The Reading Room

I suspect many admirers of the American Revolution fail to appreciate the influence that the history of ancient Rome, its philosophers and statesmen, and its fate exerted on our founders—almost all Age of Enlightenment thinkers in good standing. It was the nature of 18th-century education in the colonies as in Europe that seeded this phenomenon by putting classical education at the core of education at every level, so students began learning Latin early and, per force, immersed themselves in the curriculum of Greek and Roman literature and philosophy.