Such a citizen will, on the contrary, be a sort of universal man

Dukedom Large Enough by Michael Knox Beran in City Journal. An article length review of Kevin J. Hayes' The Road to Monticello. Jefferson was every bibliophiles patron president.

Jefferson alluded to the Greeks and Romans not only in his writing, but also in his architecture. Derivative pedantry? Servile tribute to the cultural supremacy of the Old World? Not quite. Classical standards were intimately involved in his vision of what America might become and what qualities of character might flourish here. Jefferson knew, from his reading of Thucydides, that the Greek idea of eutrapelia stood for a larger conception of civilized life: the root word means "graceful turning" (hence our idea of the "well-rounded" man), and it implied a beautiful versatility in action, what Matthew Arnold, in a lecture at Eton, called "a happy and gracious flexibility." A citizen so educated as to be able to "turn," easily and gracefully, from one task to another perhaps very different one, will not, Thucydides has Pericles say in the Funeral Oration, be idiotes, an idiot, imprisoned in a fragmentary part-life. Such a citizen will, on the contrary, be a sort of universal man, sufficiently broad-souled to contribute to the life of the city.