USA 250: America’s Roman Revolution

Summary

Instant Classics — Episode Summary

Episode: USA 250: America’s Roman Revolution
Date: June 11, 2026
Hosts: Mary Beard, Charlotte Higgins
Guest: Joy Connolly (President, American Council of Learned Societies)

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Main Theme

The episode explores the profound influence of ancient Rome—particularly the Roman Republic—on the intellectual, cultural, and political foundations of the United States. Timed for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it “scratches the surface” of American culture to reveal how Roman ideals (and myths) underpinned everything from architecture to political rhetoric to national self-concept. Special guest Joy Connolly brings depth as both a scholar of Roman political thought and an advocate for the humanities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Revolution in Roman Costume: America’s Roman Imaginary

• Literal Appropriation: The American Revolution was “fought in Roman costume” (00:30), with some revolutionaries—most famously Joseph Warren—donning togas to invoke Roman Republican values.
• Roman Names and Places: The U.S. Senate, Capitol Hill, and city names like Cincinnati are direct nods to Roman antecedents.
• Quote:

  "No kings. Here was the message." — Mary Beard (01:39)

• Takeaway: Roman references were chosen to forge a shared civic identity that transcended ethnic and religious lines in the colonies.

2. How Did the Founders Learn ‘Rome’?

• Classical Education: High literacy and classical education among the colonial elite. College entrance required Latin and Greek; texts by Cicero, Polybius, and others were well known.

  "Most of the participants in the Continental Congress... would have gone to college. And entry exams to college required knowledge of Latin and Greek." — Joy Connolly (06:02)

• Accessible Popular Knowledge: Even among the broader public, stories about Cato as a symbol of liberty and Nero as a villain circulated widely (05:09).

3. Blending Roman and Modern (Enlightenment) Ideas

• Synthesis: The U.S. founding texts combine Roman narratives with recent English and French political thought (Locke, etc.).
• Quote:

  "They took this tradition of European English political thought and put it in the clothing, one could say, of ancient Roman heroes and stories and histories, and then made it truly through that combination... American." — Joy Connolly (08:01)

4. Dramatizing Republican Virtue: The Warren Toga Speech & Cato

• Joseph Warren’s Theatrics: Used Roman costume and rhetoric to unite colonists of diverse backgrounds under a single historic narrative (09:19).
• The Play “Cato”: George Washington staged Addison’s Cato at Valley Forge for demoralized troops, underlining uncompromising resistance to tyranny (14:25).
• Quotes:

  "He was literally looking at a crowd... speaking different languages... but the Greek and Roman past... that was something they all knew a lot or a little bit about and around which he could say, this is our common story that we can all get behind." — Joy Connolly (10:10)
  "No compromise is the message." — Joy Connolly (16:35)

• Memorable Moment: The realization that iconic American catchphrases—“Give me liberty or give me death!”—are seamless appropriations from Addison’s Cato (17:04).

5. Who Are the Roman Models? Cato & Cincinnatus

• Cato the Younger: Became the ultimate symbol of resistance and inflexible virtue.
• Cincinnatus: Celebrated for relinquishing power and returning to ordinary life, beloved as the inspiration both for the city and the non-royal ideal.
• Moral Complexity: Both figures are more complicated than the myth allows—Cato was “probably an unpleasant person,” and Cincinnatus was “authoritarian, anti-democrat” (37:17).

6. Roman Ideals into American Constitutional Structure

• Anti-Tyranny: The founders used Roman models to champion anti-monarchic, anti-tyrannical governments (12:55).
• Mixed Constitution: Inspired by Polybius and Cicero—combining democracy, aristocracy, and short-term executive power (26:01).
• Senate & Presidency: The Senate takes its name and some function from Rome; the presidency mirrors the limited-term consul, but with American adaptation (27:07).
• Virtue & Citizenship: The notion of agrarian virtue, public service, frugality, and patriotism—all found in Roman stories and leveraged as American ideals.

7. Limitations, Ironies, and Critique

• Imperfect Model: The founders were aware Rome collapsed—“a thread of melancholy terror of failure” runs through their writings (35:00).
• Pluralism & Diversity: The Roman Empire’s multilingual, multiethnic character bolstered arguments for pluralism and religious tolerance, though Rome itself wasn’t especially tolerant (23:27).
• Exclusion: The model left out women, enslaved people, and Indigenous Americans—though its framework would later serve rhetorical and practical expansions of rights (28:32).
• Debate and Scepticism: Not everyone bought the Roman myth; Benjamin Rush’s quip, Latina lingua delenda est (“the Latin language must be destroyed”), mocked classical pretensions (39:18).

8. Rome and Slavery in America

• Legitimation & Critique: Roman slavery was cited on both sides—as either precedent for or a warning against American slavery. Dissenters argued Rome was actually oligarchic, not a genuine republic (41:09).

9. What About Greece? And The British?

• Little Athenian Democracy: The founders largely dismissed Athens as “chaotic” and “mob rule,” preferring Sparta for its discipline and collective ethos (43:51).
• Shared Roman Costume: Both Americans and the British appropriated Roman imagery for their own purposes; monuments, costumes, and rhetoric all around (46:17).

