The Influence That Richard Had On Our Founding Fathers

Many Americans today many not be the most familiar with ancient Greek and Roman history but our founding fathers certainly were and in “their quest to match the deeds of the ancients the founders became our heros… [t]he founders drove the ancients from their pedestals and occupied their places” (ix). Carl J. Richard seeks to highlight the influence the ancients had on our founders. I believe that Richard is very effective in accomplishing his goal of demonstrating what lessons the founding fathers learned from the greeks and the romans as well as how those ideas shaped the foundations of the American government. He accomplished this through his use of clear and specific examples throughout greek and roman history and he showcases direct connections

Sparta was perhaps the first totalitarian state in history and our founding fathers would have learned of it through the work and writings of Plutarch. Sparta was a warrior society that believed in individual sacrifice for the common good. Studying this history allowed them to learn “about the strengths and weaknesses of republics that emphasize the collective good over individual rights”(23). What the founders derived from this, Richard argues, is that they “preferred to rest their republic on the natural rights of individuals, even while urging sacrifice for the common good”(23). Samuel Adams admired spartan “frugality, selflessness, valor, and patriotism” (31) so much that he hoped that the city of Boston would evolve into a “christian Sparta”(31). This demonstrates how much admiration our founding fathers had for the ancient city

From the histories written by Plutarch, Polybius, and Demosthenes the founders learned of the Macedonian and Roman conquest of the Greek republics, this history taught them “the importance of a strong central government to bind the American states together in a powerful union”(85). They wanted to avoid the Greeks downfall who ended up losing their liberty due to incessant domestic bickering which “left them vulnerable to foreign invaders”(85). Their inability to unite left the Greeks open to invasion and was ultimately their downfall. The founding fathers want to avoid this and cited the Greeks flaw during the constitutional convention arguing with a strong central government that the united states would be subject to the same