CHAPTER
6
Rebecca Langlands*
In his handbook on oratory, Quintilian suggests that the best way to learn about abstract virtues such as “bravery” and “justice” is to read the stories of famous Romans who embodied them. Listing the evocative and familiar names of such men, he asks: “Will anyone teach courage, justice, frugality, loyalty, continence, contempt for pain and death better than the Fabricii, the Curii, the Reguli, the Decii, the Mucii and innumerable others?” (Quint. IO, 12.2.30). These historical Roman figures and their heroic feats – which include resisting torture and bribery, standing firm against the enemy, sacrificing themselves for others – were the inspiration and guidance for generations of Romans. They were the real and concrete examples of virtue that enabled the Romans to learn about the abstract concepts of courage and justice and so on. But what did learning about virtue from such examples actually entail? What kind of access to generalizable knowledge of virtue did these individual and particular exempla provide? Was their role essentially epistemological or rhetorical? Did they actually teach what the concepts of “courage,” “justice” and so on meant, or did they rather inspire and clarify?
Such are the questions, in fact, that have been repeatedly asked about “examples” in the broader sense over the course of the Western philosophical tradition. Overall the philosophical tradition conveys an appreciation of certain features of examples, especially their immediacy and persuasiveness and their capacity for bringing home a moral point better than abstract reasoning can. However, it also expresses anxieties about various other aspects of examples, notably the idea that following examples does not allow enough of a critical approach, independence, or creativity, and that following examples might be incompatible with moral reasoning (for summaries of these debates, see Louden 1998, Warnick 2008). The question of how an example mediates the relationship between the universal and the particular, the general category and the specific event or thing which is judged to fall into that category, is one that has proved especially and perennially challenging. Can examples function as the means by which one first establishes what a virtue such as “courage” is or are they able only to act as reminders of a moral idea that one has already grasped? Kant, for instance, suggested that while examples bring the abstractions down to earth and serve to “make perceptible what the practical law expresses more generally,” the abstractions are always established beforehand by principles and theory; examples must be judged against principles that have been already grasped by reason (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten 1785 (1903) 409, cited in Louden 1998). Others argue that moral reason must, in fact, ultimately be derived from particular examples that grant access (in Wittgenstein’s formulation) to the community’s shared “forms of life” (McDowell 1998, Warnick 2008: 125). Such questions are related to broader metaphysical and epistemological concerns about whether the universal or the particular should be seen as prior, or what it is that we grasp when we grasp moral knowledge. Does the abstract and general idea of a virtue such as courage come first conceptually, or the particular instances of it? In practical moral terms the question is whether examples can help us to determine what, for instance, “courage” is in the first place, or whether an act is only established as an example of courage in the light of a previously held theory of courage by which it is judged.
Without in any way wishing to suggest that such debate about examples and the “mysterious faculty of ethical knowledge” (Broadie 2006: 349) can be resolved at the philosophical level, I will argue here that Roman exemplarity does present a particular practical solution to many of the problems with exempla that have been identified over the centuries, as a cultural practice that does not usually explicitly address such metaphysical issues but nevertheless seems to acknowledge their implications and to provide a means to negotiate them in real-life ethics. By effectively combining the persuasive function of exempla (as exhortations to virtue and models for virtue) with the inculcation of a form of practical wisdom akin to Aristotelian phronesis, Roman exemplarity promoted an approach that allowed for critical independence.
Roman exempla are a particular and special kind of example, sharing many features of examples in general, but also possessing their own particular characteristics that enable them to mediate between general and particular in an especially productive and nuanced fashion. Some of the special properties that render them especially effective in moral education relate to the form and content of individual exempla: for instance, exempla are stories which share some of the moral force of narratives such as fables, parables and fiction; their claim to be real historical events lends them the force of precedent and empiricism; their representation of real people allows them to fulfill the functions of a role model. However, in this chapter I shall focus not on these more literary aspects of exempla, but rather on the macro-structure of what I shall call “Roman exemplarity” in which they functioned.
