Fireside this week! Apologies for having two of these in a row, but as I noted last week, I've had some unexpected (but good) travel, which has made a bit of havoc in my schedule and I am still trying to catch back up. Nevertheless, I wanted to use this week's fireside to muse a bit on a topic I think I may give a fuller treatment to later this year, which is the disconnect between what it seems many 'radical traditionalists' imagine traditional Roman values to be and actual Roman cultural values.
Percy was not thrilled that I had to be out of town for several days. He is, in fact, quite a creature of routines and gets grumpy when those routines are upset. It's actually quite funny, he knows my teaching schedule and seems visibly confused and bothered if I have to be out of the house on a 'writing day' where normally I'd be home writing (and thus available for lap time).
Now, of course it isn't surprising to see Roman exemplars mobilized in support of this or that value system, as people have been doing that since the Romans. But I think the disconnect between how the Romans actually thought and the way they are imagined to have thought by some of their boosters is revealing, both of the roman worldview and often the intellectual and moral poverty of their would-be-imitators.
In particular, the Romans are sometimes adduced by the 'RETVRN' traditionalist crowd as fundamentally masculine, 'manly men' - 'high testosterone' fellows for whom 'manliness' was the chief virtue. Romans (and Greeks) are supposed to be super-buff, great big fellows who most of all value strength. One fellow on Twitter even insisted that the chief Roman value was VIRILITAS, which was quite funny, because virilitas ('manhood, manliness') is an uncommon word in Latin, but when it appears it is mostly as a polite euphemism for 'penis.' Simply put, this vision bears little relation to actual Roman values. Roman encomia or laudationes (speeches in praise of something or someone) don't usually highlight physical strength, 'high testosterone' (a concept the Romans, of course, did not have) or even general 'manliness.' Roman statues of emperors and politicians may show them as reasonably fit, but they are not ultra-ripped body-builders or Hollywood hearththrobs.
So what were the core Roman values?
The most important quality for a Roman man to have was virtus. Virtus derives from the Latin vir ('man' as distinct from a mere male) and so in the narrow sense means 'manliness,' although by the time we have Roman literature (around 200BC) the meaning has drifted enough so that women can have virtus too (e.g. Cic Ad Fam. 14.1.1, 14.11; Juv. 6.166-9). Instead, virtus stands for a constellation of values that were desirable in a man (and often in women too!). At its core, virtus is the animating force of personality that impels one to great deeds: it is ambition, drive and a nearly reckless courage, combined with the obstinacy and determination to persevere through difficulties, through fear. The best translation is often not 'virtue' but rather something closer to 'valor' as virtus is what makes someone good in battle (and other endeavors), but it's more about courage than skill.
This resounds from our sources: virtus is this forward-pushing, animating intense thing; it is bright and burning (as honor can be as well). It is the courage to charge at the enemy and the courage to withstand the terror of an enemy's attack, but it is also the drive that leads one to run for office, to write a poem, to design a building. Military valor is the clearest, surest, truest test (a certamen, 'test' or discremen, 'separating point') of one's virtus, but virtus can be shown in other fields of human endeavor, including intellectual fields. The key that connects them is courage and drive.
And goodness do the Romans value virtus. My go-to quote to make this point to students is always Alcmena's declaration from Plautus' Amphitryon (2.2.18-23), "virtus is the best prize, virtus assuredly surpasses all things: it protects and preserves liberty, safety, life, property and parents, country and children. Virtus has everything in itself, all good things come to him who has virtus." Importantly, virtus is a product if the soul (the animus), a part of the inner-most person, cultivated but not necessarily learned: it is a thing proved as much as developed.
Of course this kind of impulsive force could be potentially destructive. Sallust has a good line (Sall. Cat. 11.1) that "ambition (ambitio) [...] while a vice is nearer to virtus. For the good and the indolent both long for glory, honor and power; but the former advance by the true path, while those who who lack good arts [bonae artes, 'good education' 'the liberal arts'], rely on craft and deceit." It's those bonae artes that keep virtus from becoming mere ambitio, which confine it, channel it, direct it in productive, laudable ways.
