Virtuous Men of Greece and Rome
H.I. Marrou on the etymology of the Roman virtues
"Instead of wealthy people, almost all the people we know, from Homer to Hercules to Pericles to Euripides and Phidias, were excellent at something, or had received first prize at some kind of contest, including artistic ... theatrical ... or oratorical ... contests, or shone through their politically just ... or militarily ingenious ... examples.H.I. Marrou, in his A History of Education in Antiquity, digresses into the origins of several Latin words:
www.ecnet.net/users/big0ama/GreekCulture.html "Greek Cultural History"
Latin |
Original Meaning |
Standard Meaning |
|
| laetus | well-manured ground | joy | |
| felix | fertility of the soil | happiness | |
| frugi | the profits | virtue | |
| egregius | beast separated from his herd | fame | |
| putare | prune | think | |
Farming was central to early Roman life and its virtues, hard work, sacrifice, devotion, piety, and frugality, were the virtues of the early Romans. They honored custom which the family was perfectly suited to convey. Besides devotion to the fields and gods, Romans obeyed the father, the pater familias, with mater coming in a close second. Each family was different, each inculcated different values, but all families were also loyal to the state. Although there's an emotional similarity between John F. Kennedy's "ask not what your country can do for you," and Horace's "dulce et decorum est pro patria [literally father-land] mori," in practice we Americans, who show little respect for the institution of family, don't ask "what we can do for our country."
In many ways we have much more in common with the individualist, aristocratic ideal of the Greeks, for whom Achilles' petulant refusal to lead his troops into battle almost cost the Greeks the Trojan War. For the Greeks, individual honor and glory was more important. They prized virtue, arete, beauty and goodness, kalos kai agathos. Aristocracy meant rule by those with greatest merit. [www.ecnet.net/users/big0ama/GreekCulture.html "Greek Cultural History: On Aristocracy" and www.fas.harvard.edu/~gmoritz/papers/s2.html "Virtue and the Proper Political Individual in Antiquity" 11/03/98]
Biographical material on the following famous Romans and Greeks comes from two books from the early part of this century by John Haaren, Famous Men of Rome and Famous Men of Greece. Questions to think about while reading their condensed bio's: What did they do that made them more worthy of remembrance than their neighbors? How or why was this important to the society in which they lived?
