"I have but one lamp by which my feet are
guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the
past."
--Patrick Henry, March 23,
1775
"Patrick
Henry’s view of the value of history was not unique. The men who framed our constitutional republic agreed with
French author Charles Pinot Duclos, who observed:
'We see
on the theater of the world a certain number of scenes which succeed each
other in endless repetition: where
we see the same faults followed regularly by the same misfortunes, we may
reasonably think that if we could have known the first we might have avoided
the others.The past should enlighten
us on the future: knowledge
of history is no more than an anticipated experience.'
All our
Founding Fathers believed that history was a precursor of the future. In the
annals of history — particularly that of the Greek and Roman republics of
antiquity — they believed they could find the key to inoculating America
against the diseases that infected and destroyed past societies. Indeed, it has been said that the Founders were coroners
examining the lifeless bodies of the republics and democracies of the past, in
order to avoid succumbing to the maladies that shortened their lives.
The
Founders learned very early in life to venerate the illuminating stories of
ancient Greece and Rome. They
learned these stories, not from secondary sources, but from the classics
themselves. And from these
stories they drew knowledge and inspiration that helped them found a republic
far greater than anything created in antiquity.
Early Education
Classical
training usually began at age eight, whether in a school or at home under the
guidance of a private tutor. One
remarkable teacher who inculcated his students with a love of the classics was
Scotsman Donald Robertson. Many
future luminaries were enrolled in his school: James Madison, John Taylor of Caroline, John Tyler and
George Rogers Clark, among others. Robertson
and teachers like him nourished their charges with a healthy diet of Greek and
Latin, and required that they learn to master Virgil, Horace, Justinian,
Tacitus, Herodotus, Plutarch, Lucretius and Thucydides. Further along in their education, students were required to
translate Cicero’s Orations and
Virgil’s Aeneid. They were expected to translate Greek and Latin passages
aloud, write out the translations in English, and then re-translate the
passages back into the original language using a different tense.
The
standards were no less rigorous for those taught at home. George Wythe, the renowned Virginian who would come to be known
as the “Teacher of Liberty,” was himself taught to appreciate the writings of
the ancients at home by his mother. Tragically,
Wythe’s mother died when he was very young, but she lived long enough to anchor
her son’s education on very firm moorings. Before she died she taught Wythe to read and translate
both the fundamental languages of antiquity, Greek and Latin. According to one early biographer, Wythe “had a perfect
knowledge of the Greek language taught to him by his mother in the backwoods.”
Whether
at home or in a schoolhouse, the goal of education in the early days of our
nation was to instill virtue in the students. The Founders were taught that free societies were
sustained by a virtuous populace, and that, if a society were to abandon a
study of the classics, that same society would eventually abandon the virtues
championed by the classical authors.
There
was a more pragmatic side to the Founders’ classical education as well. Twenty-seven of the signers of the Declaration of Independence
were college educated. Moreover,
of the 55 delegates who attended the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia
in 1787, 30 were college graduates. That
is an impressive feat given the challenging entrance requirements of
18th-century universities. Fortunately
for the young Founding Fathers, the teachers of the day exercised their
students in Greek and Latin, so that their pupils could meet the rigorous
entrance requirements of colonial colleges. Those colleges stipulated that entering freshmen be able to
read, translate and expound the Greco-Roman classical works.
Such
requirements were nearly universal in America and remained unchanged for
generations. Teachers
concentrated their lessons on the works of those classical authors on which
students would be tested prior to admission to college. A brief survey of the entrance requirements for colonial
colleges will testify to the enlightenment of our Founding Fathers — as well as
to the astounding decline in the educational standards of our day.
