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‘Moral idealism in pre-Christian Rome’ will strike many as an unpromising topic, and two preliminary doubts may well arise. Was there any moral idealism? And, if so, is it worth talking about? To the first of these questions the answer is an emphatic yes. For in the literature of the first century B.c. the proportion of moralizing is remarkable and perhaps unique. Historians such as Sallust and Livy moralized explicitly in their prefaces and implicitly on every other page. Cicero, whether as philosopher or politician, moralized at every opportunity. And poets for the most part accepted their traditional role as preachers with enthusiasm, Lucretius with his thundered message of hope through despair, Horace with his more sophisticated poetic sermons, and Virgil his monumental moral epic. Every branch of Roman literature had moralizing as an accepted part of its function. Now the ‘message’ differed in detail from author to author, and was in some cases highly individual: Lucretius, for instance, preached an ideal which bore little relation to that of any other writer and aroused as little reaction in the Roman public. But it remains true that numerous common features are discernible in the moral thinking of Rome's writers, and to these we may give the label ‘Roman morality’.
page 85 note 1 For a fuller treatment of this, see Ferguson, , Moral Values in the Ancient World (London, 1958), ch. ix.Google Scholar
page 86 note 1 ‘Of the personal qualities to which Livy attributes Rome's rise to world dominance, none is more vital than virtus Romana.’ Walsh, , Livy: his Historical Aims and Methods (Cambridge, 1961), 75.Google Scholar See in general 66–81 for the other moral ideals in Livy.
page 86 note 2 Cicero liked to feel that virtus in the political sphere was the particular prerogative of self-made men like himself, in whom effort (labor, industria) were necessary for success. Cf. Verr. 5. 180–2Google Scholar, an account of the careers of novi homines whose ‘virtus et industria’ have made them unpopular with the nobility.
page 86 note 3 See the Sallust references in the next paragraph.
page 87 note 1 Sallust, , Cat. 2. 3–9.Google Scholar
page 87 note 2 Ibid. 53. 2–6.
page 87 note 3 Horace, , Odes iii. 2. 17–20.Google Scholar
page 87 note 4 Ibid. 5. 29–30.
page 87 note 5 Ibid. 6. 17 ff. Current indulgence (17–32) is contrasted with the stern toughness, i.e. virtus, which enabled earlier Romans to win their wars (33–44).
page 87 note 6 Ibid. 5. 41–56 (Regulus).
page 87 note 7 Ibid. 3. 1–8.
page 88 note 1 9–10 ‘hac arte Pollux et vagus Hercules enisus arces attigit igneas’. Virgil used very similar language of the same group of demigods, and mentioned their virtus specifically: ‘pauci, quos aequus amavit luppiter, aut ardens. evexit ad aethera virtus, dis geniti potuere’. Aen. vi. 129–31.Google Scholar
page 88 note 2 Aurelius, Marcus, Meditations iv. 3.Google Scholar
page 88 note 3 Ibid. vii. 61.
page 89 note 1 For fuller treatment of gravitas see Ferguson, , op. cit. 172–7.Google Scholar
page 90 note 1 Seneca, , Dial. x. 5.Google Scholar i quoted in Rose, , HLL 159.Google Scholar
page 90 note 2 See p. 87 above.
page 90 note 3 Arch. 14.Google Scholar
page 91 note 1 This is suggested by the other adjectives which occur alongside it—if we may judge from the few references in Lewis and Short. For instance, ‘comes, benigni, faciles, suaves, homines’ from Cic. Balb. 36Google Scholar: these are words of surface charm.
page 91 note 2 Unless I am much mistaken, Lewis and Short have blundered here. For this one passage they create a special category of meaning for misericors (‘mean, pitiful, contemptible’), whereas it is people who feel pity who are spiritually ill, according to the Stoic view expressed in it: Cic. Tusc. iv. 80.Google Scholar
page 91 note 3 Seneca, Clem. 2. 6.Google Scholar
page 91 note 4 For the role of pity in the Aeneid, see Bowra, , From Virgil to Milton (London, 1945) 65–67.Google Scholar
page 91 note 5 For fuller treatment see Ferguson, , op. cit. 164 ff.Google Scholar
page 92 note 1 Horace, , Odes i. 35. 33–40Google Scholar
page 92 note 2 Tolstoy, , Christianity and Patriotism, ch. xiii.Google Scholar
page 93 note 1 Cicero, Q., De pet. cons. 4.Google Scholar ‘Haec cura ut teneas commonendo et rogando et omni ratione efficiendo, ut intellegant, qui debent tua causa, referendae gratiae, qui volunt, obligandi tui tempus sibi aliud nullum fore.’
page 93 note 2 Mur. 8; 86; 7.Google Scholar
page 93 note 3 Phil. 2. 3–10.Google Scholar
page 94 note 1 Am. 58.Google Scholar ‘altera sententia est quae definit amicitiam paribus officiis ac voluntatibus. Hoc quidem est nimis exigue et exiliter ad calculos vocare amicitiam, ut par sit ratio acceptorum et datorum. Divitior mihi et adfluentior videtur esse vera amicitia, nec observare restricte ne plus reddat quam acceperit.’
page 94 note 2 Quoted by Aurelius, Marcus, op. cit. i. II.Google Scholar
page 94 note 3 Luke, , 6. 27–29; 32 (New English Bible).Google Scholar
page 95 note 1 This is no doubt an important proviso: cf. i John 4. II.
page 95 note 2 For a full discussion of this question, see Lecky, , A History of European Morals (London, 1911).Google Scholar It is outside the scope of this article.
page 96 note 1 Aurelius, Marcus, op. cit. ix. 30Google Scholar; vi. 53; v. 6. From the Loeb translation by C. R. Haines.