Virtus Romana: Politics And Morality In The Rom... ❲UPDATED❳

Catalina Balmaceda , Associate Professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (2017).

Historians served as "promoters of change," using the concept of virtus to help Romans redefine their identity as they moved from citizen-soldiers of a Republic to subjects of an Emperor. Virtus Romana: Politics and Morality in the Rom...

Balmaceda highlights a dichotomy between virilis-virtus (manly courage in war) and humana-virtus (moral virtues like justice and clemency). Book Details The term virtus is famously difficult to translate,

Views virtus through the lens of decline. He argues that the loss of external threats ( metus hostilis ) led the Roman nobility to abandon true service to the state, replacing virtus with vices like avarice and ambition. Virtus Romana: Politics and Morality in the Rom...

The term virtus is famously difficult to translate, shifting between "military courage" and "ethical virtue". Balmaceda traces this progression across different eras:

Reclaims virtus for the new imperial system, manifesting it in the person of the Emperor (Tiberius) himself rather than just the collective Roman people.