In
1750, Harvard demanded that applicants be able to extemporaneously “read,
construe, and parse Cicero, Virgil, or such like classical authors and to write
Latin in prose, and to be skilled in making Latin verse, or at least to know
the rules of Prosodia, and to read, construe, and parse ordinary Greek as in
the New testament, Isocrates, or such like and decline the paradigms of Greek
nouns and verbs.” Of
note is the fact that John Trumball, the illustrious artist, passed Harvard’s
exacting entrance exam at only 12 years of age.
Alexander
Hamilton’s alma mater, King’s College (now Columbia), had similarly stringent
prerequisites for prospective students. Applicants were required to “give a rational account of the
Greek and Latin grammars, read three orations of Cicero and three books of
Virgil’s Aeneid, and
translate the first 10 chapters of John from Greek into Latin.”
James
Madison had it no easier when he applied for entrance to the College of New
Jersey (now Princeton) in 1769. Madison
and his fellow applicants were obliged to demonstrate “the ability to write
Latin prose, translate Virgil, Cicero, and the Greek gospels and a commensurate
knowledge of Latin and Greek grammar.”
College
lessons were as demanding as the entrance exams. American colonial curricula were based on the Latin “trivium”
of rhetoric, logic, and grammar, as well as the “quadrivium” of arithmetic,
music, geometry, and astronomy. Unlike
modern universities, where elective courses are innumerable and often inane,
the colleges attended by our Founding Fathers offered very few elective courses
and coursework focused chiefly on the study of classical works. And those works were in the languages in which they were
originally written! Students were taught lessons in virtue and liberty from the
works of Herodotus, Xenophon, Plutarch, Livy, Sallust, Tacitus and Polybius. Thomas Jefferson’s classmates recalled that he studied at least
15 hours a day and carried his Greek grammar book with him wherever he went.
Because
of the formidable classical curricula at colonial colleges, the classics became
a well from which the Founders drank deeply. In the classics, the Founding Fathers found their heroes
and villains, and they also detected warning signs along the road of statecraft
on which they would tread.
Heroes and Villains
Ancient
history provided the Founders with examples of behavior and circumstances that
they could apply to their own circumstances. Their heroes were Roman and Greek republicans and defenders of
liberty. All of the Founders’
Roman heroes lived at a time when the Roman republic was being threatened by
power-hungry demagogues, bloodthirsty dictators and shadowy conspirators. The Founders’ principal Greco-Roman heroes were Roman
statesmen: Cato the Younger, Brutus,
Cassius and Cicero — all of whom sacrificed their lives in unsuccessful
attempts to save the republic — as well as the celebrated Greek lawgivers
Lycurgus and Solon.
Cato
the Younger was a Roman of sterling reputation who lived from approximately 95
B.C. to 46 B.C. He
is described as being “unmoved by passion and firm in everything,” even from
his youth. He was renowned for
finishing whatever he started and for hating flattery. He embraced every Roman virtue, and he was especially
appreciated for his sense of justice and his even temperament. As a senator, Cato was always in attendance when the
Senate was in session. A
no-nonsense legislator, Cato was hated by Pompey and Caesar for his integrity
and for his refusal to aid them in their corrupt plans to usurp power. Although they imprisoned him, the public clamored for his
release and Caesar reluctantly complied.
Unable
to squelch Cato’s attacks on their corrupt policies, Caesar and Pompey sent him
to Cyprus. Finally, Cato
aligned himself with Brutus against Caesar, a decision that would eventually
cost him his life. George
Washington admired Cato so greatly that he had Joseph Addison’s play about Cato
performed in Valley Forge to boost the troops’ morale.
Roman
heroes very dear to the hearts of the Founders also included Brutus and Cassius. Brutus was admired by his contemporaries for his pleasant
disposition and virtuous temper. Even
those who opposed his attack on Caesar believed that Brutus was motivated by a
genuine concern for the republic and not by personal animosity toward Caesar. Marc Antony himself said that Brutus was “the only man that
conspired against Caesar out of a sense of the glory and justice of the action; but all the rest rose up against the man, and not the
tyrant …” America’s Founders looked to Brutus and Cassius as role models
because their only aim in overthrowing Caesar was to restore the constitutional
Roman government and republican liberties.
