Virtus Romana

The political transformation that took place at the end of the Roman Republic was a particularly rich area for analysis by the era’s historians. Major narrators chronicled the crisis that saw the end of the Roman Republic and the changes that gave birth to a new political system. These writers drew significantly on the Roman idea of <i>virtus</i> as a way of interpreting and understanding their past.<br/><br/>Tracing how <i>virtus</i> informed Roman thought over time Catalina Balmaceda explores the concept and its manifestations in the narratives of four successive Latin historians who span the late Republic and early Principate: Sallust Livy Velleius and Tacitus. Balmaceda demonstrates that <i>virtus</i> in these historical narratives served as a form of self-definition that fostered and propagated a new model of the ideal Roman more fitting to imperial times. As a crucial moral and political concept <i>virtus</i> worked as a key idea in the complex system of Roman sociocultural values and norms that underpinned Roman attitudes about both present and past. This book offers a reappraisal of the historians as promoters of change and continuity in the political culture of both the Republic and the Empire.