the government of consuls, senate, and tribunes which ruled Rome until
Augustus instituted the principate after the Battle of Actium in31 bce.For
defenders of the old regime, the end of Roman liberty had signaled the end of
Roman virtue; and the end of Roman virtue had put at grave risk the
imperium that Rome had so assiduously cultivated over centuries. These
writers treated the relationship between libertas andvirtusas axiomatic.
Only men who governed themselves in a free state (civitas libera) could
summon the level of agency necessary for virtuous action, and, as a result,
only they could acquire glory. By contrast, slaves—those unfortunates who
lived in a state of dependence upon the will of their masters—became passive,
demoralized, and impotent in the face of tyranny (Skinner 2001 , 237 – 68 ; Pettit
1999 ). The historian Sallust sums up this equation in a famous passage of his
Bellum Catilinae: ‘‘Because kings hold the good in greater suspicion than the
wicked, and to them the merit of others is always fraught with danger,’’ the
city of Rome ‘‘was only able to rise so suddenly to her incredible level of
strength and greatness once she gained her liberty, such was the thirst for
glory thatWlled men’s minds’’ (Sallust 1921 , 13 ). Because kings fear competi-
tion from the virtuous, virtue can only thrive in a free state. Accordingly, once
the Roman people had achieved freedom and political rights, Roman virtue
could become the engine of imperial glory. With the rise of factions and
dictators, however, Rome returned to a state of subjection, and became ‘‘the
worst and most vicious’’ of cities (Sallust 1921 , 11 ).
Liberty, then, served two functions in the system of thought with which we
are concerned. It was,Wrst of all, a good in and of itself. As Cicero has it in theDe
oYciis, liberty is that value ‘‘for which a high-souled man should stake every-
thing’’ (Cicero 1913 , 71 ). But liberty was equally important as an instrumental
good: it was a prerequisite for glory, the animating principle of the Roman
tradition. 2 For Cicero, public service in a self-governing commonwealth is the
source of ‘‘the highest and most perfect glory’’ (Cicero 1913 , 199 ), and justice
likewise recommends itself to men because it is the source of ‘‘true glory’’ ( 1913 ,
211 ). The glory described in these passages is not an abstract, other-worldly
quality; it is, like the Greekkle ́os, 3 a function of reputation and public recog-
nition, and, in the case of states, its most prominent guarantor isimperium
(empire). But how precisely does liberty make glory possible? This question
2 The centrality ofgloriain Roman thought has been a focus of Renaissance historiography since
Burckhardt ( 1990 , 104 ). See also Brunt ( 1978 , 159 – 91 ); Skinner ( 1988 , 412 – 41 ; 1990 , 121 – 41 ).
3 The etymology of this word is quite revealing.Kle ́osderives from the same root as the verbklu ́o,
meaning ‘‘to hear.’’ A person’skle ́osis, thus, literally what is ‘‘heard’’ about him.
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