On this Presidents Day I suspect that those of us who are not distracted by the sales, will be thinking more about the unknown president of the immediate future than the semi-mythical presidents of the past. Yet the past is full of lessons, messages, hints and metaphors that still give food for thought, if only we stop to think about them. The role of modern presidents is not unlike that of the gods of ancient Greece and Rome. They were insulated from the ordinary population by layers of lesser gods. At its most imperial, the role of the president corresponds to that of Jupiter or Zeus, the chief god of the ancient world, whose symbol was the eagle and who was very fond of casting thunderbolts and otherwise throwing his weight around. The founders of this Republic were classically educated. Most of them, apart from George Washington, could read Latin. They knew their Roman history, and they never quite forgot the imperial idea or the hierarchy of the gods, even as they created