Dialogues with the Dead II
Vampires, Vir, Virtue.
Shiyoun Kim (Liz)
True enthusiasts of the Gothic remember the days of vampires before the Twilight franchise struck down like a meteor. There were times when vampires didn’t glitter in sunlight. Lestat de Lioncourt of Anne Rice’s revolutionary Interview with the Vampire is from the good old days before vampires turned ‘vegan’, when they still killed like gods and sucked the blood and life out of their human victims. The novel centres around the born-yesterday vampire Louis as the tormented protagonist, who, while still clinging to the norms and conscience of a human, trembles before the ‘evil’ killings of a vampire. In response to this, to shed a light of common sense to his bewailing partner, Lestat thus says:
“Evil is a point of view.”
If evil is only a point of view, so is the notion of ‘good’. Being virtuous is then reduced into a matter of subjectivity. Virtue itself is not an absolute concept; it is arbitrary. How can this be? How are we to accept this when we, as the modern audience, have been brought up and educated under our dutiful parents, guardians, and teachers to become ‘good’ people? Being virtuous is the moral imperative that our current era and society demands from its constituents. Hence the idea that virtue and morality in a wider sense are only arbitrary may appear as absurd, or even repellingly psychopathic.
Yet when we consider the very etymology of the word ‘virtue’, a perspective both disturbing and fascinating is revealed. The English noun ‘virtue’ has its root in Latin ‘virtus’, which in turn has sprung from the most common Latin noun ‘vir’; man (here the word indicates precisely the male human being, not in the more general sense of the word including all human beings). So if we push the translation of the Latin word to the extremities of literality, the correct meaning of ‘virtus’ becomes ‘manliness’, and being ‘virtuous’, in Roman sense, means being ‘manly’.
In order to define the original criteria of virtue, then, we need to know what being ‘manly’ meant in the Roman world. Firstly, we have the contentious notion that “virtus could only be demonstrated on the battlefield”¹. The Romans frequently employed the term ‘virtus’ in the sphere of war, especially in discussion of the all-male, aristocratic cavalry in the army of the Republic. Each member of this elite unit was required to demonstrate their ‘virtus’, which consisted of specific qualities such as martial courage both in comradeship and single combat. Therefore being virtuous in this respect meant being an aristocratic male with unflinching excellence in sanctioned violence against ‘barbarians’.
Yet the word ‘virtus’ was also employed in a rather different context, such as in the sphere of politics. Latin historian Livy presents the prominent politicians of the Republican era, such as Cicero and Cato, who had seized power (a loosely translated version of imperium) through the Roman political system of cursus honorum, as having undisputable claim to virtus.² Cicero himself states on a number of occasions that man with imperium has “singular virtus”.³ Thus one can say that politicians are highly ‘virtuous’ sorts indeed (without any irony, according to the Romans).
We may ask, at this point, whether the Roman ‘virtus’ was a term exclusive to males. As we can infer from the word’s close association with ‘vir’ (man), ‘virtus’ is rarely used in depiction of Roman women; a more common Roman term in moral approbation of the other gender has been ‘pudicitia’, a word with multiple options for an English equivalent, ranging anywhere from ‘shame’ to ‘modesty’, or even ‘chastity’. Nevertheless, there have been a small number of occasions when the term ‘virtus’ was employed for females. For example, in the letter of Cicero addressing his wife, Terentia (Cic.Fam.14.1):
“perfertur ad me incredibilem tuam virtutem et fortitudinem esse teque nec animi neque corporis laboribus defetigari”
(The news was delivered to me that your unparalleled ‘virtus’ and strength have not been worn out by the toils on your mind and body).
Cicero praises the unparalleled strength of Terentia that gives no sign of fatigue from her toils, in body or in mind, and labels it ‘virtus’. In order to understand this uncommon use of ‘virtus’ in the encomium of a woman, we need to take the context of this letter into our consideration. Here Cicero writes a tender, emotionally charged letter to his dear wife (later divorced) while he wanders around Thessalonica and Durrachium, far away from Rome, as a wretched exile. Cicero’s exile from Rome after fatally losing in the political game results in his family being exposed to his inimici (social/political enemies), while in want of the traditional male head of the household. Hence Terentia is left alone to fill her husband’s position as the defender of their children and the wider household; in a sense, a surrogate patriarch. In this respect, it is no surprise that Cicero unconventionally endows the term ‘virtus’ to his wife.
To sum up, under the original categories of ‘virtue’ according to the Roman usage of the term ‘virtus’, we can call ourselves virtuous if we are 1) a posh knight who’s really good at killing off ‘barbarians’, 2) a highly ambitious and successful politician (for whom bribes etc. are permissible, if they can get you to the top), or 3) a strong wife who does not whine and is ‘not like the other girls’.
Obviously these instances are far away from our modern uses of the term ‘virtuous’. From this discrepancy between what virtue represented in the past and in the present, we can glimpse a strange yet profound insight into morality - its fluidity. A society within a certain period defines what is morally commendable, what is ‘good’ and ‘right’ according to the type of person that it needs the most for its survival. Without powerful politicians and a military the Roman Republic could not survive. A vampire’s killing of humans is justifiable to Gothic characters precisely because it is the only means of survival in a godless world.
The dead Roman viri (men) and vampires, then, ask us a number of questions in turn: are the values we believe are ‘right’ absolute? How are we to act when our values collide with those of other people, perhaps from parts of the world, where society is run and lives are lived completely differently? Is it possible to claim that one framework of justice is superior to that of others?
¹ McDonnell, M. (2006) Roman Manliness: “Virtus” and the Roman Republic, Cambridge University Press.
² Schrader, K. (2016) Virtus in the Roman World: Generality, Specificity, and Fluidity, The Gettysburg Historical Journal: Vol. 15 , Article 6.
³ Cicero, Marcus Tullius. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.