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Painting of Ancient Rome, by Giovanni Paolo Panini, 1757.
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All the World’s America’s Stage — Even Ancient Rome

Gladiator and Gladiator II have little to do with the Roman past. But they have a great deal to do with the American present.
by Jessica Clarke via HNN on December 3, 2024
Painting of classical ruins, called the 'Temple of Aphaea, Aegina,' by John Rollin Tilton.

18th- and 19th-Century Americans of All Races, Classes & Genders Looked to the Ancient Mediterranean for Inspiration

In a new land, the ancient past held special meaning.
by Sean P. Burrus via The Conversation on November 21, 2022
Nimrod and His Companions Venerating Fire, by Rudolf von Ems, c. 1400.

Enjoy My Flames

On heavy metal’s fascination with Roman emperors.
by Jeremy Swist via Lapham’s Quarterly on March 23, 2022

America Is Not Rome. It Just Thinks It Is

Anxieties about Trump’s presidency are the expression of a tradition as venerable as the United States itself.
by Tom Holland via New York Review of Books on August 6, 2019

The False Narratives of the Fall of Rome Mapped Onto America

Gravely inaccurate 19th-century depictions of the destruction of Rome are used to illustrate parallels between Rome and the U.S.
by Sarah E. Bond via Hyperallergic on July 3, 2019
Painting of the Roman Senate.

Rome's Heroes and America's Founding Fathers

Why the statesmen of the Roman Republic had such an influence on the patriots of the Revolutionary era.
by Paul Meany via Journal of the American Revolution on October 23, 2018
U.S. President Donald Trump looks at an executive order in the Oval Office.

Are Trump's Actions 'Unprecedented'? Here's What Seven Historians Say

Trump's second administration is 'unprecedented' to some, but historians find parallels in ancient Rome, Nazi Germany, and Latin American dictatorship.
by Miles Klee via Rolling Stone on February 22, 2025
Painting from 1784 of Romans doing a straight-armed salute.

The Revisionist History of the Nazi Salute

Elon Musk’s defenders were quick to claim that his hand motion was actually an ancient “Roman salute” — but that gesture never existed.
by Sarah E. Bond, Stephanie Wong via Hyperallergic on January 22, 2025
Elon Musk reacts on stage during a rally for Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden.

America’s Decline & Fall

The founders anticipated someone like Trump partly because they’d been reading Edward Gibbon’s 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'
by Jim Sleeper via Commonweal on November 24, 2024
People swimming and standing in water.

On the Time Benjamin Franklin, American Show-Off, Jumped Naked Into the Thames

On our millennia-long love-hate relationship with getting in the water.
by Vicki Valosik via Literary Hub on June 27, 2024
Signing of the Declaration of Independence.

How Christianity Influenced America’s Notions of Equality

'All men are created equal' coexisted with the understanding that not all were meant to be treated equally in life.
by Darrin M. McMahon via TIME on November 15, 2023
Title page and verso of a 1727 printing of Plutarch's Lives

"Those Noble Qualities": Classical Pseudonyms as Reflections of Divergent Republican Value Systems

Writing under ancient veneers allowed partisans to politicize and weaponize ancient history during the turbulent start of the Federal Republic.
by Shawn David McGhee via Journal of the American Revolution on August 3, 2023
African American school children at Horatio Greenough’s statue of George Washington at the US Capitol, 1899.

Why the Age of Revolution Loved the Classical World

Radicals in the Age of Revolution saw the classical world as a common inheritance that could aid their fight for liberty.
by Francesca Langer via Aeon on May 30, 2023
Map of U.S. towns with Greco-Roman names.

America's Early Love Affair With Antiquity Still Shows on This Map

There are nearly 100 towns named "Troy."
by Frank Jacobs via Big Think on September 14, 2022
George W. Bush giving speech

In the Shadow of 9/11

Two new books argue that the War on Terror changed American politics, but what if the sources of its violence were already long present in the country?
by Samuel Moyn via The Nation on September 7, 2021
Illustration of Jesus Christ showing anger at money changers in the temple

When Did Jesus Become a Capitalist?

