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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kevin McGonigal, post: 3593023, member: 72790&quot;]No coin image here, but it is most appropriate to associate some of ancient coinage with the American revolution. Many of the founding fathers were highly educated by a system that immersed them in the history of the Ancient World with emphasis on the politics of the Roman Republic. To read Madison, who was fluent in Attic Greek as well as Latin, is a refresher course for a Classicist. Graduates of Harvard, like John Adams, were expected to both read and write Latin, fluently,&nbsp; and Harvard public addresses (and most lectures) were given in Latin. Cato the younger, bugaboo to tyrant Julius Caesar, was invoked by more Founding Fathers than John Locke. Addison&#039;s play, Cato, was among Washington&#039;s favorite performances. E Pluribus Unum and Novus Ordo Saeclorum would have been as understandable to Cicero as to us, actually more so, I guess. For the generation of 1776, Dictator Caesar was what happened when the people stopped paying attention to who was governing, an error they would rectify. And if Caesar had his Brutus, (and Charles II his Cromwell) George III... could well profit by their example. The fact that Libertas, in her many iterations dominated our first coinage, is evidence enough of the influence of the Classical World on numismatics ( and the US Treasury). The Founding Fathers understood all too well what putting the image of a living ruler on its coinage was a herald of. So, as we celebrate our political independence and our own individual liberties, let us keep in mind that our Founding Fathers were standing on the shoulders of men casting long shadows and they knew it.</p><p><br /></p><p>One less important aside. While I know that many of the Founding fathers studied the Classical World of Greece and Rome, and collecting ancient coins was popular among the classicists of Europe (hence Paduans), especially after the first excavations of Pompeii then going on, I have never been able to ascertain whether or not that interest extended to ancient coins. Do any readers know if any of our Founding Fathers collected ancient coins?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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