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Ancient & modern

Wednesday, 30th January 2008

How the Romans set a good exemplum

Last time we saw that the currently fashionable buzz-word ‘change’ was anathema to the Romans, because they looked for stability and permanence, and change implied failure. Romans reinforced this perspective by using the past to act as a guide to the present. The technical term for any particular instance was exemplum.

Romans had always seen the old Roman family as the great exemplum, reliable, solid, held together by bonds of affection, the foundation of the stable society; and the key to that bonding was pietas, the respect for man and god that created those bonds and the duty that nourished them. That is why Aeneas, mythical ‘father’ of the Roman people, hero of Virgil’s nationalistic epic the Aeneid (and part ‘model’ for the first emperor Augustus) is constantly described as pius.

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