Romanitas

I was looking for an explanation of Romanitas, and the first place I looked at was wiki, which gives the following:

Romanitas was not a word used in ancient times, but it is used by modern writers to express the ideals which inspired the Roman state. It meant a great many things, but in short it meant what it was to be Roman (that is, Roman-ness). The Roman ideal was the citizen/soldier/farmer. The farmer was a hard working, frugal, practical man who worked the land with his own hands. The soldier was a courageous, strong man who obeyed orders and risked his own life in the name of Rome. Prior to the formation, under Marius, of the standing Roman Army, Rome had a militia-type defence-force which could be called up in time of war and then disbanded during peacetime. The ideal of the citizen/soldier/farmer was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. According to Roman legend, Cincinnatus was tending his farm when a messenger arrived, telling him that Rome was under attack and that he had been elected dictator. He was at first reluctant to go, but the Senate pleaded with him. He defeated the enemy tribe within a matter of weeks and, despite there remaining most of his six-month term as dictator with absolute power, returned to his farm.

The attainment and possession of the virtue of gravitas was highly valued by Romans of the early Republic and by Roman intellectuals. Indeed, gravitas was the single most clarifying characteristic of early republican Roman society:

“The Roman customs and principles regarding the acquisition of wealth are better than those of the Carthaginians. In the view of the latter nothing is disgraceful that makes for gain; with the former nothing is more disgraceful than to receive bribes and to make profit by improper means. For they regard wealth obtained from unlawful transactions to be as much a subject of reproach as a fair profit from reputable sources is of commendation. A proof of the fact is this: the Carthaginians obtain office by open bribery, but among the Romans the penalty is death.”³

The virtuous character of the Romans, their honesty and trustworthiness, is shown in the way they handled their finances. Polybius remarks: “Greek statesmen, if entrusted with a single talent, though protected by ten checking-clerks, as many seals and twice as many witnesses, yet cannot be induced to keep faith; whereas among the Romans, in their magistracies and embassies, men have the handling of a great amount of money, and yet from pure respect for their oath keep their faith intact.”³

Their cultural characteristics led to their development of "self government" by adopting a classical republic and thus this class formed the backbone of the Roman Republic.

Because of the widespread influence of Roman classical literature, the idea of the citizen/soldier/farmer also took root in colonial and early America.

I haven't seen citations from classical texts that confirm this ideal of the citizen/soldier/farmer; I do believe that the Founding Fathers, under the influence of neo-classicism, adopted it as their own. If this is the ideal of the Roman Republic (surely under the Roman Empire the ideal was slowly transformed?), then I would draw a contrast to the Confucian ideal, or the ideal of the literati class in Imperial China. More on this in another post, but for now I'll assert that the ideal of the Roman Republic is more suited to a polity than the Confucian ideal. Is it different from the Athenian ideal? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on whether the citizen of the Roman Republic owned slaves or at least had people working for him on the farm. Jefferson and Washington would be examples of "farmers" who were actually plantation-owners. In contrast, Wendell Berry conceives of the individual farmer (having only a small farm and family) who exercises citenzship as being the model.

The hero of the movie Gladiator, Maximus Decimus Meridius approximates the ideal, but doesn't quite embody it, in my opinion, since he is living during the Empire and is not interested in politics. He does own a farm with people working on it, though it is not clear if they are slaves or not.



Allen Ward reviews the inaccuracies of the movie.

I need to read a good history of the Roman Republic, one that describes the farms and the different social classes.

info for Rome at War Farms, Families, and Death in the Middle Republic by Nathan Rosenstein
(MUSE review)

Hrm, The Making of the Roman Army: From Republic to Empire, by Lawrence Keppie
Roman Manliness: "Virtus" and the Roman Republic by Myles McDonnell (CUP, BMCR review)

D. R. Turner offers this definition of Romanitas:

One of the most complex and pervasive metanarratives in European history is that of Romanitas, the notion of belonging politically or emotionally (or both) to a universal order and culture associated in one way or another with the Roman Empire. In modern historical and archaeological jargon, the process by which Romanitas came to be significant to any particular cultural group is called Romanisation (Barrett 1997; Freeman 1993; Woolf 1992).

A review of Cultural Identity in the Roman Empire, which mentions Romanitas.

Romanitas was transferred into an ecclesiastical context, as the meaning seems to be conveyed here, in an article by Sandro Magister. Similarly, Fr. Schmidberger of the SSPX quotes Archbishop Lefebvre on the meaning of Romanitas, "the full text of which can be found here (at the section entitled "3. The providential choice of Rome as the Seat of Peter ..."). I will reproduce only one line:

This relentlessness against "Romanitas" is an infallible sign of rupture with the Catholic Faith that he no longer defends."

Or, see the explanation given in Catholic Peacemaking (pdf), an essay introducing Community of Sant'Egidio (USA site). This meaning is also noted by wiki.

It seems to be different from the usage by Malachi Martin in his book on the Jesuits, but it's been a while since I've read the book and I don't have it here to check. He seemed to be describing the curial style or the "diplomatic" ways of officials in the Roman Curia (CE).


Then there is the alternate-history novel of that name. (wiki) It is interesting that the only major power left, which can hardly compete with Rome, is Sina (China).

Check out the alternate timeline.