Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment

1984

Central E312.62 WQ65

Garden City, New York: Doubleday

America’s ‘Founding Fathers’ and revolutionaries in France looked to the monarch-less republic of ancient Rome for inspiration in the formation of their new governments and administrations. Both America and France wanted to protect the ‘liberty’ that was achieved through their revolutions by creating a system based on the ‘political principles’ and ‘constitutional mechanisms’ developed in the Roman Republic. The works of Cicero and Polybius were instrumental in shaping the American and French ethos of working for the common good of the people. ‘Modern republicans found both their morals and their constitution in the old republican legacy of Rome’ (Sellers). Here are various images of the first elected president of the United States, George Washington (1732-99) and Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), republican leader of France.