The Framers: More Roman than Greek?

A fascinating question that has occurred to many students of history is why the founding fathers emphasized the Roman tradition more than the Greek. Their situation in the Eighteenth Century put them at a point after the rediscovery of the classical world. They lived after the infusion of Greco-Roman concepts, languages, and histories that had been reintroduced into the consciousness of the Western World. However, anyone who has studied the period of the founding cannot help but notice that the writings and examples of the Founders were more often referential to the Romans than the Greeks.

The first possible reason is that Latin learning was more prominent than Greek. While those admitted to colonial colleges like Harvard, Yale, Queen’s and the College of New Jersey were required to have a proficiency in Greek, the emphasis on Latin predominated. A second reason was related to the fact that the nature of composition of our new Republic, if it were to succeed, was more likely to be in the Roman model than the Greek. Rome grew from a small homogeneous city-state to a world-power partially through its remarkable ability to assimilate and incorporate new peoples and idea into its fabric. The fledgling new nation on the shores of the Atlantic was composed of at least five significantly different sub-cultures. If it were to survive, it needed to have a strong yet flexible government that could give a hearing to each faction without showing undo affinity for any one of them.

The last reason which appears to me to be the most important is the fact that the Founders consciously rejected the pure democratic model of Greek city-states Like Athens. The Athens of Plato and Aristotle demonstrated many of the flaws of direct democracy. A virtuous aristocracy was envisioned to serve as a bulwark against many of the vices of the demos. Perhaps those of us in the English-speaking world have even etymological artifacts of our affinity with Rome over Greece. The very fact that we have “virtue” from the Latin rather than “arête” from the Greek might be a symbolic signal of our centuries old choice of looking back towards the shores of the Tiber more often that the shores of the Aegean.