The most salient characteristics of Roman exemplarity for the purposes of my discussion here are the following: it offered a simultaneous display of a wide variety of exemplary tales that can be envisaged as a heterogeneous and evolving whole where the individual elements – the exempla – could be played off against and compared with one another; an exemplum is never interpreted on its own, but always in the context of others (Quintilian’s reference above to “innumerable others” is echoed throughout Latin literature); this complex set of stories was an important form of cultural knowledge, first encountered in childhood and then regularly thereafter, shared by all members of Roman society; the stories were deeply familiar to them, the details of these tales and their heroes were everyday common knowledge; importantly, as part of cultural memory, individual exempla were not single uncontested versions of a story, with their moral significance nailed down to one particular moral value, but rather what I describe as “sites of exemplarity.” This phrase draws on the idea of “sites of memory” as recently elaborated in memory studies (see Erll and Rigney 2009, Basu 2012, Rigney 2012: 17–19) and describes the whole cultural tradition surrounding any particular exemplary figure or story, which always consists of various competing versions and elaborations, with its moral and cultural significance susceptible to change over time and to different interpretations by different people.
My focus in this chapter is on “Roman exemplarity” rather than individual texts or exempla because it is at this macro level that the underlying principles governing the interpretation and use of exempla become most evident. I shall explore, then, the meta-exemplary ideas that are communicated by and within Roman exemplarity and show how they add up to a coherent and sophisticated ethical system within which examples take pride of place, but where the moral agent is not enslaved by them and is rather free to cultivate his or her own autonomy.
I shall begin with the most detailed and explicit theorization of the process of learning from exempla found in Latin literature, articulated by the Roman philosopher and statesman Seneca the Younger in a letter to Lucilius; here he theorizes the basic process by which Romans, as children, came to understand virtue, describing it precisely in terms of learning from concrete examples (on this letter and its philosophical significance see Inwood 2005: 322–332 and Inwood 2007). At first glance, Seneca may seem to be giving rather a straightforward account of inductive reasoning from examples; further analysis of his letter reveals considerable sophistication, and can lead us into a wider discussion of the special properties of Roman exempla. Letter 120 is written as the response to a question of moral epistemology that has supposedly been posed by his addressee Lucilius: how do we first reach knowledge of what “the good” or “the honourable” is? How do we grasp the concept? (Sen. Ep. 120.1, 3). Seneca explains (talking on behalf of Stoics):
We Stoics believe that [the good] has been inferred (collegisse) from the observation of acts done repeatedly and by comparison between them… Certain good deeds, certain humane deeds, certain brave deeds had amazed us; we began to admire them as if they were perfect…. Therefore from these actions we drew (traximus) the appearance (speciem) of great good. (Sen. Ep. 120.4–5).
As examples of such admirable deeds, he cites the particular cases of Fabricius and Horatius Cocles. Fabricius rejected the gold that King Pyrrhus offered him to betray Rome, but he also foiled an attempt to poison Pyrrhus by informing his enemy of the plot. Seneca writes: “We admired the great man whom neither the promises of the king nor the plot against the king could corrupt, who held fast to the good exemplum, and, what is most difficult, was innocent in war” (Sen. Ep. 120.6). Horatius held off the approaching enemy single-handedly on the bridge to prevent them entering Rome, ordering his comrades to destroy the bridge behind him. Seneca concludes: “These deeds and others of the same sort show us a likeness of virtue (imaginem virtutis)” (Sen. Ep. 120.8). This represents the sort of basic epistemological process through which all children will go when they first acquire their initial, basic understanding of the term “virtue”. This is why the verbs in this passage are all in the past tense; Seneca is describing how he and his readers (“we”) have reached their adult grasp of moral concepts such as justice and courage, from repeatedly encountering these virtues in famous exempla during their formative years.
If we take this as describing an inductive model of learning – whereby a learner observes particular instances of the good and infers from them an understanding of the abstract concept – then each exemplum must exemplify a particular abstract idea that the learner can access through its particular instance. The moral exemplum must be the conveyer of a particular virtue or concept, and therefore be an exemplum or example of something specific: an exemplum virtutis. So Fabricius could be understood as an exemplum continentiae, or an example of continence. This, in turn, rests on the assumption that virtues exist in a simple, definable form, as well as on what Geach calls the “Socratic fallacy,” namely that it is possible to arrive at a definition of continence by giving examples of continence (Geach 1966).