10. Modern Echoes: Republican Party & Roman Reality

• Surviving Patterns: Joy wryly notes the current Republican Party reflects “destructive figures in Roman Republican history... ambitious, concerned for their own self-political survival, [and] unbelievable moralizers” (47:53).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Warren’s Toga Speech

  "He was literally looking at a crowd that would have been so, speaking different languages… the Greek and Roman past… was something they all knew… and around which he could say, this is our common story that we can all get behind." — Joy Connolly (10:10)

• On Cato and American Revolutionary Rhetoric

  "Give me liberty or give me death… [Americans] think these are our own lines… But in fact, they come pretty much directly from Addison’s play about Cato." — Joy Connolly (17:04)

• On Latin as ‘Waste of Time’

  "Latina lingua delenda est, the Latin language must be destroyed." — Joy Connolly (39:18)

• On Founders’ Anxiety

  “A thread of melancholy terror of failure running through many of the founders’ writings.” — Joy Connolly (35:00)

• On American Exceptionalism vs. Antiquity

  "[There was] the belief among some founders that America should claim its exceptional status, that it should be wholly new." — Joy Connolly (40:21)

• On Roman Virtue as Both Control and Opportunity

  "Virtue can be viewed as an expression of elite control... Or you can see it as… a way in for people… to claim a spot… if [they] talk a certain talk, I have a path forward." — Joy Connolly (30:17)

• On the Modern Republican Party

  "Like actual Roman Republican senators, members of a rich elite… ambitious, extremely greedy, concerned for their own self-political survival… [and] really good at telling the less well-off, we are your only hope…" — Joy Connolly (47:53)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 00:30 – 02:00 — America’s ethos and architecture “dressed up” as Rome
• 05:01 – 08:00 — Roman learning among founders & blending with Enlightenment ideas
• 09:19 – 12:00 — The famous toga speech, crowd unification, background on Joseph Warren
• 14:25 – 17:30 — Staging Cato at Valley Forge; Cato's influence on American slogans
• 17:31 – 20:38 — Role models: Cincinnatus, peaceful transitions, and their limitations
• 23:27 – 26:42 — Roman pluralism, religious tolerance, mixed constitutions
• 28:32 – 31:56 — Voting rights, virtue, and the American ideological framework
• 33:54 – 36:04 — Collapse of Roman Republic, Founders’ anxieties
• 37:17 – 41:09 — Critiques of Roman models, dissent, and slavery
• 43:51 – 47:07 — Greek (Sparta) models, British parallels, Pompeii’s influence
• 47:47 – 49:09 — The Republican Party and the “real” Roman Republic
• 49:41 – End — Closing thanks and reading recommendations

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Final Reflection

This episode uses wit, depth, and lively exchange to underscore how America’s founding generation staged its own “Roman Revolution”—aspiring to civic virtue, mixed government, and anti-tyrannical ideals, but also morphing myth into national narrative, with all the ironies, exclusions, and complexities that come with it. The real ancient Rome, listeners discover, is both more inspiring and more cautionary than even Cicero or Cincinnatus might have imagined.

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“Not the ideal, but the real.” — Joy Connolly (49:07)

Transcript

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[Mary Beard]

Revolution was fought in Roman costume, sometimes

[Charlotte Higgins]

literally, the year before the Declaration of independence. In 1776, one revolutionary delivered his call to arms and his attack on the rule of the Brits dressed in a toga.

[Mary Beard]

In the winter of 1778, when his troops were cold, hungry and actually close to mutine, George Washington spurred them on in their struggle against the forces of King George III with a performance of a play about Cato the Younger, the Roman freedom fighter who stood up to Julius Caesar.

[Charlotte Higgins]

I'm sure that fucked them up. It's no coincidence that the U.S. senate is called the Senate or that it meets on the Capitol Hill like the one in Rome.

[Mary Beard]

And no coincidence either that the American city of Cincinnati was named after Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, a hero of the 5th century BCE who saved Rome from its enemies and then, having done his public service, returned quietly to private life on his farm. No kings. Here was the message very this is

[Charlotte Higgins]

the first of our new four part series on America's Rome, in which we'll be scratching the surface of American culture from architecture to film to reveal all kinds of Roman surprises underneath.

[Mary Beard]

But to kick off on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we are going back to the Founding Fathers and to what they got from ancient Rome and asking how important Rome really was for them.

[Charlotte Higgins]

And for some real Roman and American expertise, we're lucky enough to be joined by Joy Connolly, who is not only a leading scholar of Roman political thought and its influence up to the present day, but also, if you don't mind just saying, Joy, a fabulous public intellectual and she is president of the American Council of Learned Societies, which brilliantly advocates for the humanities in the United States.

[Mary Beard]

This is Instant Classics, the podcast that uncovers the ancient stories still shaping the world today. I'm Mary Beard.

[Charlotte Higgins]

And I'm Charlotte Higgins. Each week we dive into the myths, the dramas and the characters of the classical world to discover what they still mean to us. Now this week, America's Roman Revolution.

