First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country

by Thomas E. Ricks

The early Americans also nodded to the ancient world in naming their settlements. In upstate New York, it is possible to drive in one day from Troy to Utica to Rome to Syracuse to Ithaca, while passing through Cicero, Hector, Ovid, Solon, Scipio Center, Cincinnatus, Camillus, Romulus, Marcellus, and even Sempronius, who didn’t exist—he