The Classical Era, which flourished from the 8th century BC to the 5th century AD, saw the birth and spread of Greco-Roman ideas. These ideas became the basis for western civilization and laid a foundation of culture that has remained as relevant now as it was in ancient times. Ancient Greece, and later Ancient Rome, cemented their own ideals in the universal consciousness as the cultural standard to which all later societies were held to, and continue to shape contemporary perspective on art, architecture, and government, and other facets of modern society. Despite the core differences of modern and classical times and the centuries that have passed since, the knowledge and perspectives passed down by the Ancient Greeks and Romans remain an essential part of contemporary society and culture, while inspiring western civilization’s greatest accomplishments.
The cultural impact of Ancient Greece and Rome begins most tangibly with the Renaissance, a movement beginning in Florence and spanning through the 14th and 17th centuries. This period is seen as a revival of classical antiquity, with Renaissance scholars, artists, philosophers, and writers attempting to emulate what they considered to be a “golden age,” taking inspiration directly from their Greco-Roman forefathers, with their presence increasingly regarded as an intellectual heritage to be mined for contemporary use. The Florentine author Niccolò Machiavelli, for example, described his nightly retreats into his library in these memorable words:
“At the door I take off my muddy everyday clothes. I dress myself as though I were about to appear before a royal court as a Florentine envoy. Then decently attired I enter the antique courts of the great men of antiquity. They receive me with friendship; from them I derive the nourishment which alone is mine and for which I was born. Without false shame I talk with them and ask them the causes of the actions; and their humanity is so great they answer me. For four long and happy hours I lose myself in them. I forget all my troubles; I am not afraid of poverty or death. I transform myself entirely in their likeness.”
Francesco Petrarca, commonly anglicized as Petrarch, was a scholar who rediscovered the letters of Cicero, a Roman statesman, orator, lawyer and philosopher and one of Rome’s greatest orators and prose stylists. This rediscovery is considered to have initiated the Renaissance, as scholars became interested in learning how the ancients developed their human faculties, powers, and culture, and in turn attempted to apply their findings to their contemporary societies. Through this discovery, Petrarch became the “Father of Renaissance humanism,” humanism being a Renaissance cultural movement that turned away from medieval scholasticism and revived interest in ancient Greek and Roman thought. Petrarch firmly believed that classical writings were not just relevant to his own age but saw in them moral guidance that could reform humanity, a key principle of Renaissance Humanism. The humanists of the Renaissance believed that their mission was to revive the high Roman style of writing pure and eloquent Latin. When that flourished, they believed, art would as well.
The republican elites of Florence and Venice and the ruling families of Milan, Ferrara, and Urbino hired humanists to teach their children classical morality and to write elegant, classical letters, histories, and propaganda. Eventually, the humanism inspired by the study of the Greco-Roman world would bleed into the Catholic Church, a formidable and almost omnipotent deity of the Middle Ages. In the course of the fifteenth century, the humanists convinced most of the popes that the papacy needed their skills. Sophisticated classical scholars were hired to write official correspondence and propaganda to create an image of the popes as powerful, enlightened, modern rulers of the Church and to apply their scholarly tools to the church’s needs, including writing a more classical form of the Mass. Scholars wrote Latin letters and histories on behalf of the popes, and they even tinkered with the church’s traditional liturgy, trying to make prayers and hymns attractively classical. Humanist secretaries and popes wrote dazzling Latin. Though humanism, and therefore classical thinking, never truly permeated the Catholic Church fully, there was an influence of Ancient Greece and Rome on the Church and its leaders.
An easier and far more blatant appreciation of classical antiquity was seen clearly in the art and architecture of the Renaissance. Contrapposto, a sculptural scheme which was revived during the Renaissance, was originated by the Ancient Greeks. It is used when the standing human figure is poised in such a way that the weight rests on one leg (called the engaged leg), freeing the other leg, which is bent at the knee. With the weight shift, the hips, shoulders, and head tilt, suggesting relaxation with the subtle internal organic movement that denotes life. The Greeks invented this formula in the early 5th century BC as an alternative to the stiffly static pose—in which the weight is distributed equally on both legs—that had dominated Greek figure sculpture in earlier periods. Italian Renaissance artists such as Donatello and Andrea del Verrocchio revived the classical formula, giving it the name contrapposto, which suggests the action and reaction of the various parts of the figure, and enriching the conception by scientific anatomical study.