However, there is more to the process Seneca describes than the exercise of pure inductive reasoning. Seneca emphasizes the emotive and rhetorical aspects, alluding to the highly emotive motivational and inspirational function of exempla that were such important aspects of Roman acculturation. For instance, Sallust writes that when the leading men of Rome contemplated the portraits of heroes of the past “their souls were violently inflamed towards virtue … and that flame grew in the hearts of excellent men because of the memory of those great deeds, and it did not die down until their own virtue had become equal in fame and glory” (Sall. Jug. 4). Seneca describes Roman children as experiencing amazement and awe (obstupefecerant, mirari) at these stories. We might even call their response “hero-worship,” with all the suspension of the proper critical and rational faculties that the modern phrase suggests. Indeed, to be engaged by these exempla, one must ignore their flaws and allow oneself to be dazzled, for the moment, by their exaggerated version of virtue. As Seneca puts it: “Many vices underlay these exempla, and these flaws were hidden by the appearance and the brilliance of the particular conspicuous deed; we pretended these flaws weren’t there….” In addition, in order to communicate their moral messages, the deeds must be exaggerated: “Nature orders praiseworthy things to be exaggerated; there is no one who has not gone beyond the truth in their praise of glory.” It is from flawed actions such as these that we have deduced the appearance of great good (Sen. Ep. 120.5).
Seneca makes it clear that one does not have access, through exempla, to some kind of perfect ideal of virtue; far from it. What one reaches through this process is a very basic and flawed grasp of what virtue is. The process of learning from exempla represents access not so much to a range of universal abstractions, as to a culturally agreed body of moral values and models, with all the complexity and contradictions that these entail. It is less an inductive process than a process of acculturation, which may be the first step towards a more sophisticated, critical and adult grasp of moral ideas. The average Roman youth, not in the least philosophically minded, can acquire through this process an adequate “working knowledge” of virtues so as to understand how to act virtuously without needing to be able to state definitively what virtue is, participating thereby in a shared value system and moral language (see also the relevant discussion of McDowell 1998 on moral knowledge and uncodifiabilty in Greek ethics). Seneca will go on to argue that such a process is merely a first step, childish in ethical understanding, and does not get one very far. To reach a higher level of understanding of ethical concepts, as befits the philosopher, further intellectual work is needed to penetrate the surface of these flawed and misleading instances. However, the familiar Roman exempla have facilitated these crucial initial steps in the process and a Roman who is philosophically inclined, or ethically curious, like Seneca and his correspondent Lucilius, can used this working knowledge as a foundation for further enquiry and refinement, which will involve, among other things, seeing beyond the misleading surface of familiar exempla. Seneca warns that “evil things have sometimes taken on the appearance of the good, and the best has shone out through its opposite. For there are, as you know, vices on the borders with virtues, and the most shameful and debased things share a resemblance with what is right; thus the spendthrift looks misleadingly like a generous man, even though there is a great difference between a man who knows how to give and a man who does not know how to save … Negligence imitates ease, recklessness imitates bravery. Such similarity forces us to attend carefully and to distinguish qualities that look very similar but are actually very different” (Sen. Ep. 120. 8–9). Even now, at this advanced level of moral learning, exempla are instrumental in facilitating the acquisition of such skills of distinguishing virtue and vice in the difficult cases, since it is scrutiny and experience of these that helps to develop such skills.
What Seneca describes is also not a “eureka” moment, where consideration of an example or of several examples enables one to reach a flash of realization about what “continence” or “courage” is. He describes, rather, an iterative learning process that involves repeated encounters with exempla. It also, importantly, involves a comparison between them, and presumably some reflection on their similarities and differences; as we have seen, the plurality of Roman exemplarity facilitates this. Such a process places the emphasis on the judgment and skill of the moral agent in judging what is appropriate and required to act virtuously in any given situation, rather than in establishing universal principles. Likewise, the ability of Fabricius and Horatius to facilitate one’s grasp of “the good” rests not in the fact that their deeds are exemplifying specific virtues such as continence or courage, but rather in the fact that they demonstrate virtuous men acting in the right way in their own particular circumstances. Fabricius is put into a situation where it is evidently very difficult for him to “do the right thing,” and tempting for him not to, but he impressively managed to do the right thing by marshaling his personal virtues appropriately. We reach true moral understanding (intelleximus) according to Seneca, when we recognize as perfect virtue the behaviour of the man who consistently in every situation always does the right thing, and indeed is incapable of not doing the right thing (Sen. Ep. 120.10–11).