[Joy Connolly]

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[Joy Connolly]

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[Joy Connolly]

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[Mary Beard]

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[Joy Connolly]

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[Mary Beard]

Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again now streaming only on Disney. And let's start by saying very big welcome to Joy. And I have to add a very big welcome to Charlotte because she's recording this podcast from Ukraine and we will be going back to Ukraine in a later episode in a few weeks time. Let's start from the absolute basics, right? If you go back to the War of Independence, the freedom fighting of, you know, what was going to be the United States against the monarchical imperial rule of the Brits, that War of Independence, it really does look as it's completely embedded in Romanness. I know people often think about the French Revolution as being very much cast in a Roman rhetoric, but so is the American Revolution. And I suppose what I want to know is where are these guys? And they mostly are guys, let's be honest. Where are they getting their view of Rome from in the late 18th century in America? What are they reading? What do they think about Rome? Why does it make this kind of sense to them?

[Joy Connolly]

First of all, thank you so much for having me, Mary and Charlotte. And best wishes to Charlotte in Ukraine. Special thoughts going your way.

[Mary Beard]

Thank you.

[Joy Connolly]

To answer your question, Mary, though, one of the most extraordinary things about this period in the late 18th century is that many residents of the American colonies would have recognized these names, the names you mentioned at the beginning. They would have known that Cato was some kind of republican hero who lived and died for liberty. And they would have known that the Emperor Nero is a bad guy who threw Christians to the lions. So they had a kind of moral story going on in their heads. And you might, I mean, you did ask, how did it get there? A couple of reasons. One is the really unusually high literacy rates in the colonies that helped knowledge of these names and stories circulate. But for the founding fathers, or the founders as we try to call them now, to avoid that.

[Mary Beard]

To avoid that.

[Joy Connolly]

But you were right. They're mostly men.

[Mary Beard]

Men, yes.

[Joy Connolly]

But the founding generation, or the founders, most of them went to college and most of the participants in the Continental Congress, the people who signed the Declaration of Independence, would have gone to college. And entry exams to college required knowledge of Latin and Greek. And they were Immersed in stories, biographies of ancient Greeks and Romans, and the political thought that came out of the Roman republic. So that's the beginning of the answer.

[Charlotte Higgins]

And there's a sort of. For me, this fascinating thing that always occurs to me is that this founding generation had the opportunity to think up a constitution absolutely from scratch. And the world that they were immersed in, as you described, the intellectual world that they were immersed in and educated in, was Greece and Rome. So what were they sort of reaching out towards and plucking from these heroic and extraordinary stories of the Roman republic that they'd been brought up on?

[Joy Connolly]

Well, what they did, I think, was meld them together with more recent political thought in Europe, in France especially, and in England especially. So there were lots of complaints, actually, after Jefferson, after Thomas Jefferson and. And the little committee he worked with circulated the Declaration of independence in 1776 to the rest of the Continental Congress, that they reviewed it and said, there's nothing new here. We know all of this from English political theory, from John locke in the 17th century, and this is all old hat. And Jefferson said, well, this is the sum. I've put an American stamp on it, but this is really the sum of where we are and thinking about liberty. And they took this tradition of European English political thought and put it in the clothing, one could say, of ancient Roman heroes and stories and histories, and then made it truly through that combination, they could call it American.

[Mary Beard]

I mean, I think it's almost easy to take for granted. You can see that the architecture of the United States puts the Greek and Roman world, particularly the Roman world, know, in your faith you can see quotations from classical authors. I mean, there's this thing called the Great Seal of the United States, but you got not just one quotation from Virgil, but three quotations from Virgil on it. And, you know, in some ways we take little Latin tags a bit for granted, but I think, A, they're important, but B, some of it kind of pushes beyond that. I mean, we mentioned in our intro this guy, Joseph Warren, who actually wore a toga to give his speech, you know, putting. Putting muscle into would be revolutionaries. Now, can you give us a bit of background for that? Because it does sound a bit like mad fancy dress when you put it like that.

[Joy Connolly]

It does. I've stood in the place in Boston where he gave that oration. It's still commemorated. You can go visit it if you're ever in Boston, Massachusetts. But Joseph Warren was a brilliant speaker and very dramatic, and he saw the Boston Massacre, which happened in 1775. Bostonians who had in kind of a mob situation, angry with the British soldiery and someone yelled shoot. And supposedly five people end up dead, including a person of African descent. Just a diverse group. And we'll come back to that issue of diversity later on. But the massacre became a touchstone for people in Boston who were really on the front lines of resisting the British, the army, the Navy, the forces of taxation, the forces of tyranny, as they called it. And Warren, as you say, draped himself in a toga and used the most dramatic oratory of describing babies flung to their deaths on the cobbles. I mean, things that just didn't happen in that event, but to stir up people. And I think in his wearing the toga, he was looking to come back to this issue of diversity. He was literally looking at a crowd that would have been so, speaking different languages, German and French, English, of course, Dutch. He would have been thinking that in knowing that these people had different religious beliefs, different cultural outlooks, but the Greek and Roman past, and especially the Roman past with its dramatic stories of heroism, that was something they all knew a lot or a little bit about and around which he could say, this is. This is our common story that we can all get behind.

