Original scientific paper

Ethical Justification of the Roman Empire

Igor Mikecin ; Institute for Social Research in Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

Hellenistic learning commenced in connection with the historic decay
of polis and with the founding first of Hellenistic and then of Roman Empire. This connection is manifested in the fact that Middle Stoa
gives an ethical justification of the Roman Empire. According to the
Stoics, the Roman rule of the world is justified as much as ethically
undeveloped peoples submit themselves to ethically superior Romans
thus improving themselves in terms of ethics. To the Stoics, the true
community is not polis any more but the cosmopolis. The foremost representatives of Middle Stoa Panaitius and Poseidonius hold that
Rome's historical mission, through its rule over the world, is to make
real the notion of the essential equality among the men and to confirm
the worth of an individual as a person. In Rome the Stoics see that
historical power which can realize the stoical cosmopolis in the world.
So the question of ethical justification of the Roman Empire is being
put within the question of the true community as the community of
ethically perfected individuals. Although the Stoics reject Aristotle's
learning which justifies the slavery, and distinguish those people in
the first place by their intelligence, in their justification of the Empire
they basically use the same manner of explanation as the Aristotle. In his works De re publica and De officiis, Cicero conveyed basic Hellenistic ideas, and the New Roman Stoa (Seneca, Marcus Aurelius)
adopted and further developed stoical learning. Such justification of the Empire is later found at Roman historiographers Livius and Tacitus.

Keywords

world history; Hellenism; Roman Empire; law; community; individual; person

Hrčak ID:

35572

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/35572

Publication date:

14.4.2009.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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