# First Principles by Thomas E. Ricks - Blinkist

What’s in it for me? See ancient Greece and Rome through the eyes of America’s founding fathers.

These days, the American education system doesn’t put much emphasis on Greek and Roman classics.

Yet, the influence of ancient thought can still be felt in countless ways.

Head to America’s capital, Washington, DC, for instance, and you’ll see buildings designed in the classical style.

Turn on the news, and you’ll hear talk of Republicans and Democrats: terms derived from Latin and Greek, respectively.

But Greece and Rome made an impact on America that goes well beyond esthetic choices and linguistics.

The writings of the ancient world were central to the way America’s founders viewed their budding nation.

In a time of national turmoil, it’s all-important for today’s Americans to revisit –⁠ and refocus –⁠ on their nation’s first principles.

In these blinks, you’ll learn  what George Washington’s favorite play was; how John Adams and Roman politician Cicero were alike; and why the Constitution is an Epicurean document.

Revolutionary Americans viewed the ancient Roman Republic as an exemplar of republican government.

Consider the word virtue.

Today, it’s synonymous with morality.

A little bit further in the past, it was used to describe female chastity.

But in the time of America’s founding fathers, it had an entirely different definition.

To them, virtue meant public-mindedness –⁠ the quality of putting the common good before self-interest.

Virtue was, of course, originally a Latin word.

And it was one the founders were, if not obsessed with, at least deeply enamored by.

In the compilation of Revolutionary-era writings in the US National Archives, the word “virtue” appears about six thousand times in total.

Believe it or not, that’s more often than the word “freedom.

” It’s clear the founders had classical principles in mind when building their new nation.

The key message here is: Revolutionary Americans viewed the ancient Roman Republic as an exemplar of republican government.

The modern idea of virtue is different from the one the founders had in mind.

But their entire conception of the classical world was different, too.

Today works by Greek authors like Homer, Plato, and Herodotus are featured prominently on lists of great books.

Romans, however, are comparatively neglected.

In the Revolutionary era, it was the reverse: the Romans were revered, while the Greeks were often viewed as flighty and unstable.

Historical figures were also viewed through a different lens.

Take the example of Cicero.

Nowadays, the Roman is considered little more than a pompous blowhard.

But America’s founders idolized Cicero as a highly skilled orator and successful leader.

Along with its thinkers, the Roman republican government was a lodestar for America’s founders.

Just take Alexander Hamilton’s word for it.

In the thirty-fourth volume of The Federalist Papers, he wrote that the Roman Republic had “attained to the utmost height of human greatness.

” Of even greater interest than Rome’s flourishing was its demise: what, the founders wondered, had caused the erosion of the glorious empire?

As much as Rome inspired and guided the founders, it also occasionally steered them wrongly.

The most troubling instance concerned the practice of slavery.

Many of the founders saw human bondage as a natural part of the social order and used classical theories to justify it.

It’s plain to see that America’s founders were flawed men.

Nevertheless, they successfully created a republic that continues to expand rights for more and more people.

It’s worthwhile to examine the classical ideas at the forefront of their minds.

Washington sought to become a virtuous statesman and military general.

One of the most popular dramatic works in pre-Revolutionary America was a play called Cato.

Today, the drama reads as stiff, plodding, and barely readable.

Eighteenth-century audiences, though, enjoyed the lengthy speeches and quotable one-liners.

Cato was notable for another reason: it was George Washington’s favorite play.

Its lead character⁠ was everything Washington strove to be.

Cato was a paragon of virtue who rejected the luxuries afforded by his upper-class birth and spent his political life fighting against government corruption.

Washington was, like Cato, a man of action rather than words.

And unlike his fellow founders, Washington was educated not at a prestigious university but on the battlefield.

The key message here is: Washington sought to become a virtuous statesman and military general.

Washington’s first major combat experience came in 1754 during the French and Indian War –⁠ a conflict between the British and French, who were allied with several First Peoples tribes.

The war started off with a win for the then 22-year-old Washington.

He and his regiment successfully ambushed the French, suffering just one death.

But things would soon take a turn for the worse.

After a few weeks, the French launched an assault of their own.

But at this point, Washington’s troops were short on food and feeling demoralized.

When the French attack finally did come, Washington’s losses numbered one hundred.

Only three French soldiers died.

