Ancient Masks, American Fathers: Classical Pseudonyms during the American Revolution and Early Republic

Abstract

Can't repeat past? he cried incredulously. Why of course you can! .. . I'm going to fix everything just way it was before. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great GatsbyWhen we look into scores of pamphlets published during American Revolution and early republic by Cato, Brutus, Caesar, Aristeides, Helvidius, Catullus, as well as Determinatus, junius Americanus, Philo Publicus, The Tribune (and many, many more), we ask ourselves: Cato? Brutus? Caesar? Did they not die centuries before struggle for American independence? The vigorous neoclassical discourse in eighteenth-century America favored use of classical pseudonyms in polemical writings during war to rid colonies of foreign rule and in ideological debate over forging a nation out of newly independent states.1 An appraisal of genre of classical pseudonyms offers a fresh look at young American republic and its creation. The intense use of such pseudo-names provides, as we shall see, a framework to understanding political imagination of creators of American polity. Faced with various crises, Americans turned to ancient authority, above all Rome, to justify their republican experiment and to construct a coherent narrative out of their volatile political reality. Through importation and permutation of Whig custom of pseudonymous writing, Americans presented a deep and original explanation of their republican experiment. By drawing on classical pseudo-names authors proffered not only justifications but also a mytho-historical rationalization for revolt against England and eventually for creation of American Republic.An act of communication-such as a political essay signed with a classical pseudonym-may be better understood if we can answer following questions: Who; Says What; in Which Channel; to Whom; with What Effect?2 This article will touch on such questions, with an emphasis on first and last. These classical names assumed by political writers have not been analysed on their own merits in recent scholarship. Scholars concerned with classical influences on founding generation often mention classical pen names usually when referring to pamphlets selected for analysis. Much less attention has been given to reasons and consequences of writing as ancients.3 An inquiry into meanings of those pseudonyms will provide a thicker description of complex phenomenon of moderns conversing through totems of past, bringing to fore dialectical relationship of rhetoric and history, and hence rhetoric of history, extensively elaborated by Americans of early republic.Appealing to classics helped Americans express their hopes, desires, and fears; their particular use of language and history throws much light on American imagination.4 For revolutionary Americans, classical pseudonyms performed a double function. On a surface level, they were used as rhetorical devices to gain high ground in political debates. At a deeper level, they proposed a meta-explanation of American society in terms of antiquity. The deliberation of republican ideology through classical guises facilitated articulation of tensions, setting in motion crystallization of ideology and sentiment modern scholarship calls Nationalism. Their pseudonyms, like masks, attempted to impose upon identities.5 As with masks, true identities lurk beneath them. What truths were pseudonyms concealing behind their classical facades? Were they truths of antiquity dressed in an American guise, or those of America dressed in togas?False names, aliases, noms deplume, and pen names all signify authors assuming fictitious voices. However, pseudonymity, anonymity, and forgery should not be lumped together; interpolation, mistaken ascription, and textual alteration also differ from pseudonym. A text will here be considered pseudonymous only when the author is deliberately identified by a name other than his own. …