Synopses & Reviews
Rome Reborn on Western Shoresexamines the literature of the Revolutionary era to explore the ways in whichAmerican patriots employed the classics and to assess antiquity's importance to theearly political culture of the United States. Where other writers have concentratedon political theory and ideology, Shalev demonstrates that classical discourseconstituted a distinct mode of historical thought during the era, tracing the roleof the classics from roughly 1760 to 1800 and beyond. His analysis shows how theclassics provided a critical perspective on the management of the British Empire, acommon fund of legitimizing images and organizing assumptions during therevolutionary conflict, a medium for political discourse in the process of stateconstruction between 1776 and 1787, and a usable past once the Revolution was over.Rome Reborn examines the extent to whichclassical antiquity, especially Rome, molded understandings of history, politics, and time, even as the experience of the Revolution reshaped patriots' understandingof the classics. The book studies the historical sensibilities that enabledrevolutionaries to imagine themselves continuing a historical process thatoriginated with classical Greece and Rome. In particular, their attitudes toward, and understandings of, time provided revolutionaries with a distinct historicalconsciousness that connected the classical past to the revolutionary present andshaped their expectations about America's future.