Years after the event, John Adams recounted his admission exam to Harvard College: “Mr. Mayhew, into whose Class We were to be admitted, presented me a Passage of English to translate into Latin. It was long, and casting my Eye over it, I found several Words the Latin for which did not occur to my memory. Thinking that I must translate it without a dictionary, I was in a great fright and expected to be turned by [rejected], an Event that I dreaded above all things.” Fortunately, Mayhew kindly permitted Adams to use a dictionary, and the young scholar was on his way. As admission to Harvard also required knowledge of classical Greek, Adams could read and write that language, too. 

Adams’ experience was familiar to many leading figures of the American founding, including James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson. These languages were an integral part of the classical curriculum, which constituted the education of the American elite from academies through colleges. Classical education was civilizational, to inculcate values distilled from the intellectual patrimony bestowed by the ancients. It was the acquisition of practical wisdom, not of practical skills. 

The emphasis on classical languages coincided with a fascination for the cultures from which they sprang. The influence of the ancient Greeks and Romans on the Americans of that time is obvious from the writings during the struggle for independence and the adoption of the Constitution. Americans saw in their society the incarnation of classical ideals in a new order for the ages; “novus ordo seclorum” is a phrase derived from a work by the Roman poet Virgil. The civic virtue fostered by this “proper” education was considered the foundation on which rested the republicanism that was at the core of the American experiment. 

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