This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, the show where America is the star

and the American people.

Up next, the story of the interesting connection between our first president, George Washington,

and the ancient Roman dictator Cincinnati.

And how that relates to the southern Ohio city, Cincinnati.

Here to tell the story is Dr. Kenneth Calvert,

a professor of history at Hillsdale College.

Let's get into the story.

Take it away, Ken.

You look at George Washington and his regard for classical virtue and biblical virtue.

He's also looking to particular models like Cincinnati.

Cincinnati was a Roman who served as a dictator in Rome,

and one has to understand that in Rome,

a dictator was someone who was elected to office,

not someone who takes power,

but has given power for 18 months, total power to save the republic.

And George Washington had a kind of Cincinnati's ideal surrounding him because he was given a good amount of power to fight this

war on behalf of Congress and behalf of the colonies. He never wanted to be called a dictator or

even suggested that. Even though Cincinnati was an ideal here, there is no way that they wanted to go back to

kind of a Julius Caesar notion of dictatorship and tyranny. George Washington on a number of

occasions lived up to the ideal of this man, Cincinnati.

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