Now Seneca is, of course, only one individual Roman author; he is, moreover, writing here as a philosopher to another philosopher, so we have no reason to think that his ideas are representative of how most Romans understood or learned from exempla in everyday life. However, these same meta-exemplary principles – that exempla can be superficially misleading, that vice is deceptively similar to virtue, that rules cannot be systematically and universally applied, that judgment of and in particular cases is especially important, that one learns by constant scrutiny of particular cases – are systematically echoed throughout Latin literature wherever exempla are deployed, and especially implicitly through the means of their deployment in texts. They are prominently conveyed through Roman exemplarity alongside the stories themselves and their associated moral values, and, I argue, they work to promote the critical engagement of the learner with the exempla they encounter and with their own ethical challenges. They enable the moral learner to develop a certain moral autonomy and independence in productive dialogue with his or her acculturation within a shared value system.
So, what are the characteristics of Roman exempla and exemplarity that facilitate the learning of these ideas and teach people to see sensitively and make ethical decisions according to their own needs, rather than merely inculcating rigid and absolute principles? We have already mentioned above the whole as a complex of stories containing many “sites of exemplarity” characterised by complexity and flexibility.
Indeterminacy
In the diversity of meanings that are associated with a single story (site of exemplarity) by any individual learner engaging with the tradition, Roman exemplarity encodes the idea that particular individual acts are not so easily mapped onto specific virtues; that an exemplum cannot be understood to be merely an instance of X quality. This idea may be expressed in the deployment or discussion of exempla in specific texts (see the discussion in Chaplin 2000: 62–72 of the evolving exemplary significance of Cannae in Livy’s History). It is also implicit in the site of exemplarity experienced as a complex and evolving whole; each exemplum is known through, in and from a range of different versions, each of which gives it a different significance, and association with a different general idea or principle. To take the case of Fabricius, in addition to continence, his story is associated in the ancient sources with prudence, justice, freedom, good fortune, happiness, incorruptibility, magnanimity, as well as Roman identity and the ideas that poverty is no bar to the exercise of civic duties and that money belongs to everyone. (The tables on pages 110–11 and 115–16 in Berrendonner 2001 provide at a glance an excellent sense of the range of different moral values that are associated with the story across Latin literature, with the relevant sources.) It is abundantly clear to anyone familiar with this as a shared site of cultural memory that an exemplum like Fabricius cannot be easily labelled and reduced to an example of a particular moral quality.
Multiplicity
When they are cited in Latin texts, exempla almost always appear in a series rather than individually, and this multiplicity is a significant feature of Roman exemplarity. When exempla are cited under a particular heading or within a particular category (as for instance, in the chapters of Valerius Maximus’ collection of exempla, in the speeches of Cicero or in Virgil’s parade of heroes in Aeneid 6.824–859) it is, of course, the similarities between the examples that allow one to identify what they have in common. This should tell us something about the abstract quality or virtue that labels the category. A number of different instances of heroic courage, cited side by side, can serve to illustrate the range of different acts that can count as courageous, and fall within the parameters of the concept. In Valerius Maximus’ collection of exempla under category headings, the chapter on courage (fortitude) presents first military exploits, then courage in the civic sphere, acts of famous generals alongside those of unknown foot soldiers, deeds by girls as well as those of men (Val. Max. 3.2). The variation between these exempla demonstrates the variety of ways that courage can be manifested in individual acts, and the range of the concept of courage itself. Appreciating the common element that makes all these different examples instances of the same abstract concept is precisely to grasp something about what that concept is; what they have in common is the abstract notion of “courage.” However, there is no need for this concept to be expressed in absolute and universal terms; it may be that it can somehow only be grasped by reading between the lines of a series of different exempla.1 Peter Geach suggested that “a set of examples may in a given case be more useful than a formal definition” in establishing knowledge of an abstract concept (Geach 1966: 371). McDowell has argued that we do not need to learn from examples via a “universal formula” (McDowell 1998: 64).