An even more humiliating defeat was to come a year later.

Washington was operating under the command of British General Edward Braddock, a dangerously arrogant man who scoffed at the French forces.

Braddock was to pay for that hubris with his life.

He died along with 1,200 other British soldiers at a confrontation in the Ohio River Valley.

After an expertly executed ambush by the French and their First Peoples allies, the British were forced to retreat.

That defeat and its aftermath affected Washington profoundly.

Later, he recalled riding through the British camp at night, his horse stepping gingerly over the bodies of dead and dying men.

He saw directly what could happen to an arrogant general who refused to adapt to his circumstances and listen to advice.

The lesson would stick with Washington when he became the commander of the Continental Army fighting against the British thirteen years later.

Despite his lack of formal education, Washington learned how to become a truly Roman leader –⁠ one who exemplified discipline and virtue.

During the Revolutionary War, Washington embodied both Fabius and Cincinnatus.

Most Americans today know Washington as something of a military genius.

But at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, Washington still hadn’t figured out how to defeat the British.

In fact, his early strategies failed completely.

First, Washington attempted to engage the British head-on.

Thanks to the superior wealth, training, and numbers of the British army, this strategy was doomed from the start.

After a year and a half of defeats, Washington heeded the advice of one of his best generals, Nathaniel Greene, and switched to a war of posts strategy.

This is a defensive approach where an army retreats into a fortress and fights from there.

This, too, was unsuccessful and resulted in expensive setbacks when thousands of troops surrendered to the British.

Something different was necessary.

So Washington turned to a third strategy –⁠ one modeled after those used by the Roman general Fabius.

The key message here is: During the Revolutionary War, Washington embodied both Fabius and Cincinnatus.

Fabius’s best-known accomplishment was his defeat of the renowned general Hannibal of Carthage in the early 200s BC.

To do so, Fabius –⁠ who was, like Washington, known for being a slow thinker –⁠ devised a careful strategy.

He would focus not on defeating Hannibal outright but denying him a decisive victory.

To do so, Fabius cut Hannibal and his army off from their resources, damaging their supply lines and hindering their foraging parties.

He also kept his armies’ camps in the hills rather than the plains, requiring his opponent’s armies to keep constant vigilance.

In his war with Hannibal, Fabian hardly won a single battle.

Yet, he won the war.

It was much the same with Washington.

He rarely engaged the British directly in the later stages of the American Revolution.

But by tiring out his opponent, depleting their resources, and slowing them down, Washington could ultimately emerge victorious.

After the war had been won, in late December 1783, Congress threw a celebratory party for Washington.

The very next day, he resigned as Commander of the Continental Army.

Washington could have easily turned himself into an American Julius Caesar, a military dictator.

But instead, he chose to become a Cincinnatus –⁠ a man known for renouncing the title of dictator and returning to his farm once he’d led the Romans to victory.

In doing so, Cincinnatus and Washington displayed the utmost reverence for public virtue.

John Adams viewed himself as an American Cicero.

The Roman orator Cicero was born in 106 BC to parents of unremarkable birth.

Though he began life as a plebian –⁠ a commoner –⁠ he eventually rose to become what Romans called a “new man”: someone who attained nobility by holding high office.

The height of Cicero’s career came in 63 BC when he was appointed one of Rome’s two consuls –⁠ the top political position in the empire.

It was in this role that he confronted the Catiline conspiracy, a plot devised by the populist senator Catiline to overthrow the consulship of Rome.

Through a series of powerful, grippingly emotional speeches, Cicero exposed the Catiline plot and eventually caused the senator to flee Rome.

Cicero was well-known to America’s founders.

But he was truly idolized by one of them: John Adams, who happened to share some of Cicero’s best and worst traits.

The key message here is: John Adams viewed himself as an American Cicero.

Adams was, to say the least, a huge fan of Cicero.

At night, he would read Cicero’s speeches aloud to himself.

And he even wrote about the Roman in his diary.

In Cicero, Adams saw elements of himself.

Both, after all, had come from nondescript backgrounds and risen to prominence through a combination of effort and eloquence.

And like Cicero, Adams was dead-set on becoming a great man –⁠ honorable, respected, and powerful.

The two also shared a major flaw: vanity.

Cicero was terribly fond of praise.

And Adams, for his part, was terrible at brushing off negative press.

