This collection is the first concerted attempt to explore the significance of classical legacies for Latin American history - from the uses of antiquarian learning in colonial institutions to the currents of Romantic Hellenism which inspired liberators and nation-builders in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. * Discusses how the model of Roman imperialism, challenges to Aristotle's theories of geography and natural slavery, and Cicero's notion of the patria have had a pervasive influence on thought and politics throughout the Latin American region * Brings together essays by specialists in art history, cultural anthropology and literary studies, as well as Americanists and scholars of the classical tradition * Shows that appropriations of the Greco-Roman past are a recurrent catalyst for change in the Americas * Calls attention to ideas and developments which have been overlooked in standard narratives of intellectual history