Virtus Romana

Politics and Morality in the Roman Historians

Catalina Balmaceda

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781469668628, 9781469635125
• eBook ISBN: 9781469635132
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Roman Ancient History
• Index: History

The political transformation that took place at the end of the Roman Republic was a particularly rich area for analysis by the era’s historians. Major narrators chronicled the crisis that saw the end of the Roman Republic and the changes that gave birth to a new political system. These writers drew significantly on the Roman idea of virtus as a way of interpreting and understanding their past.

Tracing how virtus informed Roman thought over time, Catalina Balmaceda explores the concept and its manifestations in the narratives of four successive Latin historians who span the late Republic and early Principate: Sallust, Livy, Velleius, and Tacitus. Balmaceda demonstrates that virtus in these historical narratives served as a form of self-definition that fostered and propagated a new model of the ideal Roman more fitting to imperial times. As a crucial moral and political concept, virtus worked as a key idea in the complex system of Roman sociocultural values and norms that underpinned Roman attitudes about both present and past. This book offers a reappraisal of the historians as promoters of change and continuity in the political culture of both the Republic and the Empire.

CHAPTER ONE

The Concept of Virtus

Appellata est enim ex viro virtus

For it is from the word “man” that the word virtus is derived

—Cic. Tusc. Disp, 2.18.43

Before we start analyzing what virtus meant to the particular historians and the role they assigned to it in their narratives, it will be useful to investigate its original meaning and then try to illustrate the itinerary of this meaning. Virtus, as one of the most important ideas that made up the Roman set of values, was a rather dynamic concept. It also aroused emotional responses from different sectors of society: politicians, the Roman people, intellectuals, military men, and others. We shall have to look, then, not for a few brief striking changes whose character is indisputably clear, but for a much longer, more complex, and less easily identified process which was probably one that by its very nature was open to rival interpretation.

It would be rather naïve to aim here at an exhaustive definition or explanation of the essence of virtus. The concept can be approached from many different angles; it belongs to moral philosophy, but it also appears as a linguistic phenomenon with political and social implications. The purpose of this book is not only to explore and present a literary debate on a particularly important concept, which can enrich our reading of some ancient texts, but also to consider how the question of the definition and origin of the idea of virtus is soon transformed into an issue of wider significance. In searching beyond its literary and historical aspects and conceiving different ways to approach the subject, we start unpacking a piece of intellectual history.

Some of the questions that I will attempt to answer in this chapter are whether virtus is a totally Roman concept, what its relationship is with its Greek parallels andreia and arete, and whether one can translate virtus indiscriminately as manliness, courage, or virtue in general. The problem of virtus as the attribute of a particular sex, social group, or nation will also be addressed, together with the link to a particular code of moral behavior. Clearly, in the process of responding to these points, many others may arise; value-words such as virtus are of a very special kind, and it is difficult to define them because they keep changing, or perhaps they change because they cannot be categorically defined. Both value-words and political words—and virtus was both—require interpretation rather than definition.

We find virtus working as a complex set of ideas whose meaning and usage varied. The etymology of the word tells us something intrinsically related to its significance, but it falls short when applied to the more general connotations and fails to illuminate what was going to develop later as the common meaning of virtus. I will try to show in this section that the supposed contrast between traditional Roman virtus and the parallel Greek concepts, although it has been very useful in identifying the differences and particular nuances of the concepts, has also created a misleading dichotomy of the terms. This contrast has been presented by some scholars as the existence of an originally Roman virtus meaning courage that later, mainly under the influence of Greek doctrines and especially Stoicism, became a more comprehensive concept specifically related to morality.1 This is, of course, true in some sense, but it can carry a dangerous presupposition or assumption that the Romans had to wait till Greek culture had become established in Rome to start thinking about their own Roman way of being or the principles of their code of values.

Virtus as Courage

The etymology of virtus does not seem to offer problems. All studies agree in going to Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations for the explanation of the origin of the word: “for it is from the word for ‘man’ that the word ‘virtue’ is derived [appellata est ex enim viro virtus].”2 Virtus, then, comes from the noun vir and the suffix “tus”—which appears to indicate the state or form of existence, in the same way that senectus (old age) is the state of being a senex (old man) or iuventus (youth) of being a iuvenis (young man).3 Its exact Greek parallel would be andreia (manliness) from aner (man). However, virtus seems to have developed more freely than other words with the suffix “tus,” and is more commonly used not as a state of being man, but as the proper characteristic of a man: what is proper to a vir is virtus. In giving the origin of the word, Cicero adds a qualification: “And yet, perhaps, though all right-minded states are called virtue, the term is not appropriate to all virtues, but all have got the name from the single virtue which was found to outshine the rest; for it is from the word for ‘man’ that the word ‘virtue’ is derived; but man’s peculiar virtue is fortitude, of which there are two main functions, namely scorn of death and scorn of pain [Atqui vide ne, cum omnes rectae animi adfectiones virtutes appellentur, non sit hoc proprium nomen omnium, sed ab ea, quae una ceteris excellebat, omnes nominatae sint. Appellata est enim ex viro virtus; viri autem propria maxime est fortitudo, cuius munera duo sunt maxima mortis dolorisque contemptio].”4

In a highly militaristic society such as Rome, physical prowess and courage—especially shown in war—remained the central elements of manliness throughout the republican period and into the empire. This is why virtus is always shown like a warrior (see figure 1). It was the valor of her soldiers that had won Rome the reputation of a fierce and invincible nation. This is found in the early writers, particularly historians; they represented Romans as braver than other people. The concept of courage in Rome worked not only as a self-definition but also as the cause of their success. Claudius Quadrigarius, for example, in his memorable account of the fight between a Gaul and a Roman, located the latter’s superiority in his spirit and the courage he showed in challenging a man better armed than himself; thus virtus was precisely the reason for his triumph.5 In Cato this aspect becomes even more evident and explicit; various examples can be summed up in one: the tribune’s brave deed to save the state, says Cato, was not exceedingly praised at that time because for a good Roman to serve the res publica with valor was not (and should not) be uncommon: “The immortal gods accorded the military tribune good fortune [fortunam] to match his courage [ex virtute]. This is what happened: although he was wounded many times, his head remained unharmed, and he was recognized among the dead, exhausted by his wounds and loss of blood; they picked him up and he recovered. Often thereafter he gave brave and energetic [fortem atque strenuam] service to the state [rei publicae]; and by his...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations in the Text
• Introduction: Virtus and Historical Writing
• Chapter One: The Concept of Virtus
• Chapter Two: Virtus in Sallust
• Chapter Three: Virtus in Livy
• Chapter Four: Virtus in Velleius
• Chapter Five: Virtus in Tacitus
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index