And indeed, most of the rest of the Roman virtues take the form of constraints on virtus, focusing it. Cicero has a neat passage in the Second Catilinarian where he lists off what he feels are the greatest virtues, contrasted with their matching vices. The first he pulls out is pudor, followed quickly by pudicitia; both words (the later derives from the first) have the core idea of a sense of shame: that fear and a sense of shame keeps one from doing inappropriate things. It often gets translated as 'modesty' or 'chastity' and it includes those ideas, but extends to non-sexual shame as well. You may wish to do great deeds, but that sense of shame should keep you from doing terrible deeds for fear of the accusing glances of your peers (Rome is a horizontal-honor-culture).
Naturally, Cicero also breaks out pietas, which is the due respect one owes family, elders and the gods (and gives us the word 'piety'). To be pius is to be dutiful towards parents, country, elders, and the gods, putting their needs before your own (thus Aeneas, saving his father from burning Troy is famously pius Aeneas). Fides also makes Cicero's list: this is 'faith, trustworthiness.' Fundamentally it is the quality of keeping one's word and bargains - important in a Roman culture that runs on the reciprocal obligations of patrons and clients. The Romans talked so much about fides in their diplomacy that it sometimes annoyed the Greeks (Diod. Sic. 23.1.2), but this was a core value too which restrained virtus: sometimes the rush to action must be restrained by the need to keep one's word.
Cicero doesn't list another common Roman word in this context, sapientia, but he ends up assembling it instead out of its component parts. Sapientia is 'wisdom' and general good sense, the prudence that comes with age. Cicero gives us a bunch components of it, though: constantia ('restraint, self-control'), aequitas ('justice, fairness, calmness'), temperantia ('temperance, sobriety, moderation'), and prudentia ('prudence, foresight'). These are things we tend to learn as we grow older and it is not an accident that the Romans thought that generally speaking that older men should lead, to temper the virtus of the young. These traits that Cicero is breaking out are also the standard ones that do appear in Roman eulogies and encomiastic literature: men (and women) get praised not for their 'manliness,' but more frequently for aequitas, prudentia, constantia, pietas or good fides, for being diligens (diligent, careful) and so on.
Notice also how these 'constraining virtues' which channel virtus are things which can be learned or trained - they are products of discipline (Latin: disciplina), both self-discipline and discipline imposed from without. Indeed, in a military context, the Romans understand virtus and disciplina ('courage' and then 'military discipline') to be forever in tension in the good soldier: the fiery desire to be at the enemy restrained by the need to follow orders. The best Roman soldier is like an attack dog, straining at the edge of his leash - that disciplina - waiting for the general (the older man with that sapientia) to let go at the right moment. In civilian life, these qualities - fairness, justice, prudence, temperance, self-restraint - are precisely what the bonae artes are supposed to teach, while in military life, they're taught by (and also become) disciplina.
A person with virtus - that drive, courage and perseverance - in turn is going to do deeds (facta or gesta), which is to say accomplishments. Of course the highest accomplishments for the Romans were generally military accomplishments, but all sorts of other achievements could be facta or gesta too; the process of producing a facta was labor (lah-bor rather than lay-bor) and being eager for and patient with labor - either physical or mental - was an indicator of virtus.
So virtus, channeled by the other virtues, leads to admirable deeds. I'm avoiding saying 'good deeds,' because greatness rather than goodness is emphasized here, though the deeds must not be crimes, facta ('deeds') not facinora ('outrages, misdeeds') or scelera ('crimes'); they ought to serve the community. That record of deeds in turn produces brief things, like flashes of light: gloria ('glory'), fama ('fame'), and laus ('praise') and a more important, longer term quality: honos or honor (same word, different forms; it means honor). Honor was a thing the Romans felt they could almost see or feel, an emotional force around a person of great worth (great dignus). In Roman society, the social demand to defer to an individual understood to have greater honor was strong (and so, of course, everyone wants to prove themselves to be that sort of person).
