Hello everyone and welcome to this podcast edition of the Thomas Jefferson

I are this week in studio, Miss Catherine Jenkins and my daughter is the

guest host of the program Catherine the guest chooses the topic and you chose

Jefferson and classics and I think you I think you're a little

perplexed by Jefferson and classics. I'm perplexed by Jefferson and a lot of things but I am interested in the ways that Jefferson supported people to learn classical languages, but also was decidedly interested in scientific and practical education too.

Of course and I'll tell you this I studied Greek for seven or eight years.

I've I continued to do some for seven or eight years.

I continue to do some reading of Latin.

And when I read that in the last months of his life,

Jefferson was reading Thucydides without a grammar and without a dictionary, I am just filled

with envy and self-loathing.

Amazing, I mean, I've read that Jefferson died with an open book of Seneca on the table I mean amazing

It's impossible for us to even understand why that was so important, but it was and was and they saw people like Cicero as almost their neighbors.

They saw, I mean Cicero is an imperfect human being who loved the Roman Republic and feared Caesar, but he was a coward in some ways and a political

opportunist, yet he was the greatest orator of the Roman world.

And when we read about him, we sort of see ourselves in Cicero, our strengths and our weaknesses.

You have done work on Cicero.

Yes, I am endlessly amazed by Cicero, but I think that you might agree, and I think Jefferson certainly would agree that it'd be great to have minds like Cicero's in American politics.

Prostiles?

Prostiles?

But not necessarily speeches of that length.

I mean, can you imagine Cicero would be giving a filibuster every day in Congress?

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