Ancient Rome and the Constitution, Part I: Rome in Founding-Era Culture

Commentary

Last year, the internet resounded with chatter about how much American and British men ponder the subject of ancient Rome. Women started asking their husbands and boyfriends, “Honey, how often do you think about the Roman Empire?”

And based on the responses, American and British men actually think about Rome a lot. “Saturday Night Live” even produced a very humorous video on the subject.

Still, the interest modern men have in Rome pales compared with that of the American founding generation. By “founding generation,” I mean Americans living between 1763 and 1791—that is, from the time when tension with Great Britain began until the Bill of Rights was ratified. Moreover, members of the founding generation not only were fascinated by Rome, but they also knew a great deal about it.

This new series is about the lessons the Founders drew from Rome when writing and debating the Constitution. I wrote it to help fill a gap left by the modern American public school system.

During the 20th century, public schools stopped requiring the study of Latin, and eventually, most removed Latin from their curriculum entirely. They also terminated their courses in civics.

These actions were part of a wider project of downgrading Western civilization. Schools apparently did this to render the curriculum less demanding and to make room for the politically driven subjects called for by the “diversity” and “multicultural” agenda. 

These educational changes largely severed modern Americans from their own traditions. After all, Latin was not only the language of ancient Rome, but for centuries afterward was a principal vehicle for the transmission of learning and culture: Aquinas, Newton, Galileo, Francis Bacon, and many other architects of the modern world wrote some of their greatest works in Latin.

Additionally, courses in civics were where students learned the underlying assumptions of the American system of government, its basic components, and how it all worked.

One result from these curricular changes is that today many Americans are ignorant of even the rudiments of Western tradition—including the Constitution: A recent poll found that fewer than half of Americans can name the three branches of the federal government.

Unfortunately, ignorance makes it easier for unscrupulous people to spread misinformation and misunderstanding. But this series, like two earlier ones I authored for The Epoch Times (see here and here), may help readers reconnect with the Constitution, the American founding, and America’s founding ideals.

Rome Fascinated the Founders

Have you ever examined the Great Seal of the United States? You can find it on the back of the one-dollar bill.

On the right side of the back is the front of the Great Seal. Its centerpiece is an eagle, which, not coincidentally, was the emblem carried by the Roman legions. The eagle holds a ribbon in his beak. It reads E pluribus unum—“out of many, one.” This Latin phrase is derived from a Roman poem called Moretum: the salad, or pesto. In the poem, a farmer uses a variety of ingredients to make his pesto, fashioning from many foods just one.

When the Confederation Congress approved the Great Seal in 1782, most people believed that the author of Moretum was the Roman poet Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70–19 B.C.E.). Although most scholars now doubt Virgil’s authorship, the point remains that the Founders believed it. Anyway, irrespective of who wrote it, the poem is unquestionably Roman.

On the one-dollar bill’s left side is the Great Seal’s reverse. It contains two other legends, also in Latin. The first is Annuit coeptis. This is an abbreviation of two separate lines in Virgil’s poetry, one from his lengthy agricultural poem, the Georgics, and one from his epic, the Aeneid. It means that “he [i.e., God] has approved our undertakings.”

The second legend is Novus ordo seclorum, “A new order of the ages.” It comes from Virgil’s Eclogues, his first published book of poetry. The specific source is the fourth or “Messianic” eclogue, about which I’ll say more later in this series.

On either side of the dais of the House of Representatives are other indications of the Founders’ interest in Rome. On the back wall are two fasces—that is, bundles of rods enclosing an axe. Bodyguards protecting high Roman officers carried fasces as symbols of imperium, or executive authority. Their further symbolism was strength in unity: Although a single rod can be cracked easily, a bundle is virtually unbreakable.

Rome in Founding-Era Education

During the Founding Era, schoolgirls were instructed in “reading, writing, and ’rithematic,” and then went on to study modern languages, music, household arts, and other useful subjects.

Boys, on the other hand, were immersed in ancient Rome.

At roughly age 8, after acquiring basic literacy and numeracy, boys began the study of Latin. They read works of history, oratory, drama, poetry, and philosophy. The minority that headed for college later began studying Greek. Part of a typical college entrance examination was to take a designated passage from the Greek New Testament and translate it into Latin.

The college curriculum was heavy with the Greco-Roman classics. Students read advanced Latin authors, such as Seneca and Tacitus, and Greek writers, such as Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Polybius, and Plutarch. We shall have more to say about Polybius and Plutarch later.

Colleges supplemented classical studies with theology, modern history, mathematics, geography, science, and other subjects.

Rome in the Wider Culture

The 18th century thought of itself as a classical age. Certainly, classical learning had a great influence on the wider culture. As just mentioned, Latin was dominant in the grammar school curriculum. Although only a small fraction of boys attended college, the college-educated exercised an outsized influence. One reason was the popularity of almanacs, which were disproportionately written and published by the college-educated. Another was that college-educated men often were elected to public office. For example, 27 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence had at least some college education, as did 23 of the 39 signers of the Constitution.

Men and women who never attended college but aspired to an education often undertook to study the Greco-Roman classics. Patrick Henry, to name one, did not attend college. But his father introduced him to the Roman historian Livy. For the rest of his life, Henry annually reread Livy in English. Benjamin Franklin had very little formal education but taught himself Latin and became conversant with Roman history.

In 1767 and 1768, John Dickinson of Delaware and Pennsylvania (later one of the Constitution’s most influential drafters and promoters) penned a series of newspaper op-eds titled “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania.” They outlined the colonial case against Great Britain. Americans loved them, and Dickinson became, after Franklin, America’s first national celebrity. In his “Letters,” Dickinson included quotations—attributed and unattributed—from Romans such as Cicero, Sallust, Tacitus, and Virgil and from Greeks such as Demosthenes and Plutarch.

No one seems to have thought it the least bit odd to cite such authors in op-eds directed at the general public.

Next Installment: Roman History and Founding-Era Faves

Robert G. Natelson, a former constitutional law professor who is senior fellow in constitutional jurisprudence at the Independence Institute in Denver, authored “The Original Constitution” (4th ed., 2025) and is a contributor to the Heritage Foundation’s “Heritage Guide to the Constitution.” He also researched and wrote the scholarly article “Virgil and the Constitution,” whose publication is pending in Regent University Law Review.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.