Rome’s Fall and America’s Founding

But this wasn’t unusual. Many of his fellow Americans shared Henry’s sentiments and argued for the creation of a new republic by calling upon the authority and experience of philosophers from throughout the western canon. In particular, they appealed to the example of the Roman statesman, orator, lawyer, and philosopher Cicero.

Born in central Italy during the first century, BCE, Marcus Tullius Cicero quickly ascended the political ladder from a relatively young age. By his mid-​thirties, he had won several high-​profile legal cases that marked him as the finest orator in Rome, including his defense of Sextus Roscius against a heinous patricide charge and his successful prosecution of the corrupt governor Verres. While Consul—Rome’s highest political office—Cataline unveiled the conspiracies of the disaffected aristocrat Cataline and was subsequently given the title Pater Patriae, “father of the fatherland,” for saving the republic.

Cicero believed that Rome’s unique system of government had preserved Roman liberty. Rome had a mixed government, meaning it was a combination of the three traditional forms of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. By adapting the virtues of each form of government, Rome avoided their vices. This was further bolstered by a strict separation of powers and a citizenry inoculated with a hatred of concentrated power.

Today, Cicero is a niche writer studied only by a small cadre of scholarly classicists, but during the Founding period, his writings were read as a practical guidebook on establishing a republican government fuelled by a civic spirit that could secure liberty. Thomas Jefferson complimented Cicero by calling him “the father of eloquence and philosophy,” going so far as to say that the Declaration of Independence’s authority rested upon “the elementary books of public right,” including, of course, Cicero’s writings.

Cicero’s writings were widely distributed on both sides of the Atlantic for hundreds of years. The budding American Revolutionaries considered Cicero an authoritative figure on the concepts of mixed governments and natural law, core concepts of the new American system of government.

The Founding of the American Republic was — as stated on the 1782 seal of the United States—a Novus Ordo Seclorum, or a “new order for the ages.” Establishing a government based on such high philosophical principles was without precedent. To rise to the challenge, the Founders felt it was necessary to verse themselves rigorously in the lessons of history in order to avoid the fates of previous republics. Above all other historical corollaries, Americans evoked the example of republican Rome. Rome was the longest-​lived republic in the western world, even though it had eventually degenerated into corruption, civil war, and, finally, tyranny. But for five hundred years, the Roman republic had upheld a system of government that aspired to ordered liberty as supported by a mixture of public civic virtue and delicate institutional design.

By the mid-​18th-​century, the Founders were also absorbing Isaac Newton’s writings, whose formulation of gravity portrayed a world that was no longer merely an amalgamation of good fortune and divine grace but a product of universal laws observable through the scientific method pioneered by Francis Bacon. Combining the language of cause and effect with the proposition of universal laws made history a vital object of study. Nations rose or fell because of either their adherence or inattention to these natural laws. Thus, the history of Rome became an active part of the debate over the proposed American Constitution, not just a historic touchstone or comparative point of reference. The fate of Rome was intimately linked with the fate of America.

The American colonies had kept the grammar school system of education then common in England, giving all educated Americans a basic grasp of Cicero’s reputation and writings. Over a hundred years before the American Revolution, a young John Locke, then living in England, poured over Cicero’s work. The epigraph of his famous Two Treatises on Government was a quote from Cicero, Salus populi suprema Lex esto, “let the welfare of the people be the ultimate law,” which remains the state motto of Missouri today.

In the grammar school system, the grammar studied was not of the English language but ancient Greek and Latin. In his youth, Jefferson spent nearly ten hours a day perfecting his grasp of the ancient languages. Despite learning being coupled with corporal punishments for mistakes, the youth of America enthusiastically absorbed the stories and ethos of the ancient world. Noah Webster, known as the “Father of American Scholarship and Education,” observed “The minds of youth are perpetually led to the history of Greece and Rome or to Great Britain; boys are constantly repeating the declamations of Demosthenes and Cicero.” It was almost impossible to avoid Cicero in 18^th century American education.

But it wasn’t just young boys and teens who studied the ancients. For nearly two hundred years, American colleges had remarkably stable entry requirements that mandated at least some familiarity with Cicero. In 1750, in order to enter Harvard, future president John Adams was required to translate a passage of Cicero. Similarly, future authors of the Federalist Papers, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, translated Cicero to gain entry to King’s College (now Princeton) in 1760 and 1774.

Founding Father John Witherspoon, who became America’s foremost rhetorician, relied heavily on Cicero’s writings. Witherspoon was such an admirer that he named his home “Tusculum” after Cicero’s villa. Witherspoon played a part in the education of 37 judges, 10 Cabinet officers, 12 members of the Continental Congress, 28 Senators, and 49 members of Congress, imparting a subtle appreciation of Ciceronian principles to students who would become the countries’ foremost statesmen and public officials.