A person with honor had an expectation of a certain inviolability, a sort of social force-field around them which was their dignitas (literally: 'worthiness') - that their achievements had put them above, for instance, petty insults or injuries. An exceptional concentration of honor, so much that it could cow almost anyone into deference, was termed auctoritas ('authority'), a quality in the Republic wielded collectively by the Senate (the auctoritas Senatus) and in the imperial period by well-regarded emperors (like Augustus). We might view Augustus' claim that he ruled more by auctoritas than by force somewhat cynically, but I suspect it was often actually true: Augustus had achieved exceptional facta through his virtus (winning the civil wars, expanding Rome's borders, reorganizing the Roman government, then presiding over a long period of peace and prosperity) and so most Romans would have felt the tremendous pressure of his intense honor to defer to him. And of course recognizing that a person is possessed of honor, dignitas and auctoritas, that itself is a quality of the constraining virtues.
And just to stress one more time: the Romans understood all of these quality to be active in men and women. Certainly some were considered more important for men (strength, courage) and others for women (modesty, chastity), because Roman society was very much a patriarchy (in a very literal sense: rule by fathers). But Roman women absolutely could demonstrate virtus and sapientia and in doing so accumulate honor and some Roman women (Cornelia and Livia come to mind immediately) came to wield so much honor as to demand praise or deference from even elite men.
The good Roman man isn't full of machismo, but rather is a bubbling cauldron of energy and drive (that virtus), bound tightly by all of those other virtues so as to accomplish great deeds (rather than great times) and in the process to create honor. The sense of intense self-restraint, self-control is central to understanding how the Romans thought about good men (and, again, good women too).
I may come back to this topic later this year for a fuller discussion, but I hope you can see the values-and-worldview landscape here is a lot more complex. If you want to read more about this, the books to grab are: C. Barton, Roman Honor: the Fire in the Bones (2001), and two books by J.E. Lendon, Soldiers and Ghosts (2006) - already recommended in this space - and Empire of Honor (1997).
On to recommendations!
I don't have many new recommendations for this week since we just did another Fireside last week. But I'd be remiss if I didn't note that Drachinifel had a two hour long life-stream from the dry-docking (for repairs) of museum ship USS New Jersey (BB-62).
For this week's book recommendation, I'm excited to recommend friend and fellow-UNC-alum R.K.D. Colby, An Unholy Traffic: Slave Trading in the Civil War South (2024). While there is a lot of scholarship on slavery and slave-trading in the United States, Colby's temporal focus here on the slave-trade in the South during the Civil War is a fascinating one, looking at the trade in enslaved people that is taking place as the Confederacy and the institution of slavery it was created to defend crumbles all around.
Colby uses a mix of official records, letters and narratives to build a sense of the trade: the motivations that led people to trade in human beings even on the very edge of ruin, the economic concerns that dominated their thinking, the (cruel) conditions that prevailed and finally the human cost of the trade (especially the scattering of families) that continued right up to the end of the Civil War. Fundamentally, Colby's enslaver-subjects treat the slave trade both as a business venture where their primary motive is profit and little, if any, concern is given to the suffering it causes, but also as a barometer of their faith in the Confederate slaver's-republic's cause: when confederate armies are winning, the price of human beings rise. As they lose, prices fall and slaveholders scramble to move their captive humans to 'safer' regions, further away from armies bearing the Flag that Makes You Free.
Colby adroitly uses narrative, telling the stories of individual slave-traders and enslaved people to explain how the system worked, which serves to put a human face on the narrative, rather than merely treating it as numbers. Of course this is crucial with any treatment of slavery: the effort to humanize the people that slavery seeks to commodify. And of course that narrative is peppered with quotes from letters and diaries, so Colby doesn't have to tell you what the slave-traders thought they were doing or why: they tell you, in their own words.
Colby writes very well; the book is both approachable for the lay-reader and also just frankly interesting and readable (though it is hardly an uplifting read; the grotesqueness of the 'peculiar institution' in its final days is very much on display here). I tore through this book's 344 pages (bibliography, index and all) over the course of one plane trip; it wasn't fun reading, but it was gripping. The book has some black-and-white illustrations (of people involved and of places, the latter very useful to get a sense of the spaces the trade takes place in) as well as a number of really helpful maps showing the key routes being used. Most importantly, this is a story that (as Colby himself notes) needs to be told and so well worth a read.
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