The Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day, and Exemplary Anarchism^21be derived.^5 The latter sense of the term, which gave paradeigma
a functional role independent of larger ontological claims, was
not far removed from the way in which early Greek historians
like Herodotus and Thucydides began to conceive of the im-
port of historical examples. In his History of the Peloponnesian
War, Thucydides first made explicit an idea at best implicit in
Herodotus’ Histories: the study of history had utility in the pres-
ent because it allowed one to learn from the examples—both
good and bad—of one’s historical predecessors, and to act with
prudence in confronting situations similar to those they faced.^6
Later historians like Xenophon and Ephorus gave paradeigma an
even more prominent role in their work by introducing an ex-
tradiegetic authorial voice meant to identify exemplary conduct
unambiguously and ensure that it would be recognized as such
by the reader. This innovation was increasingly put in the service
of didactic and moralistic aims by the Greek historian Polybius,
as well as historians of ancient Rome like Livy, for whom the
Latin term corresponding to paradeigma was exemplum.^7 Aside
from the prominent place accorded exempla in ancient histories,
orators like Cicero helped to make exempla a standard feature of
Roman rhetoric.^8
In Roman thought and culture, the idea of the exemplum was
closely linked to the figure that modern parlance knows as the ex-
emplar, an individual whose body of accomplishments as a whole
is considered exemplary and worthy of emulation. Romans memo-
rialized great personages in a manner that linked their great deeds
to an underlying greatness of character, as reflected in physical
monuments like public statuary and imagines (images of ances-
tors displayed in the atria of noble residences), which often tout-
ed the high points of the individual’s résumé in pictorial or even
list form. Exemplarity became intertwined not just with specific
acts, but with the overarching biographies of exceptional people,
setting the stage for the exemplary personal narratives later asso-
ciated with the venerated figures of Christendom. Unsurprisingly,
given the dominant values of Roman society, exemplars tended to
be revered politicians and military leaders, national heroes whose
most admirable actions involved the subordination of self and
personal relationships to patriotic duty. Despite the fact that these