Space: the bull’s-eye
What the sequence of exempla can do is to map out the space occupied by a virtue. Simply by existing in multiples they convey the idea that each virtue has breadth and that within this breadth one finds diversity. Often the breadth of a concept is signalled by an author telling us how a single virtue can be enacted in very different, even opposing acts, emphasizing the gap between them. In Letter 66 to Lucilius, Seneca illustrates this point using the exemplum of the siege of Numantia (at which, in 133 BCE, the besieged inhabitants famously killed themselves and their families rather than surrender to Scipio’s army): “Scipio is great when he besieges Numantia and compels and forces the enemy to turn their unconquered hands against themselves; but great too is the soul of the besieged, who knows that he is not trapped as long as the road to death is still open, and breathes his last in the embrace of liberty” (Sen. Ep. 66.13). Throughout his chapter on fortitude, Valerius Maximus draws attention to the variety of his exempla in terms of setting, character and acts. The chapter’s final punchline reiterates the point that courage is made concrete and particular in different ways every time: of two young girls one goes to her death bravely by lying and concealing the truth, her companion, conversely, dies the same brave death by exposing the truth (Val. Max. 3.2. ext.9).
As well as being clustered and cited sequentially in this way in specific texts, exempla often appear more broadly within Roman cultural memory in particular groupings which incorporate a similar diversity and communicate a similar message about the breadth of virtue. For instance, the legendary siege of Porsenna is associated with three separate tales of patriotism and daring that are often thought of and cited together: the warrior Horatius Cocles holding off the enemy single-handedly on the bridge to prevent them entering Rome across the Tiber; the strategist Mucius Scaevola attempting to assassinate Porsenna during the siege and impressing him so much with his powers of endurance that he brings him to terms with the Romans; and the hostage Cloelia whose noble escape consolidated those terms (see Livy 2.13, Manilius 4.30–4, Virgil Aen. 8.646–651). Each act in the trio is very different, dependent on the changing circumstances and the varying natures of the protagonists. Similarly, the Punic War offers up two exemplary heroes, often thought of as a pair, whose virtues more or less contradict one another: the cautious Fabius and the thrusting Marcellus. Plutarch articulates this principle explicitly in the introduction to his collection of exemplary tales about women: “Achilles was brave in one way, Ajax in another…” (Plutarch, Bravery of Women 243D). However, because there is a variety of different possibilities for what might count as virtuous behaviour, when it comes to one’s own behaviour one must be very careful to ascertain what behaviour is right for oneself. (Certainly, if the male and warlike Horatius or Mucius had sneaked out of Porsenna’s camp at night as Cloelia did it could not have counted as either courage or patriotism.) The further implication of this feature of Roman exemplarity is that any given exemplum can be normative in its moral force, but it cannot represent definitively either the only or the best way to be courageous; it can only ever be one excellent possibility among numerous others.
This spatial conception of virtue, which envisages a virtue possessing a “breadth” that encompasses variety, corresponds to ideas found in Aristotle’s discussion of moral learning, and especially to Aristotle’s “central doctrine of the mean” as elaborated by Rosalind Hursthouse (2006). For Aristotle, a virtuous act falls within a certain compass of a virtue, a space that is delineated partly by its boundaries with the corresponding vices, situated as it is between extremes of excess and deficiency (NE 2.6 1106b36–1107a5). Thus, courage is bounded on the one hand by cowardice and on the other hand by rashness. As we shall see below, Roman exempla often draw attention to these boundaries between virtues and their related vices as a means of encouraging ethical reflection. However, in Hursthouse’s compelling discussion, this space refers not only to the idea of the virtue as positioned along a spectrum between excess and deficiency, but rather to the idea of it as the “bull’s-eye” at the centre of a circle. The rest of the circle around the bull’s-eye represents the possibilities for deviating from virtue, and failing to meet the mark. However, Hursthouse also suggests that the bull’s-eye is itself a space, albeit a very small one that is difficult to hit, so there is scope within its compass for a range of different possibilities for virtue, even though, in a given situation and for a given individual, there is only one point within this space where one may hit home and be virtuous. This idea of the bull’s-eye as space allows for the variation within virtue that seems to be required by Aristotle’s idea that each person must aim for the “mean” (Hursthouse says this is the bull’s-eye) “relative to you” (Aristotle NE II.9.1109b19–21 and IV.5.1126a31-b4).
