Greco-Roman Influence on the US Government

The Eagle

Roman or American?

• Civil law is thus distinguished from the law of nations. Every community governed by laws and customs uses partly its own law, partly laws common to all mankind. The law which a people makes for its own government belongs exclusively to that state and is called the civil law, as being the law of the particular state...

Amendment X

• The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Roman or American?

• the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Roman Law of Nations

• It is not the Roman custom to condemn any man before the accused meets his accusers face to face and has an opportunity to defend himself against the charge.

• No one is to be convicted on suspicion alone, it is better for the crime of a guilty person to be left unpunished than for an innocent to be condemned.

Roman or American?

• No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the age of thirty years, and been nine years a citizen.

Roman or American?

• Slavery is an institution of the law of nations, by which one man is made the property of another, contrary to natural right.

Architecture

The Parthenon

US Supreme Court

US Department of Treasury

The White House

NYSE

Philadelphia Museum of Art

The Lincoln Memorial

America’s Athena?

Another God-like American

The Pantheon

Jefferson Memorial

The Rotunda at UVA

The Capitol Building

Arch of Constantine

Washington Square Park

The Roman Coliseum

Interior of the Coliseum

Los Angeles Coliseum