Virtue and the Founders
How Classical Education & Christianity Helped Shape Early American Culture
“Epictetus & Epicurus give us laws for governing ourselves, Jesus a supplement of the duties & charities we owe to others.”
- Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short (1819)
Perhaps no single quote better sums up the influence of classical education and Christian beliefs on the cultural values of early American leaders. Jefferson’s note - widely viewed as one of the most revealing in all his correspondence - exemplified the thinking of many of the Revolution’s leading scholars who were trained in the classics but appreciated and aimed to practice the benevolence of Christianity.
For most, virtuous behavior was the essential ingredient for maintaining a Republic and election to public office. The examples of Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Cato, Xenophon, Plutarch, Demosthenes, and many others filled sermons, manuals, newspaper columns, and other educational materials.
This led public figures of the era to place the ancient authors at the core of their ideals of civility, learning, and piety.
And this focus on the necessity of a classical education extended past the Revolution. Between 1790 and 1800 the college admission requirements at Yale, Harvard, King’s College (now Columbia), Williams, and Brown all required students to be able to read Cicero, Virgil, and the New Testament in Greek.
Although only a select few Americans attended colleges during this time, those who did represented an outsized portion of the ministers, lawyers, doctors, and other leaders in their communities. Nearly all agreed with one point gleaned from their classical education:
“Republics were fragile entities suspended perilously in time and that balanced governments depended on the civic virtue of their citizenry to withstand corruption, private ambition, and dependence, the relentless forces of decay.” (Winterer)
Those without access to higher learning would imbibe Greek and Roman virtues through plays and public speeches. Joseph Addison’s extremely popular play, Cato, helped link the classical past to a political agenda of the age.
It was General George Washington’s favorite, and he even had it performed for the soldiers at Valley Forge during the winter of 1777 to ‘78. Here’s how Plutarch described Cato:
“It is said of Cato that even from his infancy, in his speech, his countenance, and all his childish pastimes, he discovered an inflexible temper, unmoved by any passion, and firm in everything. He was resolute in his purposes, much beyond the strength in his age, to go through whatever he undertook… It was difficult to excite him to laughter; his countenance seldom relaxed a smile.”
Those that have read our brief summary of George Washington’s life will recognize the distinct influence of Cato (and others, such as Cincinnatus) on his actions.
As a result of these influences, it also became well-understood that Republics were fragile and depended on leaders and citizens adhering to those virtues. As Edward Montagu noted in his widely read “Reflections on the Rise and Fall of Ancient Republicks” (1757):
“Rome in the last period of her freedom was the scene where all the inordinate passions of mankind operated most powerfully and with the greatest latitude. There we see luxury, ambition, faction, pride, revenge, selfishness, a total disregard for the publick good, and an universal dissoluteness of manners…”
For other Americans of this era - where the church often served as a center for community engagement, as well as spiritual guidance - a focus on Christianity’s “Golden Rule” helped define virtuous and ethical behavior. This was particularly true for those leading the bottom-up political pressure to end the institution of slavery, such as the Quakers, as well as the Baptists and Methodists. In short, the search for role models brought most Americans to follow examples from these two main sources.
Lessons From the Past, Relevance Today
Returning to Jefferson’s advice to Short, what did Epictetus and Epicurus suggest were the most important virtues?
For Epicurus, the “cardinal virtues” were: (1) prudence, (2) temperance, (3) fortitude, and (4) justice.
Epictetus agreed with three of those four virtues, swapping in “wisdom” for prudence. For Epictetus, the chief task in life was to identify and separate matters into what one can control versus those one cannot.
In his words:
“Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own.”
This search for, and adherence to, virtues and principles was part and parcel of designing the founding documents for the new nation. And as we’ll cover in later posts, the Founders struggled with - but ultimately made the choice of - enshrining principles over contemporary practices in both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, while also creating mechanisms for fully delivering on those principles in the future.
I don’t mean to step on any Christian toes—my wife is Irish Catholic and so is half of my side—but Jefferson wasn’t a Christian. His Bible, formally titled The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth Extracted Textually from the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French & English, was a personal devotional. It is a cut-and-paste compilation that excludes all supernatural elements and miracles, focusing solely on Jesus's moral and ethical teachings.
As for the Golden Rule, the ethical principle of treating others as you would want to be treated—does not have a single point of origin. It appeared independently across numerous ancient civilizations and religions as a fundamental guideline for social harmony and reciprocity. The principle can be found in various ancient texts:
Ancient Examples
* Ancient Egypt (c. 2040–1650 BCE) includes a version in The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant.
* Ancient India's Vedic traditions and the Mahabharata express a similar sentiment.
* Confucianism (c. 500 BCE) features a negative formulation, sometimes called the Silver Rule.
Religious Teachings
* Judaism includes the concept in the Torah (c. 1450 BCE) and in the teachings of Rabbi Hillel (1st century BCE).
* Christianity's New Testament (c. 30 CE) includes Jesus' positive statement in the Sermon on the Mount.
* Islam, in a 7th-century CE hadith, attributes a similar saying to Muhammad.
* Buddhism and Jainism connect the rule to the principle of ahimsa (non-violence).
The specific term "Golden Rule" became popular in 17th-century Britain, appearing in the writings of Anglican theologians.
The Bible should be considered a classical text like Meditations or Plato’s Euthyphro. All such writings are must reads.
PS—The core of Socrates' argument is a logical trap known as the Euthyphro Dilemma:
"Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?"
This question forces a choice between two problematic conclusions:
* The Socratic View: If the gods love something because it is pious, then piety must have an independent, intrinsic nature that the gods merely recognize. In this case, "being loved by the gods" is just a quality of piety, not its definition.
* The Contradictory View: If something is pious only because the gods love it, then piety is arbitrary. If the gods chose to love murder tomorrow, murder would technically be "pious" under this definition—a conclusion Euthyphro cannot accept.