The
most popular Roman hero of the Founding Fathers was Cicero, the silver-tongued
Roman orator. Cicero
lived from approximately 106 B.C. to 43 B.C. John Adams, in his Defense of the
Constitution, said of Cicero: “All of the ages of the world have not produced a greater
statesman and philosopher united than Cicero…” First as a lawyer, then as a
consul and senator, Cicero boldly defended the republic against the rise of
dictators. Cicero delivered his
greatest speeches in defense of the republic against the Catilinarian
Conspiracy.
The
Catilinarian Conspiracy was a plot to overthrow the republic, hatched by
aristocrat Lucius Sergius Catiline with the help of a cabal of aristocrats and
disaffected veterans. In
63 B.C., Cicero exposed and thwarted the plot, and Catiline was forced to flee
from Rome. For his service in
saving Rome, Cicero was given the title “Father of his Country” [Pater
Patriae] by his countrymen. Like Brutus and Cassius, Cicero’s courageous defense of
republican liberty in the face of designing conspirators made him a logical
model for emulation by our Founding Fathers.
Regarding
the Greek classics, the American Founding Fathers greatly admired Lycurgus, the
lawgiver of Sparta. Lycurgus
lived in the 9th century B.C. and reformed the entire Spartan commonwealth. His most important reform was the establishment of a
senate equal in authority with the monarchy in matters of great importance. Prior to Lycurgus’ innovation, the Spartan government
swayed between monarchy and democracy, depending on whether the king or the
people had the upper hand. The
senate served as a check on the excesses of both king and subjects. The biographer Plutarch called Lycurgus’ institutions “one
of the greatest blessings which heaven can send down.”
Another
Greek famed for his reform of the law was Solon. Born in Athens about 638 B.C., Solon achieved glory as one
of the “Seven Sages of Greece.”
Around 590 B.C., he was given the task of reforming the Athenian constitution. Solon’s improvements included the right of trial by jury
and the division of society into several bodies that would balance and check
each other in governing Athens. After
finishing his constitutional reforms, Solon left Athens for 10 years. While he was away, Pisistratus, his former friend, usurped
control of the government and fastened tyrannical controls on Athens. Both Lycurgus and Solon appreciated the need for
incorporating checks and balances into government, a need that the American Founders
understood just as acutely.
Detecting
Conspiracy
As the
Founders read the histories of the rise and fall of the Greek and Roman
republics recorded by Herodotus, Livy, Tacitus, Sallust, Plutarch Polybius and
others, they learned that the liberties enjoyed by the citizens of those
commonwealths were quite often targeted by conspiracies of men determined to
enslave the people and establish themselves as tyrants. The founders recognized that the conspiratorial view of
history was not a theory — it was a fact.
Ancient
historians were straightforward in their reports of the secret plots. Surveying the litany of British monarchical abuses, our
Founders rightly perceived that the shrouded hand of an evil conspiracy was at
work in America and England, just as it had been in the Roman republic they so
admired. Famed patriot
Charles Carroll of Carrollton invoked the record of Roman historian Tacitus
when he wrote that the conspiracy of his own time had led America and England
to “that degree of liberty and servitude which [Servius Sulpicius] Galba
ascribes to the Roman people in the speech to [Gaius Calpurnius] Piso: those same Romans, a few years after that period, deified
the horse of Caligula.”
The
equally eminent and historically minded John Adams also applied analogies from
the Roman republic to the increasingly open threat to the foundations of
English liberty by corrupt legislators. The government of England, he said (quoting Roman
historian Sallust), had descended to the level where “the Roman republic was
when Jugurtha left it, having pronounced it a ‘venal city, ripe for destruction
if it can only find a purchaser.‘ ”
Sallust was a valuable and oft-cited source of warnings as to the consequences
of government corruption and intrigue.
