Chapter 8 - Boni and Improbi

Summary

The social role of the vir bonus explored in the previous chapter carried over into the public realm, where this figure was invested with moral qualities almost identical to those applied in the private sphere. Thus, being a bonus in the public domain involved a very similar set of expectations, with the only real difference being the setting in which the role was performed. The essential qualities of the public vir bonus were therefore entirely predictable and uncontentious. He was a decent and honest citizen, sound, reliable and responsible. Towards his fellow citizens and the common weal, he was innocens, never causing harm to either. As such he emerges as a figure who embodies trust, dependability and common good sense. As a responsible citizen, he is law-abiding, follows the rules and conventions and respects the authorities, temporal as well as divine. These fundamental characteristics were summed up in a fragment of one of Varro’s satires, which describes the duties of a civis bonus as ‘obeying the laws and honouring the gods’.¹ The emphasis on adherence to the laws recurs in Horace’s portrayal of the vir bonus as one who ‘observes the senate’s decrees, the statutes and laws’, and in Cicero’s definition, presented in the De finibus, of the ‘good and wise man who obeys the laws and is aware of his civic duties’.²