Donatello borrowed from the ancients with his bronze sculpture of David, the biblical hero known for defeating Goliath. Donatello’s David was the first freestanding bronze cast statue of the Renaissance era as well as the first nude sculpture of a male since the classical sculptures of ancient Greece. In Middle Ages, nudity was not used in art except in certain moral contexts, such as the depiction of Adam and Eve, or the sending of souls off to hell. In the classical world, nudity was often used in a different, majestic context, such as with figures who were gods, heroes, or athletes. Here, Donatello seems to be calling to mind the type of heroic nudity of antiquity, since David is depicted at a triumphal point in the biblical narrative of his victory over Goliath. In any case, Donatello’s David is a classic work of Renaissance sculpture, given its Judaeo-Christian subject matter modeled on a classical sculptural type.
Another artwork inspired heavily by ancient antiquity would be Botticelli’s painting titled, Birth of Venus. The theme of the Birth of Venus was taken from the writings of the ancient poet, Homer. According to the traditional account, after Venus was born, she rode on a seashell and sea foam to the island of Cythera. In the painting, Venus is prominently depicted in the center, born out of the foam as she rides to shore. On the left, the figure of Zephyrus carries the nymph Chloris (alternatively identified as “Aura”) as he blows the wind to guide Venus. On shore, a figure who has been identified as Pomona, or as the goddess of Spring, waits for Venus with mantle in hand. The mantle billows in the wind from Zephyrus’ mouth.The story of the Birth of Venus is well described below by a Homeric hymn but its relevance to the painting is disputed as the poem was only published, by the Greek refugee Demetrios Chalcondyles, in Florence in 1488 (five years after the painting was completed as a wedding gift for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici in 1483).
Of august gold-wreathed and beautiful
Aphrodite I shall sing to whose domain
belong the battlements of all sea-loved
Cyprus where, blown by the moist breath
of Zephyros, she was carried over the waves
of the resounding sea on soft foam.
The gold-filleted Horae happily welcomed her
and clothed her with heavenly raiment.
The model for Venus in this painting has traditionally been associated with Simonetta Vespucci – who had been a muse for Botticelli, and was seen as the model for female beauty throughout Florence – especially for the Medici family for whom this painting had been created. There is added credence to this suggestion from the fact that she was born in the Ligurian fishing village of PortoVenere – called Port of Venus because there was a little Temple to Venus there from 1st Century BC.
The other model for the pose of Venus in the painting was possibly the Medici Venus, a first century BC statue depicting Aphrodite in a Venus pudica pose. It is actually a marble copy of an original bronze Greek sculpture that Botticelli would have had an opportunity to study whilst visiting the sculpture school or the Platonic Academy which flourished at the family home of the Medici in Florence.
The demand for this type of scene, of course, was humanism, which was alive and well in the court of Lorenzo d’Medici in the 1480s. Here, Renaissance humanism was open not only to the use of a pagan sculpture as a model, but also a pagan narrative for the subject matter, and although the Birth of Venus is not a work which employed Renaissance perspectival innovations, the elegance of the classical subject matter was something that would have intrigued wealthy Florentines who patronized this type of work.
The discovery of particular texts had enormous implications on Renaissance architecture. For example, with the discovery of the works of Vitruvius, an architect at the time of Augustus, there was an explosion of interest in ancient building. Vitruvius wrote an extremely important volume, De architectura libri decem (Ten books on architecture), where he introduced three principles to architecture: Firmatis (durability), Utilitas (utility), and Venustatis (beauty). Vitruvius talked about ancient buildings in a very significant way, not only in terms of practicality, but in an abstract way which emphasized what the buildings represented in both art and society. Similarly to how ancient texts could be applied to the values and aesthetics of contemporary Italians in the 15th century, so could ancient buildings be reduced to an essence, or a set of principles and ideals, that could be applied to the needs of 15th-century Italians, despite their differences from 1st-century Romans.
