Ten ancient Romans we could all learn from

Catholic Herald ^ | October 28, 2015 | Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith

[NYer]

A stained glass portrait of St Augustine

After Mary Beard's list of important Romans, here's mine...

Mary Beard has done more than anyone else, I think, to bring ancient Rome alive, and over at the Guardian she provides us with her list of the ten best ancient Romans.

Lists are very personal things, and everyone will have a rival version, so I cannot resist submitting my own. Here are ten people we call all learn from, indeed need to learn from, in the order in which they popped into my head.

1. Aurelius Augustinus, better known as St Augustine of Hippo, author of prose works that are still being read, one of which, the Confessions, perhaps makes him the most knowable man of the ancient world, and which is the fons et origo of all confessional literature. Not simply the greatest of all theologians, and a mighty philosopher, he can claim to be the father of existentialism and ultimate inspiration of the modern first person novel. Better than anyone else, he shows us what the search for truth is like.

2. Publius Virgilius Maro, or Virgil as we call him. Can anything compete with the Aeneid, his epic of “how great a task it was to found the Roman race”? He was a national poet, but at the same time one who dramatised the tragic fates of Rome’s victims, reminding us that pity for the fallen is a necessary and redeeming virtue. Virgil lays down one of the parameters of civilisation: toleration of minorities.

Virgil Reading the Aeneid to Augustus, Octavia, and Livia by Jean-Baptiste Wicar (Art Institute of Chicago)

3. The Emperor Constantine: With the Edict of Milan, in the year 307, he established, for the first time ever, the principle of religious toleration.

4. The Empress Helen: Obscurely born – she may have been a stable girl, or there again, she may have been the daughter of old King Coel. Her son Constantine made her an Empress, and she used her position to journey to Jerusalem to find the relics of the Passion, establishing the historicity of revelation.

5. Tacitus: The first man to make history enjoyable. His story of the way Nero tried to bump off his mother Agrippina using a collapsible ship is one of the great comic set pieces of literature.

6. Augustus: The man who gave peace to the Roman world after generations of civil war.

A bust of Julia Domna

7. Catullus:. His poems survived by a mere fluke, the sole surviving copy discovered in use as a bung in a wine barrel. The man who invented love poetry, or at least brought love poetry into the Latin world from the Greek.

8. Horace: The author of some of the most beautiful lines in literature.

9. Julia Domna, exponent of the power hairdo (see above), real ruler of the Roman Empire through her husband and later her two weakling sons. Every powerful female politician in our world should read her story and take note of her end.

10. Pontius Pilate, an obscure provincial procurator who illustrates for us the tenuousness of worldly power.

[NYer]

Ping!

[farming pharmer]

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus should be on this list.

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

Hmmmmm, I’m thinking there is a Roman missing from this list...

[Salvation]

Did you check the other list?

[rfreedom4u]

What?! No mention of Cicero???

[x]

Did you check the other list?

Nero, Caligula, Messalina, Elagabalus?

[Michael.SF.]

Pontius Pilate, an obscure...

Obscure?

The man who was directly involved in the Crucifixion is hardly "obscure"

[hotsteppa]

Julius Ceasar, Marcus Aurelius...

[sparklite2]

The most interesting Roman to me was Tiberius Gracchus,
who, as a Senator, sought to  reorganize control of land taken in
warfare that was state controlled. The land was supposed to be
used by the lower classes to elevate themselves, but was
being stolen by the wealthy in an early version of cronyism.
Labeled a traitor to his class, eventually he and 300 of
his supporters were beaten to death at the behest of
the Senate.

Later, statues of him and his murdered brother were
put up throughout Rome, revered, and sacrificed to
by the people as though they were gods.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Poor Pilate, doomed to find a man innocent then crucify him. Dante place him in Satan’s mouth being chewed for all eternity.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Poor Pilate, doomed to find a man innocent then crucify him. Dante place him in Satan’s mouth being chewed for all eternity.

[IronJack]

Horatius Cocles, better known as Horatio at the Bridge.

[Falconspeed]

Cool list but random. The names range about six hundred years. Ancient Rome is focused around Augustus (30 BC - 14 AD). Thus, ten Romans similar to Augustus might be:
Julius Caesar (d. 44 BC)
Pompey the Great (106-29 BC)
Mark Antony (83-30 BC)
Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt (69-30 BC)
Virgil (70-19 BC)
Agrippa (63-10 BC)
and writers Livy, Ovid, Stabo, and Catullus.

[Billthedrill]

Roman Gabriel. It’s been downhill for the Rams ever since.

[NYer]

Here's the original list: The 10 best ancient Romans. Unfortunately, not one of yours appears on this one, either. Not sure what that means but it's fun rediscovering these ancient figures.

[wally_bert]

I totally gave up on the Rams after they moved to Anaheim.

[BipolarBob]

If you’re a Catholic Constantine was a great guy, if a Jew or Sabbatarian, not so much. He enforced Sunday worship. He was the first to make the original “blue” laws with his codexs. Politics and religion should not mix, even if he was on your side. That is between an individual and God.

[virgil]

I would think Julius Caesar.

[virgil]

#2. I’ve seen that painting at the Art Institute, I think.