Our
Founders heeded these warnings about power elites who used corruption,
intrigue, and personal immorality to neutralize public concern and dampen zeal
for the protection of liberty. From
the 18th to the 21st century, it would seem times have changed very little.
James
Madison insightfully noted that most of the tyrants of history masqueraded as
democrats, and over time revealed themselves to be power hungry dictators and
shameless demagogues. Alexander
Hamilton, an astute student of classical history, devoted his first
contribution to The Federalist Papers to a warning against tyrants or “men who have over-turned
the liberties of republics, commencing as demagogues and ending as tyrants.”
From
such statements, it is evident that Adams, Madison, Hamilton and other Founders
understood that, throughout the history of the Greek and Roman republics,
tyrants were more likely than not to begin their political careers as populists
and democrats and to end them as despots. Such demagogues were men of prominence who used their
popular support to force their will upon an unsuspecting and trusting populace. As Greek historian Thucydides remarked, “You may rule over
anyone whom you can dominate.”
Madison’s
study of the ancient Greek confederacies revealed to him that almost every one
of these republics came to an end as a result of conspiracy among domestic
demagogues and foreign allies. Hamilton
called these insidious cabals the “Grecian Horse to a republic.” Both men worried that the same scheme would eventually destroy
the American union. This
fear, coupled with a thorough understanding of history, made the Founders
vigilant guardians against the rise of such combinations in their own nascent
republic.
Madison,
James Wilson and others who systematically studied the ancient republics and
confederacies noted that conspiracies were rampant among them. Those who were successful in carrying out such evil
designs would expose and vehemently rail against similar acts on the part of
others, thus painting themselves as guardians of liberty. The source of all this evil was an unquenchable thirst for
power. Power was the end, and
conspiracy was the means commonly used to satisfy the rapacious appetite for
dominion.
From
Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, Jefferson, Adams, Dickinson, Madison, Hamilton and other
diligent patriot-scholars learned of a particularly pernicious deception
practiced by tyrannically minded conspirators. These instigators would place their fellow conspirators in
leadership positions on both sides of a controversy, constantly inciting the “opposing”
factions against one another until the innocent citizens didn’t know what to
believe. Our American
republic in the 21st century is little different, as Democrats and Republicans
adamantly “oppose” one another, while between their rival policies lurks not a
dime’s worth of difference.
A
companion evil to the conspiracies that contaminated and eventually annihilated
the ancient commonwealths was the gradual erosion of liberty by seemingly
harmless and legal acts. In
Demosthenes’ writings, the Founders read of how Philip of Macedon — by slow and
nearly imperceptible means — dismantled Athenian freedom. Philip was an enemy even to those who fancied themselves
his allies. He used “legal”
means to subvert the constitution and rob Athens of her liberty. His favorite tactic was to create frivolous diversions and
provide luxuries to lull the Athenians into a false sense of security and
distract them from noticing Philip’s usurpations.
Unfortunately,
Philip succeeded in gaining control of Athens and in making her formerly
freedom-loving citizens slaves to his will. Jefferson described such gradual and planned usurpations
this way: “Single acts of
tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day, but a series of
oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through
every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate and systematical plan
of reducing us to slavery.” Will
we prove wiser and more zealous protectors of our sacred liberties?
One of
the best ways of demonstrating our respect for our Founding Fathers, and our
dedication to the principles of liberty they bequeathed to us, is to study the
books they studied. By
so doing, we will come to appreciate, as they did, that republics are as
fragile as they are glorious. We
will also more fully recognize that unassailable personal virtue and vigilant
loyalty to constitutional principals are the only hope for perpetuation of the
freedom that our forebears bought with their blood. May we learn from the successes and failures of the
ancients and not allow the “lamp of experience” to be extinguished in our
lives."
Wolverton, The
New American. 20 September 2004. pp.
35 – 39.
