As a historian and homeschool teacher I'm often asked, "What's your favorite period?"  It's a question I can never seem to answer definitively, because every time I turn to a new part of history, I become thoroughly engrossed by it.  That said, some material always inspires me on a special level, and I think that my students can tell how I light up when I'm presenting it, which is definitely the case when it comes to "the Ancients."

Ancient history may be about civilizations long gone, and it may not seem to have the same bearing on our lives as American history, but to know Ancient history is to love it, and to see how--without a doubt--it still matters.  Here are my "top 5" reasons why Ancient history should figure prominently in any homeschooling history curriculum:

5. WILL YOU LOOK AT THAT!  I remember travelling to Europe after my first round of college studies.  (I was an engineering graduate, so I was clueless about history!)  I enjoyed the sight of the Parthenon, the Colosseum, and other historical landmark like most tourists.  But the marvels in front of me were little more than entries on a "Lonely Planet" traveller's checklist.  I walked through the ruins of the Spartan citadel, without realizing that I was treading in the footsteps of Leonidas and the 300.  I stood overlooking the ruins of Saguntum, not grasping that Hannibal had initiated the Second Punic War by besieging the Greek colony there that was allied to Rome, let alone understanding what this meant for the fate of the world.  I looked down upon the forum in Rome without knowing that the severed head of Cicero had once been thrust upon the rostra there, punctuating the fall of the Roman Republic.  To know ancient history is to transform one's ability to appreciate the wonders that merely occupy a place along with beaches and nightclubs in the travel logs of others.

4. KNOW THYSELF!  It is all too easy to take our modern systems of thought and belief and the institutions around us that reflect them for granted.  To know ancient history, however, is to understand that the very thoughts we have and the governments that buttress our modern civilizations are of an essentially Greco-Roman character.  The scientific outlook that impels modern progress, for instance, was born of Thales's (fl. 500 BC) desire to discover the principles that unite material phenomena.  The ancient tenet "Know Thyself!" which empowers modern philosophy and psychology is a motto passed down to us by Socrates (fl. 400 BC). The idea that human beings can and should govern themselves rather than submit to the arbitrary rule of designated elites was born of Cleisthenes's plan for a freer, more politically active populace in Athens (c.508 BC).  That democracy must be tempered by constitutional means and that objective protections must be instituted to protect people's rights, including against the democratic majority, is not an invention of the Founding Fathers.  These great architects of government looked back to the example of the Roman Republic (c.454 BC) when forming this historic union.  There is a historical dimension to everything that we are and do.  To seek out an awareness of this dimension is to  genuinely live by Socrates's tenet by seeing onesself as the inheritor of 5000 years of human ingenuity.

3. FEEL THE IMPULSE TO SOAR!  Understanding how the world around us is in such large measure a product of what the Ancients accomplished can be humbling, but it is also inspiring.  It helps one to grasp how one's life is part of a vast unfolding pageant of human achievement.  It helps one develop a sense of respect and admiration for those who take those first genuine steps forward and those who fight to promote the truth in any era.  And it helps one to become a person who changes history, rather than merely lives in it.  The amazing host of examples we find in Ancient history that can inspire us to new heights includes:  Solon, the Athenian lawgiver,  who abolished debt slavery in Athens;  Themistocles, whose military genius was decisive for Greece's survival against Persia; Pericles, who championed Athenian freedom against Spartan statism; Gaius Licinius, who promoted Roman republicanism against the entrenched patrician aristocracy.  When we appreciate the unique contributions of exceptional individuals to the unfolding epic of the Ancient world, we can see that the idea that human beings can change the world isn't a platitude, it's an undeniable reality that beckons us to follow suit!

2. JUST THE FACTS, MA'AM.  To admire the greatest of the Ancients is not necessarily to fall prey to what some have called "heroification."  To know and admire history's heroes is to understand the full historical context they lived in, in order to see how they changed the world they lived in--for the better--into the one we live in.  It is from the Ancients themselves that we learned how to do this. Thucydides, the father of scientific history, explains in the introduction to his History of the Peloponnesian War: "The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time."  It was the ancient Greeks who first appreciated the need not to settle for myth and comforting stories, but to know the past for what it really was, even if it did not reflect well on them.  This honest, critical, searching character is among the essential traits of the Greco-Roman mind, which the Ancients bequeathed to us.  Acknowledging that it is by their courage and insight that we have learned to see the world more clearly, we can perceive their heroic achievements in that same critical light.

1. A REPUBLIC, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT! To see the world through the lense of history is to be able to wield all of humanity's experiences as if they were one's own, and to use that sum as a powerful tool to create and secure the values that matter most in the world around us.  It is that power that allowed Patrick Henry, the great revolutionary, to summon the examples of Caesar and Brutus and Charles I and Cromwell in his speech warning George III of the impending revolution, and later to embrace the inevitability of the conflict of the Revolutionary War weeks before "the shot heard round the world" was fired.  It is that power  that allowed the Founders collectively to defy the world's most powerful empire, to win, and to go on to create the an unparalleled government.  In that effort, knowledge of Ancient history was key.  The Founders perceived the dangers of democracy (based on the example of Ancient Athens) and created a government better able to secure individual rights.  When leaving the Convention, Ben Franklin, was asked just what this government was.  He answered, "A Republic,...if you can keep it."  Let us follow the example of the Founders who created the Republic with their knowledge of Ancient history, not only by homeschooling, but also by making sure that Ancient history is a part of that homeschooling, so that we can indeed keep it.