Ancient Rome & America

Feb. 19-Aug. 1, $12-$20, National Constitution Center, 525 Arch St., 215-409-6700, constitutioncenter.org.

by Shaun Brady

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Published: Feb 16, 2010

visual art

Having just overthrown a king, America's founding fathers were understandably averse to monarchies, shunning the trappings of royalty while laying the groundwork for the new nation. Empire, on the other hand. ... It seems the cultural and political innovations of the ancient Romans had long since eclipsed its more tyrannical tendencies in the thinking of those colonial revolutionaries. Accusations of American imperialism get raised like alarm bells at the outset of every modern war, but the idea — and its uneasy relation to the country's self-professed values — is as old as the Constitution itself. The National Constitution Center's new multimillion-dollar exhibition explores the links between the two societies, with artifacts ranging from copies of books by Plutarch and Cicero from the libraries of John and John Quincy Adams, to toga-clad busts of Washington, Jefferson and Franklin that echo classical examples and clash awkwardly with those leaders' populist mythologies.

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