Classical influences on American society

Heather Ainsley
ECB Publishing, Inc.

On Monday, May 15, the homeschool students currently taking American History and Civics were invited by instructor Gretchen Wallace to a special lecture about how Ancient Greek and Roman civilizations have impacted modern American society. The lecture was prepared and presented by Gavin Payne, a junior at Florida State University who is majoring in the Classics.
Payne led the class through a historical journey to the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome, illuminating similarities between their architecture and governmental systems and how they developed, and the connection to today's American governmental model. He delivered his lecture much in the same style of the classical era, similar to the way Socrates, Plato and Aristotle would have delivered their teachings to others. His lecture was casual, and he eagerly welcomed input from the class.
The goal of the lecture was to open up a discussion about the two classical civilizations of Rome and Greece and to allow the class to determine the correlation to modern American government, and answer the ultimate question: Was our American society influenced by classical civilization?
The first civilization discussed was Greece. A civilization nestled among landmasses, islands and mountain terrain, young Greece began with small villages made up of fishermen, hunters and gatherers. Slowly, the citizens of Greece, who called themselves Hellenes (Referring to the famous princess, Helen), began to build cities. Each of these cities developed their own method of governing. The largest of these cities was Athens.
While all of the different cities within Greece had different governments, they all shared several common traits. Among these were similarities in religion, language and ethnicity. Despite these similarities, the citizens of these cities were not unified, and Athens sought ways of unifying its people. A man named Solon, who was an Athenian statesman, a constitutional lawmaker and a poet of his time, began to brainstorm a system of government that would protect the citizen of Athens from political, economic and moral decline.
He believed that all citizens should be allowed to vote on policies and laws that were determined by the government in charge. (Similar to early American government, this did not apply to women or slaves.) His ideas included a senate, which served as a gathering of the representatives of the people to discuss policies and law. Citizens were required to vote on policies and laws, and relay their votes to their senator, who would then represent them, and would deliver their votes on political matters on their behalf.
We see hints of this connection in America's governmental system. In America, the states vote for senators, who then represent them during political discussions. Senators suggest laws and policies, and the citizens can vote for or against them. Then, depending on what the citizens choose, the senator is then supposed to reflect that position as an electoral vote, regardless of if they agree with it or not. In a true democracy, each citizen is expected to participate and play an active role in governing their city.
Before these early seeds of democracy, all major civilizations were monarchies, with a king who ruled over all the people and made all of the governmental decisions within their kingdom. Democracy quickly grew in popularity, but it wasn't without flaws.
Democracy falls apart when it encounters the following issues:
– False promises- Where citizens vote for a representative based on promises and principles that are not upheld after the election, or where votes given by citizens are changed by the representative to reflect his own wants.
– Lack of agreement on complex issues- for issues where the population is torn 50/50, determining policies or laws by means of voting makes it impossible to make a decision that doesn't end in civil unrest.
If civil unrest is allowed to continue, anarchy is a common result. Anarchy occurs when citizens feel as if the government has failed its responsibility of ruling the people, and they choose to reject the authority of that government, choosing instead to rule themselves. Anarchy is derived from a Greek word meaning “having no ruler.”
Despite these troubles, the city of Athens did not want to give up democracy. Greek philosopher Plato stated the following about democracy, “There are two mothers of regimes... it would be correct to call one monarchy (tyranny) and the other democracy, and that the Persian type is the full development of the former, while my people's country [Athens] is the full development of the latter... both of them [monarchy and democracy] should and must necessarily be present if there is to be freedom and friendship, together with prudence...no city will ever have a fine political life if it lacks a share in either of these... Now one of these two nations [Persia] delighted exclusively and more than was necessary in monarchy, the other [Athens] in freedom, and neither possessed due measure in these matters...”
This quote was his opinion based on the monarchy of Persia, which was falling into tyranny, and the democracy of Athens, which was slowly falling into anarchy. He believed that while both of the governmental systems have faults, they both are necessary for a successful society that had both freedom and friendship.
The next civilization discussed was Rome. Rome is located in Italy, a neighbor of sorts to Greece. It is said that Rome was founded by two brothers, twins who were said to be the sons of the god Mars and who were raised by a wolf. Romulus and Remus, as they were named, decided to build a city. But the two could not stop bickering, and after one particularly nasty argument, Romulus murdered Remus, and named their city after himself. Rome was governed over the years by seven different kings. These kings ruled tyrannically, and an uprising eventually led to the Roman monarchy being overthrown, and the citizens of Rome began to rethink their government.
A man named Brutus came up with the concept of a republic, where citizens elect representatives and allow them to rule on their behalf. A republic is different from a democracy, in that these representatives are given authority to make decisions and pass laws without the citizens needing to vote on every issue and be as involved.
Echos of this can also be seen in American government today. The American republic has three branches:
Legislative branch- makes the laws (U.S. Congress)
Executive branch- enforces the laws (President and individuals who report to the president)
Judicial branch- evaluates the laws and interprets them to ensure citizens know how to follow them, and what penalties exist for if they don't. (Supreme Court)
These branches work together to build the ground rules for American society.
Rome maintained a republic for 482 years, and eventually fell into oligarchy, where a small percentage of the population, made up of the very wealthy, obtained and maintained control over the majority of policies, procedure and laws. After the republic failed, Rome transitioned to an empire.
Athens maintained a democracy for around two centuries, before war with Sparta caused a revolution that effectively ended Athenian democracy in 411 B.C. Today, Greece utilizes a parliamentary republic, with three branches.
America has existed since July 4, 1776, when the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, making American society just 245 years old. We see evidence of both Greece and Rome's governmental ideologies laced throughout our government. The founding fathers admired the ideas and philosophies of many Hellenic and Roman philosophers, and used many of these concepts to build the foundation of society as we know it.
Greece and Rome also influenced much of early American architecture. The Supreme Court building was inspired by the Parthenon of Athens (the temple to honor Athena); the U.S. Capitol bears resemblance to the Pantheon temple of the gods of Rome, the Lincoln Memorial was designed after the Acropolis in Greece, and structures called obelisks, like the Washington Monument, as well as Cleopatra's Needle which stands in Central Park, were both nods to ancient Egyptian civilizations. Even Lady Liberty was named after Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom, and bears resemblance to both Athena from Greece and Minerva of Rome.
A statue of George Washington himself sits in the Smithsonian Institution, built 30 years after his passing, and depicts the founding father seated in a chair wearing a Roman toga and holding a sheathed sword. The statue was created by American sculptor Horatio Greenough, and was modeled after a Greek sculpture of Zeus. Carvings on the side of Greenough's sculpture includes depictions of the Greek god Apollo, an infant Hercules, Christopher Columbus and an American Indian, representing the roots of Greek and Roman government, mythology, and culture with reference to the New and Old Worlds. The sword in his outstretched hand is a representation of Washington's relinquishment of military power to the people of America.
While the legacy of America is still quite young indeed, it has roots that go back through the ages of civilization itself. We, as a country, have much to learn from studying the pasts of the cities we were modeled after. Perhaps by observing the victories and downfalls of these incredible civilizations, we can unlock the keys to creating a society that is balanced, cooperative and united throughout the ages.