Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/650208
23 in 1809 (just aer his second presidential term had expired) that "our national constitution, [is] the ark of our safety, & grand Palladium of our peace & hap- piness." 6 e word Palladium and its concept were well understood at the time. e editors of the Times and Patowmack Packet, Washington's first newspaper, printed their motto in the first issue: "Let it be impressed upon your minds, let it be instilled into your children, that the Liberty of the Press is the Palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights of Freemen." 7 e images of the warrior goddess who founded Athens underwent a sea change in America during the Revolutionary Era. Pierre du Simitiere's ca. 1776 design for the Great Seal of the United States included a figure of American Lib- erty as Athena holding a constitution. Congress chose the eagle for the Great Seal; the bird associated with the power of kingship thus came to represent Con- gress as the center of the nation's political power. For his Athena-Liberty Latrobe chose to represent the power of Congress via the most potent Greek god, to cre- ate a new but meaningful figure for the Capitol whose meaning had already been broadly illustrated and accepted by most Americans. 8 Latrobe's 1810-1811 alterations making Thornton's Roman Pantheon- inspired dome more "Greek" exemplified one way he achieved acceptable archi- tectural fusions of Greek and Roman architectural elements. He designed for the rotunda's covering a hexagonal drum and a series of stepped rings from which the low Roman dome emerged. His 1810 perspective from the northeast (fig. 5) shows a distinctly Greek frieze of figures decorating the drum in the tradition of the Parthenon frieze. e timing of this series of drawings suggests Latrobe celebrated Jefferson's retirement in 1809 as president. It freed him to express his own beliefs and tastes for the simplicity of Greek architecture on the exterior of Fig. 4. Latrobe planned a monumental statue of Athena as American Liberty to stand atop the Capitol's western portico, here painted in reverse in readiness for engraving. Fig. 5. omas Sunderland's 1825 print, made om a Latrobe watercolor, shows the octagonal drum's ieze with a series of figures similar to those on the Athenian Parthenon. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION (BOTH)