April 21 is traditionally considered the day on which the city of Rome was founded in 753 B.C. Through pagan and Christian eras, before Christ and after Christ, from ancient times up to our own day, Rome has almost continuously held political or spiritual sway over a significant portion of the world. Indeed, America’s Founders looked principally to Rome for political and philosophical inspiration when crafting the documents and principles on which our Republic is established.
They saw America as the new Republic (the Founders insisted our nation is a republic and not a democracy, showing how Roman rather than Grecian influence was prime), Christianized and more equal and free, but still ever inspired by Rome’s Republic. So Rome continues to influence the greatest nation on earth. Many times sacked or burned, but never destroyed, the “Eternal City” remains the source of Western civilization and American philosophy today.
The great poet Publius Vergilius Maro depicted in the Aeneid the god Jove describing the birth of Rome’s founders, Romulus and Remus, who, according to legend, were the twin sons of the god Mars and descendants of the Trojan prince Aeneas (himself born of the goddess Venus). Jove recounts the story of a wolf nursing the baby boys and how they would found Rome:
The royal babes a tawny wolf shall drain:
Then Romulus his grandsire’s throne shall gain,
Of martial tow’rs the founder shall become,
The people Romans call, the city Rome.
To them no bounds of empire I assign,
Nor term of years to their immortal line.
Ev’n haughty Juno, who, with endless broils,
Earth, seas, and heav’n, and Jove himself turmoils;
At length aton’d, her friendly pow’r shall join,
To cherish and advance the Trojan line.
The subject world shall Rome’s dominion own,
And, prostrate, shall adore the nation of the gown.
An age is ripening in revolving fate
When Troy shall overturn the Grecian state,
And sweet revenge her conqu’ring sons shall call,
To crush the people that conspir’d her fall…Then dire debate and impious war shall cease,
And the stern age be soften’d into peace:
Then banish’d Faith shall once again return,
And Vestal fires in hallow’d temples burn;
And Remus with Quirinus shall sustain
The righteous laws, and fraud and force restrain.
The statement about Greece is important to Venus as comforting her for her son’s forced flight from a burning Troy, conquered by Greek treachery. But since Vergil was really writing this passage for his contemporaries, he was impressing upon his fellow Romans how marvelous the origin of their city was. Countless individuals from numerous nations have been equally fascinated by Vergil’s poetic account.
And like Vergil, the Roman statesman, philosopher, and orator, Marcus Tullius Cicero, was most proud of Rome’s moral principles, even if Roman officials usually failed to live up to their own stated aspirations.
“The fatherland is the common parent of us all,” Cicero praised Rome, and he argued that all men alike have natural rights: “These things originate in this, that we are inclined by nature to cherish human beings; that is the foundation of right.”
It was those same Roman moral and political principles, so close to Christianity and concerned with the inherent dignity and freedom of all men, which also fascinated early Americans. Roman philosopher Seneca argued for the inherent equality of all men (e.g., “[we are] fellow-slaves, if one reflects that Fortune has equal rights over slaves and free men alike”), too, and our Founding Fathers read Seneca and Cicero and were electrified by their arguments.
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The Founders were most particularly admirers of Cicero:
John Adams declared, “as all the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united in the same character [than Cicero], his authority should have great weight.” Thomas Jefferson dubbed Cicero “the father of eloquence and philosophy.” And Adams’ son John Quincy Adams imbibed his father’s enthusiasm, stating that “to live without having a Cicero and a Tacitus at hand seems to me as if it was a privation of one of my limbs.” Meanwhile, Alexander Hamilton adopted the pen name “Tully,” in tribute to Marcus Tullius Cicero.
So today we celebrate the “Eternal City,” which, though its ruins, monuments, and churches stand on Italian soil, still gave birth to our own magnificent republic.