During his presidency, he actually jailed newspaper editors who criticized him.

Long before Adams became president, however, he involved himself in politics.

In fact, he was the first founder to call for a revolution.

In 1765, Adams published a pamphlet that laid out a surprising and prescient vision.

In it, he predicted the long-term future of America: liberty, he said, would ultimately reign over millions of citizens.

In the summer of the same year, Adams published a series of essays where he argued that Americans had a right to liberty derived from God rather than a king.

These essays had an extraordinary impact.

They gave Adams’ fellow Bostonians a much keener awareness of their own rights and liberties.

They questioned whether they were being treated fairly by the British.

And they began to accept the idea that a revolution might be on the horizon.

Thomas Jefferson was inspired by the Greeks, particularly Epicurus.

Thomas Jefferson was different from the other founding fathers in many respects.

He was esthetically minded: he played music, read widely, and designed architecture.

And though the Romantic movement, which valued emotion over reason, hadn’t yet begun, we can easily view Jefferson as one of its forebears.

He was passionate, emotional, and even illogical at times.

The Romantic movement was influenced greatly by the ancient Greeks.

And so was Thomas Jefferson.

He was the only founder who was arguably more Greek than Roman.

The key message here is: Thomas Jefferson was inspired by the Greeks, particularly Epicurus.

While Jefferson was receiving his education, he kept a kind of diary called a commonplace book, in which he recorded quotations from various texts he was reading.

Greek authors feature prominently in it –⁠ for example, Jefferson quotes the Athenian tragedian Euripides some 70 times.

Curiously, however, the Greek philosopher Epicurus is nowhere to be found.

This means Jefferson must have encountered Epicurus later in life.

But once he did, the Greek philosopher would have a profound impact on his thinking.

Little is known about Epicurus’s life.

What we do know is that he established a community called The Garden in Athens.

There, its members celebrated the view that tranquility and pleasure were the ultimate goals in life.

Today, we mostly think of Epicureanism as being about indulging in things like wine and sex.

But in Jefferson’s time, the philosophy meant something much different.

In his diary, Jefferson summarized the Epicurean philosophy in this way: happiness is the aim of life.

Virtue is the foundation of happiness.

And virtue consists of prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice.

These values speak loud and clear in Jefferson’s masterpiece, the Declaration of Independence.

In the document’s second paragraph, Jefferson declares that all men are created equal and are entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

” His use of the term “happiness” is Epicureanism in its highest form.

It’s a notable departure from the formulation of the English philosopher John Locke, who had instead used the phrase “life, liberty, and estate.

” By doing so, Jefferson envisions a positive and optimistic future for all Americans –⁠ not one centered around private property.

Next, Jefferson invokes prudence and justice –⁠ two concepts he felt were central to Epicureanism.

In his Declaration, Jefferson laid out the blueprint for the burgeoning nation.

In part, Americans have Epicurus to thank.

James Madison viewed the classics through an Enlightenment lens.

In the middle of the eighteenth century, the northwestern European nation of Scotland was experiencing an intellectual revolution.

The movement known as the Scottish Enlightenment occurred just as its neighbor, England, was going through a period of intellectual stagnation.

Some estimates suggest that 75 percent of Scots could read in 1750, compared to just 53 percent of English people.

At the time, English universities like Oxford were in decline, while those in Edinburgh and Glasgow modernized and flourished.

Thanks to the large number of Scottish immigrants flowing into America, the Scottish Enlightenment had a major influence on the founding fathers.

The movement drew heavily from classical thought, and its impact was greatest on America’s fourth president, James Madison.

The key message here is: James Madison viewed the classics through an Enlightenment lens.

Madison came in contact with Scottish Enlightenment thinkers during his time at Princeton.

There, his Scottish professors taught him French, classics, logic, and moral philosophy.

He heard lectures about the necessity for governments to include systems of checks and balances.

And he was introduced to the ideas of the French philosopher Montesquieu.

Montesquieu’s arguments in his most famous work, The Spirit of the Laws, were based heavily on the histories of Greece and Rome.

The Frenchman used the examples from these two civilizations to argue that republics could only be small nations –⁠ too large, and they would eventually slip into warring factions that would cause the country to fall apart.

These concerns were of ultimate consequence to Madison and his contemporaries.

