In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

2 171 B oth Thomas Jefferson and his political rival John Adams passed much of their political retirement reading and reflecting on the classics. In his first letter to Adams after many years, Jefferson wrote that he had taken his leave of politics. “I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid, and I find myself much happier.”1 Their correspondence did not long shy away from politics, however, and in June 1813 Jefferson wrote a long letter reflecting on the controversies of their active political careers. The letter was as conciliatory as any that Jefferson wrote, and emphasized that Jefferson had no desire reopen the animosities of the past. It was delicately worded, and Jefferson defended his own actions while expressing respect for Adams and emphasizing his retirement from politics. It opened with three lines from Theocritus, and with Jefferson’s assurance that he was now “truly Epicurean,” in the sense that he now sought “ease of body and tranquilly of mind.” Classical motifs remained prominent throughout the letter, and helped to reinforce Jefferson’s reassurances of friendship. He carefully characterized their early conflict as part of a longer historical process. “To me it appears that there have been differences of opinion, and party differences, from the first establishment of the parties to the present day,” he wrote, and while politicians always seemed to have taken sides “in favour of the many, or of the few, . . . opinions, which are equally honest on both sides, should not affect personal esteem, or social intercourse.” As the current generation had judged “between the Claudii and the Gracchi, the Wentworths and the Hampdens of past ages,” so would that generation itself be judged in time.2 America and Ancient and Modern Europe nicholas p. cole 172 Nicholas P. Cole The carefully judged classical motif had its desired effect, and Adams, ignoring Jefferson’s rather unflattering portrait of his career, seized on Jefferson’s more universal points in his reply. He quoted Jefferson, “‘The same political parties which now agitate U. S. have existed through all time.’ Precisely.” He went on to note that this was exactly the argument he had made in the first volume of his Defence, a work that he always felt had been unfairly misunderstood and misrepresented, not least by Jefferson himself. He seized too on Jefferson’s heavy use of the classics. “Lord! Lord!” Adams wrote. “What can I do with so much Greek? When I was of your Age, young Man, i.e. 7 or 8 or 9 Years ago I felt, a kind of pang of Affection, for one of the flames of my Youth.” Adams wrote that he had amused himself for some time with lexicons and grammars and classical reading, though he was modest about his progress: “I found that if I looked a Word today, in less than a week I had to look it again. It was to little better purpose, than writing Letters on a pail of Water.”3 Nevertheless , from that moment forward their correspondence featured exchanges of Greek and Latin quotations, discussion of particular translations, and debate about ancient belief, and their discussions became more generally decorated with classical allusions. Despite considerable interest in the political thought of Jefferson’s generation , the significance of their interest in the ancient world has proved difficult to gauge, or to reconcile convincingly with the other sources of their thought. Jefferson himself did much to make this task more difficult. He wrote in old age that his appreciation of the classics was “more now than when younger, and more susceptible of delights from other sources. When decays of age have enfeebled the useful energies of the mind, the classic pages fill up the vacuum of the ennui, and become sweet composers to that rest of the grave into which we are all sooner or later to descend.” Though he goes on in the same letter to recommend the classics to students as “stores of real knowledge” and “a solid basis to most and an ornament to all the sciences,” the suspicion that Jefferson ’s well attested classical reading reflected his aesthetic sense far more than it contributed to the formation of his ideas is difficult to avoid.4 Indeed, when questioned directly on the subject, and despite his deep knowledge of and love of ancient authors, Jefferson doubted at this time in his life that they had anything significant to contribute to modern thinking. The circumstances of ancient...

Share