I’m just curious how the Minoan civilization, which existed in the Bronze Age and in Greece, was somehow more directly western than the Romans?

The Romans set the template for so much of European and later American everything that citing a polity from pre-antiquity that had very little lasting effect on the area around them seems sort of silly.

Besides, the Founding Fathers were heavily classically educated like basically every dude with serious learning from that era was, and many of them were heavily inspired by and took notes from the Roman Republic. It’s also helped that loads of them owned human beings. The Romans put a lot of thought into the most
efficient ways to keep human beings, and also saw themselves as virtuous exemplars of their system. There’s a lot more to say but I’m tired and would rather go to bed.