Hursthouse’s bull’s-eye space, then, corresponds to what is marked out by Roman exempla; virtuous exempla represent acts that fall within this target area. It is a space that is hard to hit, but there is not just one way to hit it correctly; the right spot in any given case will depend on individual circumstances. It is hard to discern and to distinguish this spot from the rest of the target around it, with its many opportunities for vice and failure. Moreover, Aristotle lays emphasis on the sensitivity to particular circumstances that are needed to identify where your own bull’s-eye is in a given situation; an act is only virtuous in relation to a range of different factors all of which need to be in alignment (Aristotle NE 3.7 1115b20). Virtue, in this context, lies not in correctly applying the rules but in correctly identifying one’s target. According to Hursthouse, one of the central insights of the central doctrine of the mean is that one should start “by training children, not to follow general rules, but to recognize their central target in particular circumstances” (Hursthouse 2006: 114). The particular faculties needed to identify the area of the target, and also the specific spot within that area where one’s own act should fall, include those that are most prominent in Roman exemplarity: the ability to distinguish between similar or similar-looking acts of virtue and vice, whose appearance can be deceptive (a concept we have already encountered in Seneca’s letter, discussed above, cf. Arist. NE 3.7) and sensitivity to particular circumstances (cf. McDowell 1998: 52–3) where virtue is “reliable sensitivity” and “an ability to recognise requirements that situations impose on one’s behaviour”. Having an eye for the right thing to do is crucial for Aristotle (NE 6.12–13; see also Sherman 1989: 13–55 and Sherman 1997: 239–283). Yet, despite his particularising approach to ethics, he does not, in his extant works, make significant use of examples; Roman exempla fill this striking gap in Aristotle’s ethics.
Boundaries
Exempla regularly acknowledge the proximity of virtue and vice and the deceptive appearance of acts: in the tradition, the virtue of strictness (severitas) is shown to border on cruelty and brutality, courage on rashness, clemency on overindulgence, and often they look very similar. Exempla invite learners to exercise and hone their judgment about where the boundaries between such virtues and vices might lie. Even if the boundary is definite, it still may be difficult to perceive, and one of the things that exempla do is to draw attention to the area where the boundary lies. Exempla often take one to the extremes of a concept in order to allow one to come to a better appreciation of where the boundaries of that concept might lie. This invitation can be issued by a particular discussion of an exemplum in a particular text. As Valerius Maximus remarks on the case of the magistrate Domitius who crucified a poor shepherd (who had brought him as a gift an unusually large boar that he had killed) because he had breached a ban on hunting: “some might say that this should be placed on the borderline between severity and savagery” (Val. Max. 6.3.5), making it clear that the borders of the virtue of severitas can be disputed in and through this case (Langlands 2008: 181–2). The invitation can also be issued by a contested site of exemplarity, when it is unclear whether the exemplary act represents a virtue or a vice. Such is the case of Manlius Torquatus, who executed his victorious son for fighting a duel without his permission as commanding officer; his act is variously labelled in the sources as praiseworthy moral discipline and as excessive brutality (e.g. Livy 8.7; Cic. Fin. 1.35). The point of Torquatus’s case, however, is not that some exempla are hopelessly indeterminate, but that often virtue is very close to vice. Sometimes perhaps, as in this case, the boundaries between the two may even be up for dispute, and a case such as this invites us to think hard about where we might want to draw the line.
In Book 5 of his collection of exempla, Valerius Maximus demonstrates through his interwoven sequences of exempla what a thin line there is conceptually between the vice of brutality and the virtue of severity, between discipline and cruelty, mercy and over-indulgence. The juxtaposition of all these exempla also highlights the benefits and disadvantages of the two opposing virtues of leniency and severity (see detailed discussion of these passages in Langlands 2006: 138–91 and Langlands 2008: 168–9); however, Valerius Maximus does not provide any explicit guidelines for working out which virtue is more appropriate in a given situation. Rather, the sense is that through repeated observation and scrutiny of particular exempla, one will develop sensitivity to particular circumstances that will enable one to act virtuously in one’s own case.
Situational sensitivity
A cluster of important principles communicated by Roman exemplarity, which one might summarise as “sensitivity to different circumstances,” are these: behaviour that is right in one instance may not be right in another; different circumstances call for different ways of implementing virtue, and a virtue may manifest itself very differently in different situations (see Langlands 2011). It is, therefore, crucial to be able to judge, when one is making moral decisions, the specific requirements of one’s situation and to tailor one’s behaviour accordingly. If one calculates wrongly, one can end up very far astray – as we have seen there is a thin line between virtue and vice and it is often very difficult to distinguish between them. The exempla tradition teaches that the ability to evaluate the significance of circumstances of all kinds is crucially important, and it is a skill that one must continue to refine and develop. Situational sensitivity helps you to relate particular exempla to your own life, and to locate where your own spot on the bull’s-eye must be.
