The letters of Adams and Jefferson fairly shimmer with the utility of reading classics; for them this was no merely ornamental skill; Greek and Latin furnished their minds and formed their political judgment. Classics contained a not-so-subtle spur to grow up, intellectually and culturally. The Founders took to heart Cicero's standing, eternal question: "For what is the life of man, if memory of the past be not interwoven in the life of later times?"
~T. l. Simmons, Climbing Parnassus, p.211
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