In particular, we can see in the career of Leon Battista Alberti, who was born in 1404 and died in 1472, how these ideas could be distilled into a set of principles that could apply to the conditions of the Italian world. Alberti wrote De re aedificatoria, or On Building. His work can be considered highly derivative, but Alberti’s purpose was quite different: to take an ancient text and apply it to the needs of his own time. Not only did he write a theoretical treatise on architecture, but he then went out and built buildings. In particular, in Florence, he designed the facade of the Palazzo Rucellai from 1452 to 1470, in which, again, the Vitruvian orders appear and in which the ideas of ancient building are made useful to a Florentine palace for a wealthy merchant.
In the more modern world, there is a wealth of Greco-Roman influence over the inception of the United States of America and its government. For example, the men who inspired the American Revolution and wrote the American Constitution were heavily influenced by the classical Greek and Roman world. The American founding fathers were well educated individuals, and they all had significant experience with ancient Greek and Roman authors since childhood. Historian Bernard Bailyn states, “knowledge of classical authors was universal among colonists with any degree of education.” Thomas Jefferson, writer of the Declaration of Independence, was taught Greek and Latin from the age of nine, and Benjamin Franklin received instruction in Latin at grammar school and became proficient in both Latin and Greek later in life. In Franklin’s Autobiography, frequent references are made to classical western figures, such as Cicero and Cato. James Madison learned Greek and Latin as a child, and “immersed himself in the histories of Greece and Rome.”
With classical schooling such an integral part of the founding fathers’ education, America’s first political leaders studied the works of the great Greek Philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle. Polybius, a less celebrated but still influential thinker, also left his mark upon the American framers of the Constitution. Through Polybius, the founding fathers were introduced to the Roman Republic as the “mixed government” described by Plato and Aristotle. They used Greek philosophy and the model of Roman Republican government in order to form a new nation based on ancient principles.
Philosophers from classical Greece proposed the separation of powers in government, an idea that the American founders adopted for their new nation. In addition, The Roman Republic (509-27 BC) served as a direct model of government for the writers of the constitution. Greek and Roman political thought was critical in shaping the government of the United States of America.
Plato writes that that a strong state should contain elements of both democracy and tyranny, so that the state has a mixed government. His political philosophy, particularly his idea of a “mixed” constitution, would have far reaching effects among later philosophers. His mixed government would ultimately be brought to life in the American Constitution.
Aristotle believed that a mixed government, like the one described by Plato, would halt the decline of government into anarchy. In Aristotle’s mixed constitution, defined in his work The Politics, there were to be three branches of government: “All constitutions have three elements, concerning which the good lawgiver has to regard what is expedient for each constitution…There is one element which deliberates about public affairs [“legislative” branch]; secondly, that concerned with the magistrates [“executive” branch]…and thirdly that which has judicial power.”
This three-tiered mixed government of Aristotle would ultimately find its way into the Constitution. Aristotle also established the principle that the rulers of a state should be subject to the same laws as the rest of the populace; to Aristotle, the rule of law is better than the authority of “even the best man.” This concept of a “ruling official subject to the law” is an integral idea to modern government, where all political figures are supposed to be subject to the same legal code as the average citizen.
In addition to the foundation of government inspired by the ancient world, the influence of classical antiquity can be seen in some of America’s most iconic architecture. Prevalent between about 1780 and 1830, Federal style drew inspiration from the Greco-Romans. The influence of Ancient Greek architecture is apparent in the use of columns and colonnades. Thomas Jefferson was an architect during the Federal period, and he designed not only his own home, Monticello, but the campus of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in this style.
Greek Revival architecture also became widespread in the U.S., and in the middle of the 19th century it became known as the national style, as it was used extensively in houses and smaller public buildings of that time. This style generally featured the Doric Order in larger buildings, and simpler Doric columns topped with a small pediment (without a frieze) in houses. The first major public building built in this style was the Second Bank of the United States, built in Philadelphia between 1819 and 1824, though most famous is the Lincoln Memorial, its exterior echoing that of the Parthenon.
The heritage of the classical world has been one which later societies have taken and made relevant to their own contemporary aesthetics, visions, and ambitions. From the Renaissance to the formation of the United States, Greco-Roman ideals have paved the way and inspired art, architecture, and civic duty, all the while remaining the standard for which culture strains to meet. Despite its antiquity, the classical world has remained both relevant, adaptable, and innovative, inspiring some of western civilization’s greatest feats.
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