Creativity
Exempla also inculcate creativity in relation to the application of moral principles, and one way that they do so is through what has been called in other contexts “exemplary originality” (Lloyd 1995: 266) or “revolutionary exemplarity” (Warnick 2008: 116); that is to say, through the strong emphasis in the Roman tradition on examples of people who break (or change) the rules or act against the grain of general opinion. Many prominent examples are collected by Valerius Maximus in chapters 3.6 and 3.7 of his work (discussed in Langlands 2011). Therefore, as a whole, the field of Roman exemplarity (the body of stories as sites of exemplarity) strongly communicates the idea that often doing the right thing involves acting independently and pushing the boundaries of what is agreed to be acceptable. This feature of Roman exemplarity then incorporates a response to the Enlightenment criticism that by encouraging imitation, examples may be inherently conservative and prescriptive and stifle creativity, preventing people thinking for themselves. However, sensitivity to circumstance remains vital, as Cicero makes clear in de Officiis: “No one ought to make the mistake of thinking that just because Socrates or Aristippus did or said something that went against established customs that it is okay for him to do it.” (Cic. Off. 1.148.)
Conclusion
I have argued that Roman exempla were a special form of example, and that the cultural and interpretative framework within which they functioned, which I have called Roman exemplarity, was also a special kind of exemplary system which enabled Roman exempla to mediate between the general and the particular in such a way that the benefits of emulation were cut through with the critical skills of practical wisdom. It constitutes in this way something of a practical reconciliation between the co-existing Aristotelian concepts of habituation and phronesis, whose relation to one another is recognized as problematic by Aristotelian scholars (Broadie 1991: 72–6); indeed, in many respects, my account of Roman exemplarity is analogous to Nancy Sherman’s account of Aristotelian habituation as a critical practice with a cognitive element (Sherman 1989, Chapter 5 and especially pages 176–83; and Sherman 1997: 241–3.)2 However, by providing a body of specific, shared moral examples from which to learn, and on which to test ideas and hone one’s judgement, Roman exemplarity made a new and useful contribution to ancient ethics that was peculiarly Roman and that was missing from Greek philosophy; indeed David Sedley has suggested that it may have been influential on the Stoics, whose well-known and widespread use of exempla “seems to start with Panaetius, and may well reflect Stoicism’s incorporation of, or assimilation to, a Roman moral tradition” (Sedley 1999: 151).
A knowledge of shared general values and virtues is constituted in and through the sharing of exempla, especially during childhood, while these same exempla also built up in Romans, as they moved through life, experience and awareness of how to negotiate particulars. A combination of a strong binding together of the community through shared stories, motifs and moral structures (and no doubt more than this: schemata or “forms of life” that structured the very experience of the ancient Romans) with the inculcation of a moral faculty akin to Aristotelian phronesis gave Roman exemplarity a perfect synthesis of communal agreement and individual autonomy. Exempla communicated a basic shared grasp of values that were important to Roman society, but also taught the tools of practical wisdom and how to evaluate what was right for one’s own circumstances. For they should not be understood as instances where general rules have been applied to particular circumstances, and hence as injunctions to the learner to follow rules, but rather as representing invitations to the learner to exercise moral judgment about particular situations in a way that goes beyond rule-following. “Occasion by occasion one knows what to do, if one does, not by applying universal principles but by being a certain kind of person: one who sees situations in a certain distinctive way” (McDowell 1998: 73). Roman exemplarity facilitated the development of a distinctive way of seeing, that allowed one to belong to the community while still retaining individual critical independence, following examples without being enslaved by them (cf. Lloyd 1995: 265).
Endnotes
*All Latin translations not listed in References are the author’s own.
1See Langlands (2006) Chapter 3 for an analysis of Valerius Maximus’ work in these terms in relation to an understanding of the concept of pudicitia.
2I would not want to argue that Roman exemplarity maps exactly onto Aristotelian ethics, and I am certainly not suggesting that Roman exemplary ethics were deliberately “designed” as a practical enactment of Aristotelian ethics (or designed at all). Nonetheless, the parallels seem striking.
References
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Berrondonner, C. (2001) “Un homme nouveau peut-il être un grand homme?” in M. Coudry and T. Späth (eds), L’Invention des grands hommes de la Rome antique, Paris: de Boccard, 97–116.
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