By Katie Kieffer

Roman historian Titus Livius (Livy) would love the new World War II movie, Dunkirk, because Livy believed: “the study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind.”
Livy was not the only prominent Roman thinker to value historical studies. Marcus Tullius Cicero—one of Rome’s finest orators—concurred: “To not know what happened before one was born is to live as a child.” And America’s founding father James Madison agreed with the Romans, warning: “A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.” Continue reading