How did a radical social activist, killed for his politics, become the figurehead of capitalist and imperial power?
by Steve Teare via The Nib on July 19, 2021
US Capitol

Is the US Capitol a 'Temple of Democracy'? Its Authoritarian Architecture Suggests Otherwise

The neoclassical building was inspired by European shrines to imperial power.
by Megan Goldman-Petri via The Conversation on February 8, 2021

Imperial Wars Always Come Home

All empires fall. When they do, the violence and terror they’ve wrought on others has a way of coming back around.
by Patrick Wyman via Perspectives: Past, Present, And Future on July 24, 2020
Sanitation truck.

W.A.S.T.E. Not

John Scanlan’s “The Idea of Waste” argues that all civilization is an attempt to make waste disappear.
by Madeleine Adams via The Baffler on May 15, 2025
A woman holding her head in distress, and a naked woman sitting on an illustration of a toy car pulled by string.

Frog-Free

The demystification of pregnancy.
by Erin Maglaque via London Review of Books on April 17, 2025
Illustration from the “Projected Trends” section of Hugh Ferriss’ The Metropolis of Tomorrow (1929).

Modern Babylon: Ziggurat Skyscrapers and Hugh Ferriss’ Retrofuturism

In the early twentieth century, architects turned to a newly discovered past to craft novel visions of the future: the ancient history of Mesopotamia.
by Eva Miller via The Public Domain Review on April 9, 2025
Caesar's profile is eerily set against the Great Seal of the United States.

US President or American Caesar?

American democracy has been haunted by the spectre of a Caesar-type figure since the birth of the republic. Have such fears ever been justified?
by Ian McDaniel via History Today on September 25, 2024
U.S. presidential seal

Founding-Era History Doesn’t Support Trump’s Immunity Claim

Historians Rosemarie Zagarri and Holly Brewer explain the anti-monarchical origins of the Constitution and the presidency.
by Rosemarie Zagarri, Holly Brewer via Brennan Center For Justice on February 21, 2024
A group of birds with one standing on top of the rest.

Rules for the Ruling Class

How to thrive in the power élite—while declaring it your enemy.
by Evan Osnos via The New Yorker on January 22, 2024
Greek style illustration of Edith Hamilton and mythical figures.

The Latin School Teacher Who Made Classics Popular

A new biography of Edith Hamilton tells the story of how and why ancient literature became widely read in the United States.
by Emily Wilson via The Nation on October 17, 2023
Botanical drawing of a flowering pennyroyal plant.

Pennyroyal, Mifepristone, and the Long History of Medication Abortions

Pennyroyal is a species of mint with purple flowers. It smells like spearmint. And it has been used as an abortifacient for over two thousand years.
by Kathleen Crowther via Nursing Clio on April 26, 2023
1963 black and white photo of protesters marching for racial equality in Washington D.C.

Just Give Me My Equality

Amidst growing suspicion that equality talk is cheap, a new book explains where egalitarianism went wrong—and what it still has to offer.
by Teresa M. Bejan via Boston Review on February 7, 2022
Line of forest fire volunteers in Siberia

A Deranged Pyroscape: How Fires Across the World Have Grown Weirder

Fewer fires are burning worldwide than at any time since antiquity. But in banishing fire from sight, we have made its dangers stranger and less predictable.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The Guardian on February 3, 2022
Fruitcake

The Magnificent History of the Maligned and Misunderstood Fruitcake

The polarizing dessert that people love to hate became a Christmas mainstay thanks, in part, to the U.S. Postal Service.
by Jeffrey Miller via The Conversation on December 17, 2021
A European style woman standing in front of a complex crossword puzzle.

A Brief History of Word Games

Crossword puzzles may be a recent invention, but since we've had language we've played games with words.
by Adrienne Raphel via The Paris Review on November 30, 2021
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