Commentary The previous (ninth) essay in this series identified three Roman poets quoted by participants in the constitutional debates of 1787–1790—Ovid, Horace, and Virgil. The essay explained why Virgil was the most influential: “If the American Founding had a poet laureate,” I wrote, “he would be it.”
This installment outlines Virgil’s influence on the constitution-makers in more detail.
As related in the second essay of this series, Founding-era schoolboys started studying Latin around the age of 8. A few years later they were reading Virgil.
Unlike Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero, Virgil had little to say on the comparative benefits of political institutions. One cannot claim of any particular clause in the Constitution, “Virgil helped formulate this one.”…