[Charlotte Higgins]

How, how interesting. So it's a kind of non culturally specific. It's something that everybody could. It has a sort of neutrality because it's in the past, but everybody can kind of attach themselves to it. But this guy had actually taught Latin, hadn't he? He was, he was, he was a sort of proper classical scholar who was also a doctor, but it really was marinated in the classics, I think. Wasn't he, Joy?

[Joy Connolly]

Oh, they really, most of them were. I mean, I've talked with fellow scholars who have said that if you look at the work of the writing of most American founders and you try to do some kind of source analysis to see the influence of different classical authors like Cicero, we haven't mentioned yet, a great orator and a Roman orator, Republican political thinker who was killed by Mark Antony, the successor to Julius Caesar, precisely for resisting tyranny. And if you tried to do an analysis of the words of a writer like Cicero in the Founders, it would be impossible because it's so baked in, it's everywhere.

[Mary Beard]

What's quite interesting here, and I think it's sort of the basic platform for what we're going to say is the Romans that they're looking back to are absolutely fundamentally not the Romans of the lascivious, luxurious, tyrannical empire, not the Romans of One man rule. What we are dealing with is we are looking back to the Romans of the Roman Republic, which came to an end with the one man rule of Julius Caesar. But it's the period from, let's say the 5th century to the 1st century BCE when Rome did not have kings.

[Charlotte Higgins]

And the whole point, right, Mary and Joy, is the rhetoric that we've just touched on is anti tyranny, it's anti monarchical, and it is thus by extension in the 18th century, it's kind of anti British.

[Mary Beard]

What I think is interesting though, looking at them is that there are some Roman republican characters that they return to again and again. Now you just mentioned Cicero, Joy, and in terms of how, in terms of the rhetorical and political formulations in speaking on paper, you can see Cicero, as you say, it's just complete. His language is embedded in what they're saying. But they're also almost more, I think for us, more. Well, strangely or weirdly romantic characters. Cicero's never been a great romantic character that they, they pick out and really focus on. And again, in the introduction we mentioned George Washington putting on for the troops. You know, dark days, putting on for the soldier, a play about Cato the Younger. We call him the Younger to distinguish him from Cato the Elder. Surprise, surprise. Now what's going on there? What's Cato, what's Cato giving them?

[Joy Connolly]

Oh, he's such a fascinating figure and probably an unpleasant person in real, historically speaking. But he became over the centuries, the symbol of rock solid resistance to tyranny, elite overreach. He became the symbol of standing up for republican freedom. Republican liberty, to use the word the founders preferred. And the essential story is he's leading an army, he's fighting against Julius Caesar, who is the overweening tyrant would be king. And the play that George Washington had put on it in this brutal, horrible winter in Valley Forge when the soldiers were miserable, the there wasn't enough food. We have ample documentation of Washington writing desperately to Congress, saying, please send us resources, supplies. This army, which had been supplied by the various colonies, wasn't a particularly unified unit. And he decides to put on this play which it features the younger Cato in his last struggle against Caesar's army and deciding in the end to kill himself. What a model to show. But it's a play very much, yeah, designed to get you behind the fight to liberty for the very end, it

[Mary Beard]

has to be said, it's not a play that is now very much read. I mean, it's written by Joseph Addison and I Confess that I have looked at it, but I could not claim to have either seen it or actually, let's be honest, read it from line one to the very end. But it really encapsulated, you know, what I would be tempted to call, you know, if we were talking in another context, I'd be saying the bloody minded resistance of Cato the Younger. He was not ever going to be, he was not going to be battered by the tyranny of Julius Caesar. Now as you say, it comes to a very nasty end. I mean he takes his own life in the most dramatically horrible way by disemboweling himself.

[Charlotte Higgins]

I've forgotten that.

[Mary Beard]

It's truly awful.

[Charlotte Higgins]

It's awful.

[Joy Connolly]

But it's no compromise is the message. And I think for a fragmented and kind of discontented and suffering group of people to be brought together to watch the spectacle of someone who would say no kings, no compromise, that it must have had an enormous impact. And we know, and the play even before that we know was enormously popular in England, in the UK as in Great Britain as well as in the us I mean the, the American colonies, I should say. We know a couple of examples. Patrick Henry, Nathan Hale, these are heroes of the American War of Independence. Lifting lines, famous lines, give me liberty or give me death or I only regret I have but one life to live for my country. Americans certainly would think these are our own lines, these are our property. These are great lines of American heroes. But in fact they come pretty much directly from Addison's play about Cato, a

[Mary Beard]

slightly better known character. Only slightly, I think better known is another of their great favorites who we also mentioned in the intro, which is the 5th century republican hero, Cincinnatus, who actually was, whose name was taken to be the name of the city of Cincinnati. And he's another. Well, he's a no compromiser in a different way actually, isn't he? Because he, in the middle of the 5th century, he is called upon to save Rome. They're being attacked by some neighbors called the Aequi and Cincinnatus comes to save the day, to lead the Roman troops. To be a short term, and this is what's absolutely key, short term dictator, a crisis manager. And what gets remembered about Cincinnatus, and there are things, some actually rather more unpalatable aspects to Cincinnatus, it has to be said, like he has no truck with popular rights, that's for sure. But what gets remembered about him is that once he had saved Rome, he went back to his farm, he laid down political Power. And it was again, no kings, business as usual. So here is the man devoted to, to public service, devoted to saving the state, but not to saving the state in any way that gave him any sort of long term power. Some people in the British audience here might remember that when Boris Johnson, our one time prime minister retired from, laid down his premiership, should we say, when he was forced out, his speech, I think it was on the steps of Downing street, he compared himself to Cincinnatus. Right.

