Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, who lived in the second half of the 4th century, was a prolific writer. Seven speeches and over 900 letters penned by him have survived. Symmachus was entirely typical of his class, based on the information gleaned from these writings. He had numerous large estates scattered across central and southern Italy, Sicily, and North Africa. Some of his friends owned estates in Spain and southern Gaul as well. All of these estates belonging to these wealthy families represent “booty” apportioned out to the supporters of the victorious wars of Imperialism over the centuries. They were shuffled around a bit due to inheritance and marriage settlements, but basically, just as in our own day and time, the wealth was just accumulated and passed around among that 1.5% of the population, including a few “new blood” types who married into the ranks.
Symmachus and his friends justified their domination of the rest of the population because they were “better” than everyone else. In certain of his letters, Symmachus refers to the Senate as “the better part of humankind” which meant, not just the wealthiest, but the best in terms of morality and virtue. This, of course, justified their claim to greater wealth: they deserved it.
How did they get to be “better” than everyone else? It was really rather simple.
They had to speak the right language with the right accents and know the right authors and be able to quote them on any and every occasion. Yes, that’s a simplistic explanation, but that really is all it amounted to. To be a “virtuous man” one had to study a very small number of literary texts intensely under the guidance of an expert in the language and literary interpretation, otherwise known as a grammarian. The accepted writings were those of Vergil, Cicero, Sallust and Terence. After you had mastered that, which could take quite a few years, you then graduated to the tutelage of a
rhetor who would introduce a few more texts into the mix. Texts were studied line by line and every nuance of language and meaning was examined and discussed and probably memorized. Students were assigned to write about their everyday lives in the style of the various authors studied.
The reasoning behind this education system was that these texts were held to contain the canon of correct language and children had to learn the canonical vocabulary and the complex grammar with which to use that vocabulary, as well as the appropriate situations in which the words were applicable. Symmachus and his friends made the claim that by absorbing the contents of the authors they were required to study, they became so much better than other human beings that they literally believed that no one else on the planet equaled them. They firmly believed – and passed on the belief – that Latin grammar was a tool for developing a logical, precise, mind. If you couldn’t master the language, you couldn’t say what you meant or accurately describe anything. In other words, Latin grammar was the Roman equivalent of Formal Logic.
They were also convinced that the texts they revered were the accumulation of all that was needed to know about human behavior, both good and bad, and from those texts you would learn what to do and what not to do in any given situation. This idea was actually a twist on educational philosophy that had developed in classical Greece: that by pondering on a wide range of behaviors one could develop a wide range of intellect and emotions in oneself. One could not know pity, love, hate, without being enlightened and becoming truly human under the tutelage of the Latin grammarian. Symmachus and his friends not only spoke a superior language in superior accents, by their mastery of that language, they could
feel things denied to others, and express things that were unknown to the uneducated masses and barbarians.
You will have noticed, I’m sure, that the curriculum was extremely narrow and the effect of this system turned Latin into a profoundly formal and limited mode of expression. The emphasis on language and the proper accents turned Latin into a cultural vice that held the Empire in an iron grip for centuries.
As soon as a Roman opened his mouth, it was obvious whether or not he belonged to the elite class. And, being a member of the elite class meant that one had the responsibility to lead, to make and impose laws, to hold high office, to set an example of correct behavior in public. You had to learn to control yourself (via learning the language perfectly) before you could attempt to control others. But once you had learned this, and could do whatever you needed to do, basically
without any emotional investment, then you had the right and duty to dominate others. The bottom line was: the Roman Elite shared a privileged culture and it was their duty to stick together. By means of their exclusive education and language, they were destined to lead mankind.
I don’t know what kinds of thought you are having after reading about the Roman education system and the beliefs of its elite class, but what it immediately reminded me of was what some psychologists are calling the “socially compensated psychopath.” A study in 2001 tells us:
Psychopathy, as originally conceived by Cleckley (1941), is not limited to engagement in illegal activities, but rather encompasses such personality characteristics as manipulativeness, insincerity, egocentricity, and lack of guilt - characteristics clearly present in criminals but also in spouses, parents, bosses, attorneys, politicians, and CEOs, to name but a few. (Bursten, 1973; Stewart, 1991). Our own examination of the prevalence of psychopathy within a university population suggested that perhaps 5% or more of this sample might be deemed psychopathic, although the vast majority of those will be male (more than 1/10 males versus approximately 1/100 females).
As such, psychopathy may be characterized ... as involving a tendency towards both dominance and coldness. Wiggins (1995) in summarizing numerous previous findings... indicates that such individuals are prone to anger and irritation and are willing to exploit others. They are arrogant, manipulative, cynical, exhibitionistic, sensation -seeking, Machiavellian, vindictive, and out for their own gain. With respect to their patterns of social exchange (Foa & Foa, 1974), they attribute love and status to themselves, seeing themselves as highly worthy and important, but prescribe neither love nor status to others, seeing them as unworthy and insignificant. This characterization is clearly consistent with the essence of psychopathy as commonly described.
The present investigation sought to answer some basic questions regarding the construct of psychopathy in non forensic settings... In so doing we have returned to Cleckley's (1941) original emphasis on psychopathy as a personality style not only among criminals, but also among successful individuals within the community.
What is clear from our findings is that (a) psychopathy measures have converged on a prototype of psychopathy that involves a combination of dominant and cold interpersonal characteristics; (b) psychopathy does occur in the community and at what might be a higher than expected rate; and (c) psychopathy appears to have little overlap with personality disorders aside from Antisocial Personality Disorder. ...
Clearly, where much more work is needed is in understanding what factors differentiate the abiding (although perhaps not moral-abiding) psychopath from the law-breaking psychopath; such research surely needs to make greater use of non forensic samples than has been customary in the past. {Salekin, Trobst, Krioukova, (2001)"Construct Validity of Psychopathy in a Community Sample: A Nomological Net Approach; Journal of Personality Disorders, 15(5), pp.425-441.}
Obviously, not every member of the ancient Roman elite was a psychopath, but what seems to be suggested in considering the matters above, is that the system was designed and set up by pathological individuals, possibly schizoidal psychopaths , and strictly maintained over hundreds of years by the ruthlessness of its imposition.
Read Marguerite Yourcenar and you will learn how French can be a splendid language. :D
Allow me to disagree, since :
I had to ask Belibaste to clarify.
