The ideas that formed the Constitution: Tacitus
The authors discussed in this series impacted the Constitution both directly and indirectly. Citations to the authors by participants in the constitutional debates of 1787–1790 are evidence of direct influence. Indirect influence occurred in at least two ways. First,...
The ideas that formed the Constitution: Cicero Continued
The previous installment in this series outlined the life and career of the Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero. It described how John Adams relied on Cicero’s work in the preface to the first volume of his survey of republican constitutions. Although Adams was in...
The ideas that formed the Constitution: Cicero
The first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth essays in this series addressed the influence on the Constitution of four leading Greek thinkers. There is one more Greek on our list, the biographer Plutarch. He lived much later, however, so to retain chronological...