek column with the Roman dome in his designs for such structures as the Virginia Capitol, the U.S. Capitol, Monticello, and various buildings on the University of Virginia campus.

models of conduct

Ancient history also provided the founders with important models of personal behavior, social practice, and government form. George Washington modeled himself after Cincinnatus (fl. mid-fifth century b.c.), the Roman hero who defeated the Aequians, a Latin tribe that threatened Rome, in sixteen days and then promptly resigned his dictatorship and retired to the plow. Proud of his position as the first president of the Society of the Cincinnati, an association of Revolutionary War veterans, Washington demanded reforms when popular fears of the hereditary nature of the organization threatened to destroy the image associated with its name. Washington also admired Cato the Younger (95–46 b.c.), who died defending the Roman republic against Julius Caesar (100–44 b.c.). Washington memorized various lines from Cato, a play by Joseph Addison (1672–1719) based on Plutarch's lives of Cato and Caesar, and employed them aptly at crucial moments in his career. John Adams emulated Cicero, the other great martyr of the Roman republic, throughout his life. Cicero's unwillingness to engage in party favoritism was especially influential for Adams.

In general, the founders embraced the classical theme of the lone-wolf hero (e.g., Socrates [470–399 b.c.], Demosthenes [d. 413 b.c.], and Cicero) who sacrifices short-term popularity, which can be purchased only by vice, for long-term fame, which can be purchased only by virtue—the aristocrat who saves the masses, often at the cost of his own life, from themselves. The founders also admired Spartan frugality, courage, and patriotism and Athenian freedom of speech. During the American Revolution they noted that the Greeks, unlike the British, had allowed their colonies complete independence. The founders were encouraged by the fact that a tiny band of Greek republics had defeated the greatest power of their own day, the seemingly invincible Persian Empire. Like his colleagues, Jefferson also frequently compared the United States with the early Roman republic, adding that Great Britain resembled the corrupt commercial city of Carthage. The founders were excited at the opportunity to match their ancient heroes' struggles against tyranny and their sage construction of durable republics—to rival the noble deeds that had filled their youth.

antimodels

The founders' classical antimodels, those ancient individuals, societies, and government forms whose vices they wished to avoid, were as significant as their models. The most prevalent antimodels were Philip II of Macedon (382–336 b.c.), Alexander the Great (356–323 b.c.), Catiline (c. 108–62 b.c.), Julius Caesar, Tiberius (42 b.c.–a.d. 37), Caligula (a.d. 12–41), and Nero (a.d. 37–68)—men who had either overturned the revered Greek democracy and Roman republic or had ruled tyrannically following their demise. Some founders considered Greco-Roman slavery a model, others an antimodel. While Charles Pinckney based his defense of southern slavery on the Greco-Roman model, George Mason and John Dickinson emphasized the deleterious effects of slavery on the Roman republic. During the debates at the Constitutional Convention, Federalists repeatedly cited ancient Greek confederacies, such as the Amphictyonic and Achaean Leagues, as examples of federal systems destroyed by decentralization, while anti-Federalists referred to the Roman republic as an example of a republic ruined by centralization.

The founders' scrutiny of the ancient republics frequently resembled autopsies, the purpose of which was to save the life of the American body politic by uncovering the cancerous growths that had caused the demise of its ideological ancestors. Unfortunately, the antimodels the founders encountered everywhere in their classical reading left them obsessed with conspiracies against liberty. The same visceral fear of conspiracies that instilled in the founders a passionate love of liberty and a proper recognition of its fragility also fueled the tendency to see a conspiracy behind every well-intentioned blunder, a conspirator in every opponent. For this reason, the early republican period was filled with acrimony between the political parties, each of which considered the other not merely mistaken but treasonous.

mixed government and pastoralism

In addition to symbols, models, and antimodels, the classics also provided the founders with mixed government theory. Referring back to the theory of Plato (c. 428–348 b.c.), Aristotle (384–322 b.c.), Polybius (c. 200–c. 118 b.c.), and Cicero that the best form of government balanced power among the one, the few, and the many, the framers of the U.S. Constitution balanced power among the one president (a powerful executive selected by the electoral college), an aristocratic chamber of senators (selected by the state legislatures for lengthy, six-year terms), and a democratic house of representatives (directly elected by the people for brief, two-year terms). Recognizing the theoretical basis of the Constitution, anti-Federalists either assaulted mixed government theory or denied its applicability to the American context. During the early national period, the Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison abandoned the theory in favor of representative democracy. Even then, most Republicans responded to the near-unanimous judgment of ancient political theorists against majority rule by resorting to the equally ancient and august tradition of classical pastoralism. Jefferson argued that it was safe to entrust the majority with the predominant power so long as the majority consisted of farmers, whose frugality, temperance, and independence made them the backbone of the republic. Following the lead of the poets Hesiod (eighth century b.c.), Theocritus (c. 310–250 b.c., and Virgil, the historian Livy (59 b.c.–a.d. 17), and the philosopher Aristotle, Jefferson considered the rural, agricultural existence morally superior to the urban lifestyle. For this reason, Jefferson was willing to violate strict construction of the Constitution, one of his core principles, by purchasing the Louisiana Territory. In Jefferson's mind, the expansion of American territory was vital to the virtue and longevity of the republic because it supplied the land necessary for the maintenance of a society of Virgilian farmers.

natural law

The Greek theory of natural law also influenced the U.S. Constitution. This theory hypothesized the existence of a universal code of morality that humans could deduce from nature. The theory was suggested by the Pythagoreans, expanded by Plato, and emphasized by the Stoics. From it modern republicans deduced the theory of natural rights, which held that humans were born with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and property. (Jefferson's substitution of "the pursuit of happiness" for "property" in the Declaration of Independence was intended not to restrict the right of property but, rather, to broaden natural rights in general.) The theory of natural rights furnished the intellectual foundation of both the state bills of rights and the U.S. Bill of Rights.

The classics exerted a formative influence on the founders of the United States. Classical ideas provided the basis for their conceptions of government form, social responsibility, human nature, and virtue. The authors of the classical canon offered the founders companionship, solace, and a sense of identity and purpose. Classical republican ideology allowed them to cast the English king George III as Nero or Caligula, Washington and Jefferson as Cato and Cicero—in other words, to portray the king as the real rebel, the violator of that natural law which lawful patriots would die to defend. Without this sense of belonging to an ancient and noble tradition in defense of liberty, it is unlikely that the founders could have persuaded themselves and many other Americans to rebel against the mother country. The American Revolution was a paradox: a revolution fueled by tradition.

See alsoArchitectural Styles; Architecture: Public; Constitutional Convention; Education: Grammar, Elementary, and Secondary Schools, Education: Colleges and Universities; Natural Rights; Politics: Political Thought .

bibliography

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Carl J. Richard