Thread by @Burnest137

The rebel, the first American:

There was something in the founding fathers that recognized Cicero not merely as a thinker, but as a miracle of ascent, a man who should never have risen, and yet did. That mattered to them. He was not born among Rome’s hereditary giants.

He was no Caesar with glory at his back, nor a Scipio descending from the old patrician constellations. He came from Arpinum, provincial, obscure, outside the charmed circle of Roman power, what the Romans called a novus homo, a new man. I call, The First American

And there was something profoundly republican, something almost American before America existed. For what was the young republic itself if not a novus homo among nations, provincial and improbable, rising against the ancient bloodlines of Europe, a miracle, like Bethlehem

The founders saw in Cicero a reflection of their future, the greatness, not of descent through aristocratic inheritance, but through man, who might rise by merit, by study, by eloquence, by virtue, by force of mind. That was biography becoming political philosophy

One can imagine Adams lingering over the improbable ascent with a kind of emotional recognition. For Adams, was suspicious of hereditary grandeur, and here was this Roman lawyer who had climbed not by legions but by language. Cicero did not conquer Gaul. He spoke, that is all

He conquered the Senate with word. He made rhetoric itself into a form of statesmanship. And this moved the founders because they believed republics are sustained less by force than by persuasion. Empires may be built by swords, but republics are argued into existence.

Cicero was not just Rome’s orator; he was the constitutional man. A provincial outsider arrives in Rome, studies law, rhetoric, the Greeks, out argues the aristocrats on their own ground, breaks through offices normally reserved for ancient families, this was no ordinary man

It had the shape of myth. But then the myth grew dark, and here the founders revered him even more. Because Cicero did not merely rise; he risked all for the republic after rising. When he opposed the conspiracy of Catiline, he became the defender of Rome

When he opposed Julius Caesar and later Mark Antony, he became something rarer, a man willing to lose in defense of a constitution. And perhaps it is only defeated defenders of liberty who become sacred. Perhaps that is thee entire point

The founders knew victors often leave monuments, but martyrs leave principles.
Cicero’s severed hands displayed in the Forum were, to them, not merely a cruelty but an image of what tyranny fears most. the written and spoken word of a free man

There is something biblical in it, almost prophetic. The hands that wrote against corruption cut off by corruption itself. And yet the hands endured longer than the men who ordered them struck down. What could appeal more to revolutionaries risking death at British hands? Nothing

One hears Cicero everywhere in the American founding documents once you listen. In the claim that law stands above rulers. In the fear that republics decay internally before they fall externally. In the conviction that liberty requires virtue and cannot survive corruption

In the architecture of mixed government shaped partly through Polybius but morally animated by Cicero’s spirit and Christ’s grace. Even the language of natural law that echoes through the Declaration carries Roman weather in it, and Bethlehem’s sonrise

Cicero was a contradiction held together by aspiration. He was vain and noble, insecure and courageous, philosophical and political, worldly and moralizing. In other words, he was human enough to be believed. Not marble, but flesh. Flawed

He was no saint, but a stricken man. And perhaps republics need exemplars like that more than perfect heroes, because self government depends on ordinary flawed souls rising toward uncommon standards. Believing in greatness, and we are halfway to achieving it

The founding fathers sensed that Cicero’s rise was itself an argument against fatalism. Birth was no destiny. History was not chosen. A provincial boy could shape an empire’s conscience. And if that were true, perhaps thirteen colonies could shape the future of mankind.

Jefferson reading Cicero not as a dead Roman but as an ally in a transhistorical struggle. Washington hearing in Cicero’s warnings the ancient music of republican vigilance. Adams, the lover of virtue and order, seeing in him not a master but an elder brother across centuries

And perhaps every free nation, if it is still true, has somewhere in its hidden chapel a candle burning still for the new man from Arpinum, who believed reason and law could hold back the wolves through the night.

And yet here we are. Allast, back with Cicero, struggling for freedom, for truth, for liberty. Perhaps a new direction is needed. Will the son of man return to save us? Will new man, once more arrive from the province to save the republic?

Their hour has passed. This fight cannot be done alone. If we are to be saved. If this republic is to be saved. It is because here and now, the daughter of man begins to speak. The new woman rises to save the son of man, and their children. She is our only hope.

Cicero knows this, as do I. Let us pray, the message, in its bottle, arrives, to her shores in time for salvation

Can she save the republic?

Nobody knows, not even her. The question that begs asking. Will she sacrifice what is needed to save it? I have my beliefs….

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