I am honored that two of our members, Herodotus and Xerxes, are both mentioned in this essay ;).
Read it in its entirety here, Teaching the Classics: What Americans Can Learn from Herodotus - FPRI.
Teaching the Classics: What Americans Can Learn from Herodotus
There is one obvious reason why Americans ought to find it useful to read and study Herodotus. He described a world that is in certain crucial regards like our own. Athens and Sparta were, of course, tiny communities. Herodotus tells us that at the time of the Persian Wars there were 30,000 adult, male Athenian citizens and 8,000 adult, male Spartan citizens. The difference in scale between these polities and our own is obvious and significant. But there is this that is similar. Athens and Sparta were republics. Matters of state were open to public debate; most major decisions were reached by voting; the citizens of both polities enjoyed the rule of law—and theirs were citizen armies.
These similarities are by no means accidental. The modern nation-state owes a great deal to the ancient example. In the medieval period, antiquity never entirely lost its purchase. Cicero’s De officiis survived through the Dark Ages within the Christian West and was at all times widely read. In some measure, Roman law survived as well, and certain of its elements were imported into canon law, the only universal law in the Christian West. From canon law these made their way into the various common law systems regnant locally within that otherwise exceedingly diverse world. One principle, derived from Roman law, deserves special attention.
Roman liberty was arguably derivative from ancient Greek liberty: the republicanism that emerged in Rome ca. 509 BCE, the species of self-government that was instituted there, was an Etruscan variation on practices developed earlier in Crete, at Sparta, and elsewhere in the Hellenic world. Naturally enough, the Romans carried over into private life the practices of public life, and, in keeping with this trend, Roman corporate law, as applied to the management of waterways, was built on the following principle: Quod omnes tangit ab omnibus tractari debeat—“that which touches all should be dealt with by all.” This principle, borrowed by the Roman Catholic Church to make sense of the practice of electing abbots, bishops, and popes, provided an underpinning for the practice of self-government within guilds and cities and inspired the establishment of representative institutions within kingdoms. In part as a consequence of its propagation by the church, political liberty was no stranger in late medieval Europe, and this distinguished the Christian West from the Christian East and from the Muslim world as well.
***
Herodotus’ questions are still worth asking. They are, in particular, questions that Americans must pose to themselves. Is our heritage of political liberty and the rule of law a treasure worth fighting for? Does this heritage produce today, as Herodotus claims it arguably did in antiquity, a people brave and resolute in their defense? Do the words that Demaratus used in describing the ancient Spartans describe modern Americans as well? When Francis Scott Keyes, in The Star-Spangled Banner, spoke of America as “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” he was borrowing language that had been used to describe classical Sparta. If the comparison is no longer apt, Herodotus would tell us that it is unlikely we will remain for long a people free.
There is one obvious reason why Americans ought to find it useful to read and study Herodotus. He described a world that is in certain crucial regards like our own. Athens and Sparta were, of course, tiny communities. Herodotus tells us that at the time of the Persian Wars there were 30,000 adult, male Athenian citizens and 8,000 adult, male Spartan citizens. The difference in scale between these polities and our own is obvious and significant. But there is this that is similar. Athens and Sparta were republics. Matters of state were open to public debate; most major decisions were reached by voting; the citizens of both polities enjoyed the rule of law—and theirs were citizen armies.
These similarities are by no means accidental. The modern nation-state owes a great deal to the ancient example. In the medieval period, antiquity never entirely lost its purchase. Cicero’s De officiis survived through the Dark Ages within the Christian West and was at all times widely read. In some measure, Roman law survived as well, and certain of its elements were imported into canon law, the only universal law in the Christian West. From canon law these made their way into the various common law systems regnant locally within that otherwise exceedingly diverse world. One principle, derived from Roman law, deserves special attention.
Roman liberty was arguably derivative from ancient Greek liberty: the republicanism that emerged in Rome ca. 509 BCE, the species of self-government that was instituted there, was an Etruscan variation on practices developed earlier in Crete, at Sparta, and elsewhere in the Hellenic world. Naturally enough, the Romans carried over into private life the practices of public life, and, in keeping with this trend, Roman corporate law, as applied to the management of waterways, was built on the following principle: Quod omnes tangit ab omnibus tractari debeat—“that which touches all should be dealt with by all.” This principle, borrowed by the Roman Catholic Church to make sense of the practice of electing abbots, bishops, and popes, provided an underpinning for the practice of self-government within guilds and cities and inspired the establishment of representative institutions within kingdoms. In part as a consequence of its propagation by the church, political liberty was no stranger in late medieval Europe, and this distinguished the Christian West from the Christian East and from the Muslim world as well.
***
Herodotus’ questions are still worth asking. They are, in particular, questions that Americans must pose to themselves. Is our heritage of political liberty and the rule of law a treasure worth fighting for? Does this heritage produce today, as Herodotus claims it arguably did in antiquity, a people brave and resolute in their defense? Do the words that Demaratus used in describing the ancient Spartans describe modern Americans as well? When Francis Scott Keyes, in The Star-Spangled Banner, spoke of America as “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” he was borrowing language that had been used to describe classical Sparta. If the comparison is no longer apt, Herodotus would tell us that it is unlikely we will remain for long a people free.
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