[Charlotte Higgins]

The man who, I make no remark,

[Mary Beard]

the man who goes back to his farm and lays down his power.

[Joy Connolly]

Hugely important for especially after the war of independence was won. And the question of not only how, what kind of state will we set in place, but will it really hold, will it work and will that first person to take power in the new order hand it over peacefully? And George Washington, of course the first president was called a cincinnatus from the very beginning. And you could almost hear kind of hopes, people saying, almost ahead of the game saying, you're going to be our great Cincinnatus. Right, right. Yes. And of course it turned out he did in fact go back to Mount Vernon and was hailed again as a true Cincinnatus and gave a famous farewell oration to the Congress making a point that this was a historic moment, that transfer of power in a peaceful way and he went back to private life. I won't make any comparisons to Boris Johnson.

[Charlotte Higgins]

No, please don't. Let's not go there. You're making me feel just how far Rome just is a sort of undercurrent even now in modern America. And you know, when we talk about no kings and think about the no kings marches there have been in contemporary America, there's a sort of resonance that goes right back to, you know, the Roman Republic and anxieties about kingship being restored in late republican Rome. And you mentioned before Mary, the Great Seal with its Virgil quotes on it. I mean the kind of. The most famous of those quotes, the great resonating, wonderful statement of American ideology, E pluribus unum, out of many one which is Virgil. Sort of Virgil, isn't it? But there's a sort of tremendous irony because it's actually from a poem attributed to Virgil about making a cheese spread. We talked about this poem in an episode on Roman food a few months ago. So that makes me laugh slightly. It's not quite the sort of heroic and monumental slab of poetry that it might appear to be. It's rather a humble thing.

[Mary Beard]

Yeah. And we certainly don't want People to go to Virgil's Aeneid and to search through Virgil's Aeneid for the phrase E pluribus unum. Because it ain't there, guys. It's the cheese spread, which I think people tend to forget.

[Joy Connolly]

And I think it made its way through. It was on the COVID of a gentleman's magazine in Great Britain that it became a tag. So not exactly an exalted transmission.

[Mary Beard]

No, I don't imagine your founders, as I'm learning to say, Joy, I don't imagine your founders spending much time on Virgil's poem, the attributed to Virgil's poem Maritum. I think they've picked the clever words that maybe don't even then know exactly where it comes from.

[Charlotte Higgins]

I think it's sort of wonderful as an it sort of strangely wonderful that you bring all these ingredients together and make something wonderful out of it. So I'm here for it. But I'm wondering, Joy, what were the other other sort of ideological principles that the founders extracted from Roman models? I mean we've talked about this sort of anti monarchy, obviously anti tyranny perspective, but what about the actual sort of constitutional nitty gritty? And I can only assume that religion or some form of religious toleration played a part. What else did they pull out of Rome to make this new country?

[Joy Connolly]

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the religious toleration because it's a good example to think about how they are looking at a society 2000 years in the past and importing their own ideas and in some cases fantasies and hopes back onto that society and then back forming it and using it as an example to justify what they're thinking now was as Mary, you said, don't go to the Aeneid looking for E pluribus unum. And by the same token, and we wouldn't look back to Roman writing to find ringing declarations of religious toleration. In fact, you'll find some comments to the contrary. But the historical truth I think was what in that case, what the founders were looking back to, that they understood Rome was an expansionist empire, which made some of them excited, made some of them very nervous. And that's its own debate of how the new United States should consider itself a continental empire or not. Strong views on both sides, but they understood that in that expansion Rome would have absorbed many different cultures, different religions, different languages. And that made it really useful as they were seeking to illustrate and talk about in a way that was accessible and exciting to people, their fundamental beliefs in the rights of association Religious freedom, freedom of speech. Yeah. Binding together this plurality, the, the plurality pluralism of the Roman Empire culturally, linguistically, was very important to them as a model.

[Mary Beard]

They also, as far as I understand it, and if you're thinking at the level, not so much of the symbols but of the theoretical foundation of this, they're picking up on one strand that you find in not only, but, but very pronouncedly in Roman republican writing. The idea that the perfect government, the perfect constitution is a mixed one. That it, you know, you don't go wholeheartedly for democracy or mob rule, that the perfect balanced constitution has some element of democracy, some element of aristocracy, really elite class. And also, even though probably temporary, the sense that there is a leader, there is a single person, just not there for very long. And they're finding a theory of that partly in Cicero, but also in the 2nd century Roman Greek writer Polybius, who bangs on a lot about the virtues when he's trying to decide, you know, he is looking at Rome just like we have to say, what was so distinctive about the Roman constitution and the fact that they'd managed to have an amalgam of the best bits of the different kinds of government that you find, you know, you could have a bit of democracy and, you know, and a bit of oligarchy, etc.

