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The Roman ‘Virtues’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2011

Harold Mattingly
Harold Mattingly
Affiliation:
British Museum
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Extract

Juvenal in his First Satire (vv. 115, 116) remarks on the curious fact that Pecunia, though so devoutly worshipped, yet has no temple of her own

ut colitur Pax atque Fides, Victoria, Virtus, quaeque salutato crepitat Concordia nido.

She is not actually like them an object of cult. The modern reader, while relishing the bitterness of the gibe, is left vaguely wondering how the Romans could seriously worship such ‘personifications’ as Pax or Fides, and his wonder will only increase, if he follows up the subject and traces the cult of the ‘Virtues’ in literature, in inscriptions and, above all, in the imperial coinage. When we talk of ‘personifications,’ we feel ourselves at once in the realm of poetic or artistic imagery and fancy; the ancient Roman, when he spoke of similar figures, felt himself in the realm of religious fact.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , April 1937 , pp. 103 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1937

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References

1 The Romans themselves knew ‘personifications’ in our modern sense. Cf. Quintilian, IX, ii, 36, sed formas quoque fingimus saepe, ut Famam Vergilius, ut Voluptatem ac Virtutem (quemadmodum a Xenophonte traditur) Prodicus, ut Mortem ac Vitam, quas contendentes in satura tradit Ennius.

2 Nat. Hist., II, 14. We may add the witty passage in Lucian's θεῶν ἐκκλησἰα in which Momus remarks that ‘he has observed with considerable amusement the introduction of various strange names, denoting persons who neither have nor conceivably could have any existence among us, such as, Virtue, Nature, Destiny and Fortune.’

3 Abhandlungen zur römischen Religion, pp. 104 ff.

4 Op. cit., p. 22, n. 2.

5 Op. cit., pp. 52 ff., 327 ff. and further references there.

6 Scholion to Hesiod, Works and Days, 1 (Moschopulos) [Gnisford, Poetae Min. Gr., 33].

7 H. Mattingly, Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum, II, p. xci.

8 Cf. for examples Julian, Hymn to King Helios, 143 B on the δυνάμεις of Helios πληθυνόμενοι μὲν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, περὶ αὐτὸν δὲ ἑνοειδῶς ὄντες

9 Cf. Ruinart, p. 510, l. 4: Saint Theodore is now in the presence of God cum virtutibus et potestatibus. P. 549, l. 23: the guards of the Forty Martyrs saw virtutes quasdam e caelis descendentes et tamquam a rege magna dona militibus dividentes.