The Classical Education of the Founding Fathers

Memoria Press ^ | Spring 2007

[Lorianne]

“Americans view the Founding Fathers in vacuo, isolated from the soil that nurtured them,” says Traci Lee Simmons in his book, Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin. For the Founders, says Simmons, these virtues came principally from two places: “the pulpit and the schoolroom.”

We are already fairly familiar with the explicitly Biblical influences on America’s founding, but we are far less familiar with the classical influences on the Founders—and how these two influences worked in concert to mold their education and their thinking.

It is a well-known fact that literacy was prevalent in colonial times. “A native of America who cannot read or write,” said John Adams, “is as rare an appearance…as a comet or an earthquake.” It is not nearly as well-known a fact, however, that early Americans with a formal education usually knew several other languages as well as their own. The typical education of the time began in what we would call the 3rd Grade—at about age eight. Students who actually went to school were required to learn Latin and Greek grammar and, later, to read the Latin historians Tacitus and Livy, the Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides, and to translate the Latin poetry of Virgil and Horace. They were expected to know the language well enough to translate from the original into English and back again to the original in another grammatical tense. Classical Education also stressed the seven liberal arts: Latin, logic, rhetoric (the “trivium”), as well as arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (the “quadrivium”).

Thomas Jefferson received early training in Latin, Greek, and French from Reverend William Douglas, a Scottish clergyman. At the age of fourteen, Jefferson’s father died, and, at the express wish of his father, he continued his education with the Reverend James Maury, who ran a classical academy. After leaving Douglas’ academy, Jefferson attended the College of William and Mary, where his classical education continued along with his study of law.

When Alexander Hamilton entered King’s College (now Columbia University) in 1773, he was expected to have a mastery of Greek and Latin grammar, be able to read three orations from Cicero and Virgil’s Aeneid in the original Latin, and be able to translate the first ten chapters of the Gospel of John from Greek into Latin.

When James Madison applied at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), he was expected to be able to “write Latin prose, translate Virgil, Cicero, and the Greek gospels and [to have] a commensurate knowledge of Latin and Greek grammar.” Even before he entered, however, he had already read Vergil, Horace, Justinian, Nepos, Caesar, Tacitus, Lucretius, Eutropius, Phaedrus, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plato.

Other key figures in the American founding received similar educations, including John Taylor of Caroline, John Tyler, and George Rogers Clark, all of whom studied classics under the Scottish preacher Donald Robertson.

It is interesting to note that the study of Latin and Greek, which is what the term “classical education” originally implied, was not something they learned in college, but something they were expected to know before they got there.

These men not only had to read classical authors in school, they read them in adult life for pleasure and profit. Hamilton apparently had a penchant for copying Plutarch (the Roman) and Demosthenes (the Greek). John Adams would copy long passages of Sallust, the Roman historian. If you look around on the Internet a little, you can find a manuscript of twelve lines for sale, in the original language, from the Greek historian Herodotus, in Adam’s hand. It will cost you a mere $6,300.

(excerpted)

[dagogo redux]

“I keep meaning to read some of the classics like he does, but...”

___________________________________________

For the shear joy of it, consider starting with Robert Fagel’s translation of the Iliad, and then his Odyssey as well.

Then The Oresteia of Aeschylus, and The Three Theban Plays of Sophocles - both books also wonderfully translated by Fagels.

Then Plato - I’d avoid the Republic if you’re not ready for it, maybe work up to it with the Apology, Crito and Phaedo, and then some other approachable stuff like Euthyphro, Sophist, Phaedrus and such.

Unless you really like Aristotle, just stick to the Nicomachean Ethics - which should not be missed. If you like him, read it all: Well worth the struggle, and Thomas Aquinas and others wrote some great commentaries to help us through it as well.

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and the Discourses of Epictetus, Plutarch’s Lives of Famous Greeks and Romans, and Cicero’s De Officiis (a great translation can be found in the Oxford World’s Classics series, entitled On Obligations) should round out a wonderful beginning education.

Hope you can get to some of those treasures. And glad to hear about your son.

[Verginius Rufus]

Knowing Latin makes it much easier to pick up other Romance languags (Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French), plus makes it easier to use Engish grammar correctly and helps a lot with English vocabulary. It even helps with non-Romance languages, at least other Indo-European languages which retain some similar grammatical features (such as Greek, German, or Russian).

[zeugma]

BFL

[AuntB]

“In the 19th century, Cherokee Indian children in Indian Territory studied Latin and Greek in grade school.”

You’re right about that. In the early 1800’s they were sending their children to New England and bringing in missionaries, teachers. The Cherokee learned to read and write their own language, as well as English, and other languages and converted to Christianity. After the trail of tears, they set up their own schools in Indian Territory west, which were
considered the finest in the nation. Most of my Cherokee ancestors were trained in the classics and were very good writers. I’m lucky enough to have many of their documents.
In fact, this ethnic group left the best written record of their history of any ethnic group.

But for some reason, we no longer expect immigrants to this country to learn English. If those ‘savages’ could do it, so can they.

[SunkenCiv]

:’) Not so much into paleoclassical? ;’)

[bigheadfred]

Not brave enough to get that close to a wookie. Wonder if she braids her back hair into corn rows? Ok, I’m over wondering that...shiver...