II. The Primitive Moral Type
The ethics of the family; the virtue of obedience
In the bosom of the family was nourished what we may regard as the primal virtue of the Latin race—submission to authority.[525] The son’s subjection to the father’s authority was complete throughout his whole existence. He could not disobey his father’s command. More than seven centuries after the founding of Rome the Emperor Tiberius absolved a certain person from guilt in participating in a revolt, because it was shown that he had acted under the orders of his father.[526]
This virtue of submission to rightful authority, of obedience to superiors, contributed much to the military efficiency of the Roman people. Indeed, it lay at the basis of their greatness in war. The consul’s authority in the field was like that of the father in the family, and obedience in the soldier was a habit, almost a religious instinct. Thus did this virtue, which had its starting point in the family, help largely to give the Romans the rule of the world.[527]
Civic and military virtues
Patriotism, meaning submission, obedience, devotion to the state, was the saving virtue in the Roman ideal of excellence. “Patriot” and “good man” were identical terms. “Dear to us are our parents,” says Cicero, “dear our children, our kindred and our friends; but one’s country alone includes all our loves, for what good man would hesitate to die if he could promote her welfare.”[528]
Since war was the normal status of society in ancient times, the moral qualities of the Roman as of the Greek patriot were the virtues of the soldier—obedience, courage, and self-devotion in battle. And by no people, save perhaps the Japanese as shown in their recent history, has the soldierly virtue of self-renunciation for the fatherland been more exalted or more finely exemplified than by the Romans in early times.
In this ready self-devotion of the Roman hero to public interests we have an exhibition of the altruistic sentiment in its loftiest form, for of all forms of disinterested action, as Lecky maintains, the self-abnegation of the ancient warrior for his city was the most unselfish, for the reason that he made the sacrifice without any hope of reward in another life.[529]
The industrial virtues
In early Rome there was no such prejudice against labor as unworthy and morally degrading as we meet with at a later period. The fact that a large body of the citizens in primitive Rome were peasant farmers determined that the traditional virtues of this class should find a high place in the early national ideal of character. The moral or semi-moral qualities of the peasant, namely, simplicity, frugality, industry, and conservatism or respect for the past, formed the substratum of early Roman morality. It was from the primitive citizen peasantry that came the strong, tough, moral fiber of the old Roman character.