George Washington: American Aeneas
The narratives of Aeneas, mythological founder of Rome, and George Washington, founding father of the United States of America, both tell stories of men who rose against great odds and acted on behalf of their duty to peoples. The similarities in their narratives offer insight into the success of their created nations.
The first is a story of a man who was born unto a divine right of kings, and who led his people from the war battered streets of Troy across the sea to Latinium where his people, his “children”, would go on to found one of the greatest empires in human history. His story was spun by Virgil in the Aeneid as a legitimization for a self-made Emperor, but his character reflects deeper truths of Rome that were born and evolved from his story itself (Aeneas himself was worshipped as a god by early Roman settlements). He founded the state, and thus the state was shaped and evolved, from his image. His legacy, his living memory, was Rome itself.
The latter, who shot to fame during a series of high profile but botched military expeditions under the British command during the French and Indian War, and to wealth from incidents of sheer luck and deft social maneuvering, is the father of the empire often labeled as a modern Rome — America.
Both men are ‘second sons’ — or a son of a second son in Aeneas’ case — who found themselves thrust into history’s spotlight and rose to fulfill their duty as they came to understand it. Both go through watershed moments where the weight of their duty to their peoples becomes their defining trait. Aeneas, by the end of the Aeneid, has undergone a transformation of character. He goes from an rash ego-driven man bent on revenge in Troy, to an avenging leader who embodies his people, prioritizing their will and the benefit of the common good over his own desires. Washington, during the Revolutionary War — a conflict that he shaped and embodied as the only truly uniting symbol of the independence movement — transformed, as Joseph Ellis says in His Excellency, “into a public figure whose personal convictions must be suppressed and rendered subordinate to his higher calling as an agent of history” by prioritizing the success of the war and his “cause” over his pride and his sense of reputation. According to his friends, such as Gouvernor Morris, Washington had an explosive temperament which he willed under control, becoming his steely will and self-control. This ability for coolness and quiet, but solid, leadership allowed him to maintain his position as that transcendent symbol. The principles he referred to as “the cause” became real through his efforts. The concepts he championed became external to, yet synonymous with, himself.
In Discourses on Livy Machiavelli comes to the conclusion that a successful state should be founded by one single man of significant virtue and honor, then left to a few to dictate the laws and structure. Just as Aeneas was the founder, and his subsequent “children” were the shapers, Washington was the founder of the American Republic, while his “children” were responsible for writing the laws and documents that would go on to represent the founding materials of America. Washington’s aid-de-camps and officers, like adopted sons, composed his “official family” as he called it. Fiercely loyal individuals of outspoken and meticulous natures, these young men of intellect and zealous loyalty occupied his most trusted inner circle and came to embody his principles of revolution and independence during and after the Revolution. Washington remained silent and nonpartisan during the discourse that shaped the Constitution, yet his ideals and vision of America’s potential as a nation served as the source and instruction for those men who fought, wrote, and argued for it. While they handled the controversial tasks at hand, he remained the unifying uncorrupted symbol the nascent nation needed.
In both of these cases, these men became symbols of their causes, vehicles for the ideal image of their institutions. In the Aeneid the narrative ends with the transformational moment of Aeneas’ killing of Turnus, and we are left to glean the reverberations of Aeneas’ myth in the pages of history — Livy’s Early History of Rome, i.e. the manner in which the priorities exhibited in the behavior of those exemplary Romans echo that of Aeneas — ourselves. In Washington’s narrative we see something even more remarkable. Washington’s transformation from man into symbol of a revolution and subsequent nation is only the first half of his narrative. Within the timeframe of the founding of the American Republic, within his own lifetime, the manufacturing and engineering of an institution and underlying belief system with Washington as the idealized sovereign solidified within one single generation. Washington wasn’t just a remarkable general or honorable man, he wasn’t just the “father” of a nation, the man himself became a living myth.
Washington was the man who “began, carried on, and consummated the revolution.” He was what held North and South together, he was the “man who unites all hearts.” When we refer to the “spirit of ‘76” it is him who we are referring to. We wouldn’t have the Constitution, let alone the nation, if it hadn’t been for his presence and symbolism for the swirling notions of American independence to rally around. The man became myth, and thus his monument became the foundational structure of a nation. One that may not have been built exactly in the form he hoped, but one that has been gifted the strength of his legacy. It has proved strong enough thus far, and if nurtured, it may just carry us on to fulfill that sacrosanct prompt: to create a more perfect Union.