Cicero represented both eloquence and moral virtue. He was referred to by Josiah Quincy as “the best of men and the first of patriots.” With this kind of characterization, it is no surprise many explicitly evoked his example to make political points. When Samuel Adams wrote to protest British troops’ occupation of the colonies, he quoted Cicero, writing, “Let the arms yield to the toga.” When Joseph Warren delivered an oration commemorating the Boston Massacre, he draped himself in what was dubbed by commentators in the papers a Ciceronian toga. 18th-​century Americans wanted to walk, talk, and act like their hero Cicero, the enemy of tyranny and lover of liberty.

Though 18^th-century America was an era frenetic pamphleteering, most pamphlets dealt with immediate issues. Answering the philosophical questions of what is the essence of a republic and how does it best preserve itself were questions usually avoided in favour of urgent causes. But two of the foremost political thinkers of the Revolution, future President John Adams and James Wilson, one of the first US Supreme Court judges, wrote extensively over the hotly debated question of what constituted a republic. Both signed the Declaration of Independence and were deeply indebted to a Ciceronian vision of politics. Although often underrated by modern readers, their writings were invaluable to the budding American republic.

Cicero’s bold example inspired Adams to become a lawyer. In a letter from 1758, he expressed his glee at finding himself in “a Field in which Demosthenes, Cicero, and others of immortal Fame have exulted before me.” Adams may have been America’s greatest admirer of Cicero, saying, “As all the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united in the same character, his authority should have great weight.” At each pivotal moment of his life, Adams consulted his old friend Cicero for advice and recommended his sons do the same.

In 1787, when writing his extensive work, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, Adams showed his Ciceronian roots. Adams opens by asking the question, “What is a republic?” To answer this, Adams quoted Cicero, writing, “The very name of a republic implies that the property of the people should be represented in the legislature, and decide the rule of justice.” The Latin res publica translates to “the public property or the commonwealth.” It is no coincidence Adams insisted Massachusetts be named a commonwealth instead of a state.

From Cicero, Adams learned of the primacy of private property. Cicero stated that “the men who administer public affairs must, first of all, see that everyone hold on to what is his and that private men are never deprived of their goods by public acts.” Adams agreed, writing that “property must be secured or liberty cannot exist.” For both Cicero and Adams, the protection of property was a necessary qualification for political legitimacy.

While James Wilson is somewhat forgotten today, he was one of only six Founding Fathers to sign both the Declaration and the Constitution. He also served both in Congress and on the Supreme Court. In 1790, he took up a position as a professor of law at the College of Philadelphia, where he delivered a series of lectures about the nature of law for which he had an ideal audience: then-​president George Washington and several new members of Congress.

Wilson fashioned his doctrine of natural law from Cicero’s writings, quoting extensively from Cicero’s work De Re Publica on the eternal and unchangeable content of natural law. When discussing the importance of consent in establishing political authority, Wilson quotes from one of Cicero’s speeches titled “Pro Balbo,” writing, “The power of retaining and of renouncing our rights of citizenship, is the most stable foundation of our liberties.”

It was somewhat unusual for Wilson to quote Cicero in this regard; usually, Aristotle is credited with establishing the doctrine of mixed government. But Wilson believed that Cicero was the first to fully express the nuances of the mixed theory of government. Wilson wrote that Rome benefitted greatly from “the exquisite genius of Cicero, which like the touch of Midas, converts every object into gold.” But despite Cicero’s best efforts he lived during the dying days of the Roman Republic.

The fall of the Roman Republic has often been attributed to moral decay and corruption, but both Adams and Wilson argued that what caused Rome’s downfall was not a weakening system of morality, but an enfeebled constitution, a fate both men wished to avoid in America.

Despite the remove of nearly two thousand years, the American Revolution’s most pivotal figures deemed Cicero an invaluable source of republican ideas and attitudes. Cicero is a rarity in history, a profoundly philosophical mind that also held high political authority. Countless thinkers throughout the western world trusted his writings because they were more than merely abstract, free-​floating principles but rather lessons backed by real-​world experience.

Sadly, Cicero outlived his beloved republic. Though he failed to save the Roman republic, he still inspired countless republicans throughout history, culminating in the founding of the American republic. Today, politicians on both sides of the aisle turn away from their heritage of constitutional restraint and the value of the rule of law. Republics are famed for maintaining glorious spans of liberty, but they also experience brutal, violent deaths. Cicero’s prescience remains relevant now more than ever. Americans ought to heed Cicero’s advice that “not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever.”