Classical Antiquity and the Politics of America: From George Washington to George W. Bush

241 Pages·2006·0.83 MB·English

by  Michael Meckler

Classical Antiquity and
the Politics of America

Classical Antiquity and
the Politics of America
From George Washington
to George W. Bush
edited by
Michael Meckler
Baylor University Press
Waco, Texas USA
©2006 Baylor University Press
Waco, Texas 76798
All Rights Reserved.No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in
writing of Baylor University Press.
Cover Design: Stephanie Blumenthal
Cover Images: Greece: Athens and The Capitol, c. 1880. Used by permission of the
Granger Collection, New York.
Interior Design:Diane Smith
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Classical antiquity and the politics of America / Michael Meckler, editor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-932792-32-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. United States--Politics and government. 2. Civilization, Classical--Influence. 3.
United States--Civilization--Classical influences I. Meckler, Michael.
JK31.C53 2006
320.973--dc22
2006015944
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.
in memoriam
M. R.
et
R. F. M.

Contents
Preface ix
Introduction
Michael Meckler 1
1 Classical Education in Colonial America
William J. Ziobro 13
2 Classical Antiquity and Early Conceptions
of the United States Senate
Carl J. Richard 29
3 Classical Oratory and Fears of Demagoguery
in the Antebellum Era
Caroline Winterer 41
4 William Sanders Scarborough and the Politics
of Classical Education for African Americans
Michele Valerie Ronnick 55
5 The Rise of Populism, the Decline of Classical Education,
and the Seventeenth Amendment
Michael Meckler 69
vii
viii Contents
6 William Linn Westermann at the Paris Peace Conference
of 1919
John Milton Cooper, Jr. 83
7 The World of Moses Finkelstein: The Year 1939
in M. I. Finley’s Development as a Historian
Daniel P. Tompkins 95
8 Thucydides and the Cold War
Lawrence A. Tritle 127
9 Senator Robert C. Byrd and the Wisdom of the Ancients
Robert F. Maddox 141
10 Platonism in High Places: Leo Strauss, George W. Bush,
and the Response to 9/11
Neil G. Robertson 153
Afterword
Michael Meckler 175
Notes 181
List of Contributors 219
Index 221
Preface
This volume emerged from a panel organized by the editor at the annual
meeting of the American Historical Association held in San Francisco in
January 2002. The panel, on “Classical Antiquity and the United States
Senate,” contained earlier versions of the papers by Carl J. Richard, Car-
oline Winterer, Michael Meckler, and Robert F. Maddox that have been
published in this volume. The panel was sponsored by the Association of
Ancient Historians (AAH), and thanks are due to the then-president of
the AAH, RichardTalbert, and the former AAH secretary-treasurer, Patri-
cia Dintrone, for their assistance. Special thanks are also due to former
AAH president Carol Thomas, who has long championed greater interac-
tion between ancient historians and their Americanist colleagues. The
fruits of such interaction include the essay in this volume by John Milton
Cooper,Jr., which was originally delivered as a lectureatthe annual AAH
meeting held in Madison, Wisconsin, in May 2000. The other essays were
solicited particularly for this volume.
The editor also wishes to express his gratitude to Frank Coulson and
Fritz Graf, the directors of the Center for Epigraphical and Palaeograph-
ical Studies at The Ohio State University; to the Center’s staff, Philip
Forsythe and Wendy Watkins; and to the Chair of Ohio State’s Depart-
ix
x Preface
ment of Greek and Latin, David Hahm. Personal thanks are also owed to
my parents for their sufferance.
This book is dedicated to the memory of Meyer Reinhold and Robert
F. Maddox. Both men died within three months of each other in the sum-
mer and autumn of 2002, during the early development of this book.
Meyer Reinhold passed away on July 2, 2002, at the age of ninety-two.
Over the years he kindly offered his advice and assistance to several of
this book’s contributors. His own research from the 1960s through the
1980s examining American classicism lit the way for further studies, and
he eagerly shared his insights with younger scholars. He helped found
the International Society for the Classical Tradition, and its journal, The
International Journal of the Classical Tradition. The circumstances of his
own career, which included a decade-long period of involuntary depar-
ture from college teaching, would have provided him a prominent place
within the history of American academia and its interaction with Ameri-
can politics even without his valuable contributions to scholarship. Yet
his perseverance and longevity allowed him to make up for lost time and
then some, for he did not retire from his final academic appointment
until the age of eighty-five.
Robert F. Maddox did not get to enjoy such a long life. Maddox
passed away on September 30, 2002, at the age of fifty-nine. A historian
of twentieth-century America, Maddox was most concerned with chron-
icling the events and personalities of his native state of West Virginia. He
spent nearly his entire life in the Mountain State, and had a distin-
guished career at Marshall University,wherehe served in several impor-
tant administrative positions. But he was perhaps proudest of his role as
a teacher and preserver of West Virginia history, which he fulfilled as
director of Marshall’s oral history of Appalachia program and as presi-
dent of the West Virginia Historical Association.
Maddox was enthusiastic about participating in the AAH-sponsored
panel in San Francisco, but deteriorating health prevented him from
making the trip. RichardA. Baker, the historian of the United States Sen-
ate, kindly agreed to deliver Maddox’s paper in addition to serving as the
panel respondent. Maddox passed away before plans for the volume were
finalized. In preparing Maddox’s essay for publication, the editor is grate-
ful for RichardBaker’s advice and assistance.