[Joy Connolly]

Yeah, that notion of the separation of powers and containing the executive function in, as you said, I mean, you've got the popular vote, which expresses itself in some, but not always. It's not a direct democracy. The founders had absolutely no interest in that. They looked back at Athens or what they thought about, what they knew about historical Athens.

[Mary Beard]

Generally bad thing of the 5th and 4th century.

[Joy Connolly]

Generally bad things, yeah, a mess, chaotic. But then they looked at the Roman Senate as a model for what they ended up having as a bicameral, a two house congress, one, as you said, one piece of it called the Senate, modeled directly on the Roman Senate. But they were fascinated by the fact that in the Roman Republic, the consuls, the two consuls, and they did not choose to go with two executives. Early Americans went with one, but they were fascinated by the short term, a year, long term of a consulship that again, a little too short for modern government. But they used that model in the design of the presidency and making the four year term with the hope that at the end of that four year term as Washington could be elected twice, but at the end of your elected terms you would step down peacefully. So that was containing that executive function in a very, very particular way.

[Mary Beard]

And that's where it does look from, at least to me, that they're digging in quite intellectually, powerfully into what made Rome, you know, what gave Rome its distinctive success, and then trying to see how you can use that, but also adapt it to a world millennia later.

[Joy Connolly]

And that framework, especially the certain popular votes, which had had a long history in the colonial governments too, but by gradually expanding who was able to vote, it turned out that framework provided a useful way for groups who were excluded from voting in some cases for decades or over a century. And I'm thinking here, obviously of women who started complaining about not having access to the vote in the 18th century, and of course, enslaved people too, and indigenous Americans. So it was far from perfect, as we all know, far from perfect. But the framework gave, as you say, that flexibility for people to claim a spot.

[Mary Beard]

And it could all be seen within some almost ideological slogans about virtue, about, you know, and this is the Cincinnati story about agriculture, about patriotism, about doing your public service, frugality, you know, all those things which they saw. I mean, I'm not sure how right they were to see those always in, in the traditions of Republican Rome. But it gave a kind of an ideological message that wasn't just about the political theory, but it was about morality and how you behaved and what made a good, what made good government, what made a good constitution, a good polity. And there was, there were plenty of Roman stories and more to help you see that virtue was, virtue was really important.

[Joy Connolly]

And as with so many things, virtue can be viewed as an expression of elite control, you know, elite authority. We know what virtue is and everyone should be the following way. Or you can see it as a way in for people who were able to say, this is a new nation where I don't have a lot of money, I certainly don't come from a good family, I may be emigrating from whoever knows where. But if I behave a certain way and talk a certain talk, I have a path forward, I have a way in. And certainly the emphasis, as you said, on self sufficiency, on an agricultural lifestyle, on everyone working together to make the most out of the land. And it was something that, it spoke to people who were coming to the new country and seeking a life for themselves. I will say that it's there. It was hotly debated. I mean, none of this was, was, was without resistance. So hotly debated. So plenty of Americans saying commerce is the way forward and we should focus on banking.

[Mary Beard]

And I think that's really important. And, you know, because you can, one can make it sound all a bit romantic, you know, or, and you know, all a bit, a bit easy. But I think of, you know, what in a sense makes it really interesting is what you just started to talk about, about the kind of edginess, the dispute, the complexities of it, which is I think that after we've taken a break is what we ought to explore a bit more.

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[Mary Beard]

If you're not yet part of our Instant Classics Book club, well now is the perfect time to join because we are making our way through one of the most exciting works of literature ever. That's Homer's Odyssey.

[Charlotte Higgins]

We would love you to join our book club, which we absolutely adore. So please do join now to give you all the access to our previous episodes and loads of other perks like being able to join our online community and getting early booking access to our live events.

[Mary Beard]

All details are on our website, instant classicspod.com

[Charlotte Higgins]

it's clear that actually the Roman Republic wasn't a kind of ideal state in reality. And I'm sure that was recognized by those of the people among the founding generations of America. And there is one crucial difficulty with it, of course, which is that it collapsed and it didn't stay the course. So to what extent was the republic as a model debated and problematized and recognized as a kind of flawed model for this new emerging nation state.

