Thread by @BretDevereaux

I guess we're doing this now too.

The issue with the original tweet is twofold: the first problem is of 'Latinity' - sure the Romans have a word, but how do they use it? Is it common? What are its most common uses?

The second is the failure to grasp Roman self-perception. 1/

https://twitter.com/latinedisce/status/1742833714466300031

So is 'virilitas' a common Latin word, the sort of word that might underpin some major Roman social value, strongly held belief in their culture?

No. As the Lewis&Short notes, it doesn't seem to be used at all in the Republic, so it's a late-appearing word. 2/

As for frequency, it is imperfect, but virilitas appears 14 times in the Perseus corpus (across 8 texts).

You may ask, "is that a lot?"

Well, let's compare. 'Virtus' - which also has the root meaning of 'manliness' - appears 8,734 times across 865 texts.

No, it is not a lot.3/

Alas, the TLL hasn't made it to 'v' or we'd have a more perfect comparison, but let me suggest that this is a very uncommon word. Most of the core Latin authors never use it at all.

Probably not a sort of core-value kind of word. 4/

How is it used? Well, the L&S notes 11 instances and here is the breakdown:
age of manhood (1)
fact of manhood (2)
male human genitalia (4)
male *animal* genitalia (2)
appropriate manly vigor (2).

So in pre-medieval Latin it mostly means 'penis' as a polite euphemism. 5/

What about the last two examples? One is Quintilian () for whom virilitas (and sanctitas) was a quality of old Latin poets as distinct from the poets of his own day, corrupted by the vices of luxury. 6/perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…

The other is a bit from Valerius Maximus () about how P. Scipio Nasica (this is Corculum, cos. 162, 155, not his son Serapio, cos 183) banned building a theater because he thought it was more appropriate for men to stand than sit taking in a play. 7/perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?do…

So it seems like you use 'virilitas' to describe things appropriate for men in contexts (poetry, theater) where the much stronger virtus with its strong martial connotations, would seem silly or frivolous. It's a circumlocution and an awkward one at that. 8/

Note what we don't have here: no long discourses on the value of virilitas or its importance.

Compare. Plaut. Amph. 646ff, "virtus is the greatest prize, virtus surely surpasses all things, it guards & preserves liberty, safety, life, property & parents, country & children..."9/

"...Virtus has everything in itself, someone with virtus has every good thing."

So from a basic question of Latinity - of using Latin the way the Romans used Latin - the word you wanted for a 'maximally desirable quality in a man' was virtus. 10/

Which then gets us to the second problem: the claim about Roman cultural values itself, that this is a "high testosterone civilization."

To be blunt, the Romans didn't seem to think so. 11/

So let's go back to virtus. It derives from Latin 'vir' ('man' as distinct from 'woman' or mere 'male' (=homo, hominis)) and so has this sense of 'manliness' but as any good Latinist well tell you more correctly means "courage, valor, excellence, drive." 12/

Virtus - as J.E. Lendon points out in Soldiers & Ghosts - *is* one of the core Roman values, one of the two great pillars (the other being disciplina) on which Roman military masculinity is built.

It was the qualities in someone that made them good at war. 13/

'Someone' because not only men have virtus!

Cornelia (mother of the Gracchi) has virtus (Juv. 6.166-9), Cicero's wife Terentia has virtus (Cic. Ad. Fam. 14.1.1) as does his daughter (Cic. Ad. Fam. 14.11 - summa virtute, no less! the utmost virtus!). 14/

So the actually important value, the one the Romans care about (again, virtus) isn't about 'testosterone' but about courage, energy and drive - and good Roman women can have it too.

Ok, but surely the Romans thought they were the manliest men in the world? Nope. 15/

Instead it is a classic element of Roman thought that the peoples to the north and west of them were excessively masculine, while the people to the south and east were insufficiently masculine, and Rome, of course, was 'just right.' 16/

e.g. Vitruvius 6.1.3-11, where people from northern (wet!damp) places supposedly have deep voices, great courage and energy, but are slow-witted, while people from southern (hot!dry) places are clever, quick-witted planners who lack courage and have high-pitched voices. 17/

And this is a quite common motif in Roman thought, e.g. Vitruvius, op. cit., but also Seneca De Ira 2.15, Pliny HN 2.79-80, Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos 2.2 (where it is explicitly a gendered distinction), Vegetius De Re Militari 1.2. 18/

(Refs. quickly pulled from the excellent sourcebook on Race and Ethnicity in the Classical World (2013) ed.&trans. R.F. kennedy, C.S. Roy and M.L. Goldman) 19/

And of course we've already discussed on the blog the gendered structure of Tacitus' Germania, where the Germanic peoples are constructed (Tacitus never visited Germany) as ultra-masculine, indeed even excessively so, even the women. 20/acoup.blog/2020/02/07/col…

Instead, when the Romans go to describe what makes them unique, it sure isn't being super-masculine.

Cicero attributes Roman success not to numbers, strength or cunning, but superior Roman pietas (piety) and religio (religious scrupulousness), Cic. Har. 19. 21/

Roman diplomats don't extol the value of Roman virility, but rather are always "harping on the word fides" ('trust' 'faith' 'reliability') is in Diodorus 23.1.2. Fides as a core Roman value resounds from Livy; 'virilitas' does not. 22/

In short then, while my words were harsh, I stand by them: 'virilitas' was not a key idea in Roman thought (virtus was).

It is rather an uncommon word and putting it front and center suggests something crucial about Roman culture has been misunderstood. /end