The Founding Fathers clearly looked to ancient Rome as a model for their new American republic. A 2009 exhibition at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia traced the classical Roman influence that shaped the American nation from its founding through its growth and expansion to the present day, noting that the lessons which the rise and fall of Rome offered fuelled both ‘the hopes for national greatness and fears for the fate of the American republic’. Those same Founding Fathers consciously rejected Greek models in favour of Roman ones, and the lasting influence of Rome continues to be felt in both political and everyday life in the United States. Let some random examples suggest how.

For lessons in oratory, the Founding Fathers looked to Cicero's De oratore. America borrowed the idea of the decadal census from the Romans, enshrining the requirement for the census in the Constitution in Article 1, section 1, clause 3, and using that requirement as the basis for determining the system of representational apportionment in the House of Representatives. The style consistently used for the neo-classical architecture of the seats of power and of the national monuments in Washington, DC, is Roman not Grecian.