Of the Roman Grandeur

There is a scale to Roman things that defeats our imagination. We read of their public works, their roads, their aqueducts, their games — and we say, yes, we understand, it was very large and very impressive. But I do not think we do understand. To understand we would need to feel in our own chest the indifference to cost, the contempt for the second-rate, the serene assumption that if a thing was worth doing it was worth doing beyond what was strictly necessary — that magnificence was its own justification. This feeling is no longer available to us.

I am speaking not only of stone and mortar. I am speaking of gesture. The Romans gave in a manner we have lost. When a Roman senator released his slaves at a feast, or a general distributed the spoils of a campaign to the people, or a patron endowed a library or a bath, there was in these acts a quality of carelessness about money that we cannot replicate because we do not feel it. We admire the gift while calculating what it cost. The Romans made the gift without the calculation — or rather, the calculation was simply absent, because the question “can I afford this?” was beneath a man of consequence to ask.

“A Roman citizen thought it as indecorous to take a gift as to refuse to give one; they gave not to be thanked but because giving was the proper exercise of what they were.”

This makes them at once admirable and alien. Their virtues were not quite our virtues — they were larger, more absolute, and mixed with things we would not call virtues at all. Their courage shaded into ferocity. Their generosity required an audience. Their honor was a social performance as much as an inner standard. But these impurities do not, for me, diminish the grandeur. A thing may be partly wrong and still be magnificent.

What I take from the Romans is a kind of rebuke to the spirit of sufficiency that governs modern life. We ask: what is adequate? What will do? The Roman asked: what is worthy? These are different questions, and they produce different results.