The End of Man (Part Seven), Roman Honor

Honor, popularity, fame, achievement: all of these things have the same end, the same goal: to be in the good opinion of other men.

High-schoolers obsess over popularity. Athletes seek to achieve feats unreached by prior generations. Many celebrities and musicians are consumed in their quest for fame. The ancient Greeks and Romans lived first and foremost for honor. To live for the opinion of others is not the end of man, for it enslaves man and prevents him from truly living.

High school is temporary. Athletes and celebrities die and are soon forgotten. We do not remember the dead as other cultures have so the trappings of fame and achievement don’t hold much weight with us. We barely remember Michael Jordon and Princess Diana, let alone Jim Thorpe and Doris Day. Yet there have been cultures where the end of man was viewed as being seen in good standing: the ancient Greeks and Romans.

To the Greeks and Romans honor was the end of man. Life, happiness, wealth, sex: not one of them mattered if a man was dishonored and a man would sacrifice them all for honor. Two stories will demonstrate my point.

In the Greek city-state of Sparta young boys were taught to steal. But it was shameful to get caught stealing. Plutarch tells us that one such young boy stole a fox and hid it under his shirt. He was stopped by another citizen who wanted to talk to him. As the boy stood there the fox began to claw at his stomach. The boy was in immense pain but refused to release the fox or even make a noise; he could not endure the shame of being caught. Eventually the boy fell over dead. He chose to bleed to death in honor, rather than be caught stealing. He was remembered fondly for this act.

Livy tells the story of a brave warrior named Gauis of the Roman Republic. Gauis and two other Romans were to do battle with three Sabine warriors. These six would wage war on behalf of their cities. Whoever won would win their freedom and booty from the other. Gauis won a great victory that day, defeating all three Sabine warriors after his fellow Roman warriors were killed. His sister had been in love with one of the fallen Sabine warriors. During his victorious return to Rome Gauis’ sister began to weep upon hearing of the death of her lover. At this Gauis unsheathed his sword and struck her dead on the spot. She had dared to dishonor him on the day of his great victory by weeping over the death of one of his enemies. This was an expected response to his sister’s act of dishonor.

We must study the past so we may remember that the things we assume are universal values have not been so important by others. Often what we call truth is nothing more than a modern opinion. When modern writers tell us that what we believe is uncontested, we must know that what is has not always been so. Man did not always live primarily for wealth or happiness: there was a time when a man lived proudly in poverty and pain so long as he had honor. Yet, living for honor had many negative aspects, the greatest being its enslaving character.

When one lives for honor they are bound by the expectations of others. They dress, act, talk not how they want to, but how others want them to. They do nothing freely; every action is done with the opinion of others in mind. If a society has good values, a person may do good actions, but these will not be morally good. For a thing to be morally good a person must freely choose it. If one does something, good or bad, out of fear of what others will think, that action is not freely done. One may not divorce because of opinion, go to church because it is expected, and give to charity to impress others. But faithfulness must be freely chosen to be morally good. And how can one have love if they only stay married so others will think good of them? Generosity has no moral meaning if it is done to impress others. We must do these things freely for them to have moral worth and we must be free from the opinions of others in order to act freely.

It is true that we do not live for honor like the Romans did, but we often worry about what others think. We should not do this. Not only does it prevent us from eating, reading, and watching what we like, but it prevents us from doing any good deed. If we only do good deeds out of compulsion, we do no good. And what happens if society has bad values? If we want to fit in we will become bad men.

No, to live for honor is not man’s men for it enslaves man and prevents him from freely living.