[Joy Connolly]

It's absolutely true that fact which everyone knew, that the Roman Republic had collapsed and essentially turned into a monarchy and into an imperial military dictatorship, that that was known. And you can see a thread of melancholy terror of failure running through many of the founders writings. Jefferson and Adams famously exchanged letters in their later life and worried that their great experiment was failing right in front of their eyes, that the forces of money or ambition, factionalism would destroy the republic just as the Roman Republic had fallen. So it was absolutely known to them. I would say it provided an interesting impetus. There's a way in which the knowledge of failure in the past went together in these mostly Christian founders. Again, complexity there. There were some atheistic ones, but mostly Christian founders for whom the fall of man story and the expulsion of Eden, it was very much part of their Mental furniture of what human beings were easily corruptible, very tempted by all kinds of vices and sins. And so the job was to buckle down and be good and work together, live peacefully, be a good person, be a good citizen, be a good man. But that sense of unfinishedness and it created what I think the founders experienced and hoped would be a good pressure on people to figure out life in this new nation. And I should add too, there are strains of millenarianism, the idea that the end of the world was coming. This was, was a country very much founded in Protestant ideas of prior centuries, where the notion that Jesus was coming again soon and the world would end and there would be a great new world of God to come. This in its strange way also embedded itself into this thinking. So be good now, be a good citizen now. Is one of the messages coming out of that.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Yes, I think it would be hard to make the case that early America was entirely consisting of utterly rational Enlightenment types. So clearly a huge amount going on religiously. And you know, where, where we British sent all our most interestingly religious people.

[Mary Beard]

I also like to that. I mean we've been talking about diversity in different ways, but, but you know, I do picture this, you know, this Warren guy and he's getting up and he's got his toga on and it's fantastic rhetoric. You know, I'm also with those, I'm sure in the audience who thought that he looked ever so silly, right. You know, what he's got dressed up in a sheet, everybody. And so. And it is very easy to take what becomes the sort of orthodox version of these stories that are told and retold and to forget that there are some people who aren't quite buying into this. You know, I mean, I suppose I bridle, I find myself bridling when, you know, when Cincinnatus is quite the hero that is made quite the hero that he's cracked up to be. Because the story of this guy who dutifully goes back to his family plot, you know, that becomes the standard sort of branding of Cincinnatus. But as I mentioned very briefly before Cincinnatus political record, he was a authoritarian anti democrat of the most extreme kind. In the clashes in early Rome between the patricians, the rich and powerful, and the plebeians, the kind of basically exploited underclass. Cincinnatus had no truck whatever with the plebeians. And there's one story, and I always, I have to say I always thought this about Boris Johnson, because I bet Boris Johnson knew this version of the story. There's one story where, you know, a decade and a half later, he does come back again and he leaves his plot again and he comes back to Rome to lead it again, you know, that you never quite get rid of Cincinnatus. And I've always felt that Boris Johnson knew that comparing himself to Cincinnatus meant that, you know, he was leaving the door open. And so I think it's, you know, like, with all these stereotypical anecdotes, there's always the other side, you know, Cato the freedom fighter versus Cato the self disemboweler, you know, a great kind of image for fighting on guys, you know,

[Joy Connolly]

and you're absolutely right. I mean, even in elite, you know, well educated debates, we know very well that there were people who found references to Rome inappropriate, misleading, deceitful, false, or just irrelevant. And one of my favorite lines, although it also makes me weep a little, is Benjamin Rush, a wonderful Pennsylvanian scientist, founder, brilliant thinker, who wrote. And here he was citing a famous line of the elder Cato, I believe, who in a context earlier in Rome's republican history, was very worried about the growth of Carthage, the empire in North Africa just across the Mediterranean. And the elder Cato would stand up in the Senate and say in Latin, carthage, Carthage must be destroyed. Cartago delinda est. And Benjamin Rush translated this in a widely read essay where he said, latina lingua delenda est, the Latin language must be destroyed. So really kind of hilarious because he's showing off his knowledge of Roman history and Latin literature, but at the same time saying it's a waste. It's what we should focus on in the new country is science, technology, business, commerce, law. You know, let's get it. All right? But forget this history and this language that we're not gonna use in our daily lives. It's a waste of time. So. So there's definitely that reaction. And then the. Also the reaction that we wanted that the belief among some founders that America should claim its exceptional status, that it should be wholly new. So that reaction as well.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Joy, I. I'm curious. Did Rome play in. In any way to American ideas around slavery? In the sense that. In the sense that Rome was obviously a slave economy, did that have any play, any kind of legitimating purpose? Or was the ideology around slavery sort of so different in 18th and 19th century America that it doesn't map on in any way? I mean, is there any connection?

[Joy Connolly]

They made it map on. And again, it was used on Both sides as an argument for a fresh start. You know, that this was an opportunity for all, certainly all men to be treated equally. And then on the other side, appealing to ancient Roman, the Roman Empire, the Roman Republic in particular as justification as well as to the Bible. So very much the same way that people appealed to references to slavery in any ancient literature to seek to justify this practice. So it did play out. And charges of illegitimacy again on both sides too, just as people founders had arguments in print that people would read in accessible language about whether it was appropriate to root the new United States in an ancient nation or not. And again, plenty of people saying not just that it's inappropriate because it's ancient history and irrelevant Rome is irrelevant, but rather that it's inappropriate because the story that was being told about Rome as a balanced government with a popular voice was false. There are people out there saying, you know, look, Rome was an oligarchy. It was government by the few. Don't, don't be, make no mistake, don't, don't let yourself be lied to. This is not a model for us because it doesn't allow this model in the actual historical practice. Rome just didn't allow enough room for the people.