And Madison was almost certainly thinking of Montesquieu when writing his two masterworks: the American Constitution and The Federalist Papers.

The Constitution laid out the blueprint for the new nation.

But The Federalist Papers gave it a true sense of legitimacy.

In them, Madison allayed fears that America’s politicians would one day forsake virtue in favor of partisanship.

Unlike Rome, America’s government would make partisanship a feature, not a flaw.

The government would account for the reality of partisanship and self-interest with three governmental branches that could check and balance each other.

As for Montesquieu’s argument that a republic could only be a small nation, Madison had an answer for that, too.

Madison believed the solution to the issue of factionalism was to create a large national republic.

This would divide the nation into so many different communities and parties that it would be incredibly difficult for one group to dominate the rest.

And if regional conflict ever broke out –⁠ which it ultimately did in the Civil War –⁠ a strong federal government could hold the nation intact.

American classicism declined after the ratification of the Constitution.

There is a term we use today: loyal opposition.

It describes the practice of questioning and criticizing those in power while still remaining loyal to the nation’s government.

The problem for America’s founders was that this term had not yet been invented.

They had no political vocabulary to describe the potential for healthy political competition or partisanship.

So they continued to view it in Roman terms.

The Federalists, foremost among them John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, described their opponents –⁠ the anti-Federalists –⁠ as “Catilines”: traitors to the state.

The classical framework was a poor way for the founders to understand the unique circumstances of their new nation.

Partisanship was growing, yet the Federalists still clung to the idea that their government could exist without it.

It was an idea that was doomed to fail.

The key message here is: American classicism declined after the ratification of the Constitution.

For the Federalist vision of government to work, it required virtuous men to be in power.

Washington was just such a man –⁠ a paragon of virtue who didn’t even really want to be the president.

If Washington’s presidency validated the Federalist vision, Adams’s presidency smashed it into pieces.

Unlike Washington, Adams aggressively lashed out against the growing partisanship.

He did so in deeply unpopular ways: cracking down on opposition press, arresting journalists, and wielding the judiciary branch as a political tool.

For all of Adams’ failings, he did pass one major test for a new democracy: a peaceful transition of power.

His successor was Thomas Jefferson, who was rapidly becoming an unabashed partisan.

In Jefferson’s inaugural address, he claimed a clear victory for the anti-Federalists.

But, importantly, he would not violate the rights of those who’d lost.

No matter one’s views, they were entitled to the same rights as everyone else.

Notably, Jefferson hardly invoked the term virtue at all in his speech.

It was a clear departure from the old classical way of thinking.

Virtue was nice to have, but it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

During Jefferson’s presidency and Madison’s afterward, classicism slowly became an object of ridicule.

It was seen as a sign of elitism and upper-class foolishness.

Meanwhile, people began to view slavery as being at odds with the founding American principle of freedom for all.

As reason and rationality gave way to emotion in the nineteenth century, classicism slowly died.

Americans didn’t completely abandon classicism –⁠ but it was no longer their guiding light.

The key message in these blinks: America’s founding fathers looked on the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome as guiding lights that could show them how best to create a flourishing republican government.

Final summary

More than that, they sought to emulate their own personal Greek and Roman heroes.

However, as James Madison was drafting the Constitution and The Federalist Papers, he began to depart from the classical model.

It was around that point when American classicism began to decline into the pale shadow it is today.

Actionable advice: Return to the principles of virtue and the public good.

Over time, the term virtue may have lost its original meaning.

But that doesn’t mean Americans can’t still honor this founding principle.

They can do so by participating in their local governments, engaging in respectful debates, and speaking out against those who violate America’s fundamental principles –⁠ even when they’re on their own side.

Finally, Americans should refocus their discourse to center around the public good and general welfare –⁠ not just the rights of the individual.

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What to read next: The American Presidency by Charles O.

Jones When the founding fathers were creating the new nation of America, they wrestled with one particularly important question: who should lead it?

Should the country have a king?

A two-person consulship or a triumvirate like they had in Rome?

Or should America try something else entirely?

Eventually, the founders decided that America’s leader should be part-monarch, part-prime minister.

And they carefully laid out the responsibilities they believed the president should have.

To find out how the founders originally envisioned the presidency, why the electoral college exists, and how all of this affects global affairs today, check out our blinks to The American Presidency.