[Mary Beard]

I want to know a bit how far Greece really gets left out of this story. I mean we mentioned before that people in the 21st century tend to look back to 5th century Athens as kind of as the quotes wellsprings of Democracy, however inaccurate that is in the 18th century you're much more likely to see it as the Athenian democracy was the kind of the origin of terribly inefficient mob rule. But almost everything that we've talked about has been Roman Republican did, were they in part sometimes looking to Greek culture or not? I mean presumably they knew Latin and Latin literature much better than they knew Greek because everybody always, everybody's always known Latin and Roman history much better than they've known Greek literature and Greek history. But are they picking anything out of what they find in Greece?

[Joy Connolly]

They're certainly looking to not Athens for all the reasons we've said, but to Athens great rival Sparta. So the Spartans give great, just as they do today to some viewers of movies and readers of books about Sparta. They gave to the late 18th century, early 19th century founders another model, a very Roman model. Romans and Spartans look very similar in the way that the founders write about them. Virtuous, committed to agriculture, family oriented, self modeled, moderated. Yes, all the fantasies that we've already talked about. They looked some of them and this is definitely part of a better, a well educated conversation, probably not so much a popular one because as you say, fewer people were familiar with the ins and outs of Greek history. But the Greeks did create federations or leagues of small city states to stand up against the Persian empire next door to be ready for any threat. And those leagues, those federations were important in the way that the founders thought about how the states were going to work together and if a federated republic could be a powerful one. And there the Greek example is not really ideal because these leagues a weren't, they weren't equal in the way they distributed power and they didn't last very long, but they did provide some. A platform. And I think it's, I find it always inspiring and interesting to think about that the thin line the founders were walking between, as I say, Jefferson, I said at the beginning, Jefferson said to his critics, after the Declaration of Independence was written, of course there's nothing new in it. This is. And that's good. On the other hand, they were doing something new. And so in all these reaching ins to ancient history, I see a kind of a looking for to build ground under their feet to say that this has been tried in some sense before and yes, it's different, but we're not hanging out like Wile E. Coyote over the brink. People have tried this kind of thing before and it seems to have given them both inspiration and comfort as well as covering for all kinds of flaws as well.

[Mary Beard]

It's also very funny looking at it in a distance for a couple of hundred years that you've got, you know, new America thinking about itself in Roman dress and putting togas on, etc. And yet, of course, and using Rome to think with. But the, the awful British Empire was doing exactly the same. They were, you know, that everybody on, you know, everybody in this block was in some ways grabbing something out of Rome. They were, you know, everybody was dressing up as Romans. You know, there were British monarchs represented wearing, you know, silly Roman battle skirts. And so everybody's playing the Roman game but extracting something, you know, extracting something that they can use in a different way.

[Joy Connolly]

And I think, and Mary, with your work on Pompeii, I mean, you're a much better place to talk about this than I am. But I think it's important to remember too, people were beginning to see for the first time artifacts and architecture from Rome itself, but also from places like Pompeii. And it was so exciting. It was like a window into the past that made these people I think feel very real.

[Charlotte Higgins]

So Joy, I have a super basic question to end with, which is how much of the Roman Republic is there in the modern Republican Party? I mean, explain to me the connection between the Republican Party and the Roman Republic. I've never understood this.

[Mary Beard]

I think that's baffling for most Brits actually, that we can't see how these things go together.

[Joy Connolly]

Well right now I'm really tempted to say, rather than go through the whole hundred and, you know, however many years long of the existence of the Republican Party to simply think about the current moment. And there all I can think of is this, that like actual Roman Republican senators, members of a rich elite right, Republicans in the current administration seem to be ambitious. They seem to be extremely greedy, concerned for their own self political survival. They are unbelievable moralizers. They're very good at telling people what virtue is and what people should do. And they're really good at telling the less well off we are your only hope against other forces of evil, whether those be immigrants or the powers of business. So I have to say that they remind me of quite destructive figures in Roman Republican history.

[Mary Beard]

And in a sense they're kind of more Roman in the way that we study the Roman Republic than the founders are. In looking back to Cato and Cincinnatus and whatever, we've now got a real Roman Republic.

[Joy Connolly]

Not the ideal, but the real.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Although we might remember that the first ever episode of this podcast was called which Roman Emperor is Donald Trump? But anyway, let's not dwell on that now. Let's rather thank Joy Connolly so much for illuminating this conversation so much about the way Rome sort of courses through the ideas of the founding generation of the United States as We mark the 250th anniversary since the Declaration of Independence. Thank you so much, Joy.

[Mary Beard]

I promise I'll never say Founding Fathers again. Me, me too.

[Charlotte Higgins]

Deal.

[Joy Connolly]

And we can all go off and read Merciodis Warren and other female figures of that time. But meanwhile, it's so wonderful to talk with you wonderful women and thank you so much for having me.

[Charlotte Higgins]

As ever, we want to know your thoughts and comments, ideas, questions. And so if you have them, please do send them to [e-mail] or on our social media at Instant Classicspod.

[Mary Beard]

Bye bye.

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