Exempla tuenda: Religion, virtue, and politics in Valerius Maximus

Valerius Maximus is a true believer. Analysis of the religious element in the Facta et dicta memorabilia discovers a pious soul passionately devoted to the moral and religious reforms initiated by Augustus and promoted by Tiberius. Roman religion constitutes the moral foundation of the virtues that Valerius consequently illustrates and promotes. Close links between Roman religion and morality (prescribed human behavior) are uncovered through detailed examination of the roles that four traditional state-gods (Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, and Vesta) play in his exempla. These gods promote virtues that vary according to class and gender. Wherever other treatments of the same historical material exist (from Herodotus to Orosius, but especially Valerius' predecessors Cicero and Livy; his contemporaries Ovid, Seneca the Elder, and Velleius Paterculus; and his successors, Pliny the Elder, Plutarch, Lactantius, and Augustine), they are compared with Valerius' versions. Cross-examination not only reveals that Valerius intensifies the religious element in order to add rhetorical force to the values his exempla exalt, but such comparison also throws into sharp relief the manner in which he shapes traditional material in conformance with the political and ideological exigencies of Tiberian Rome. Attention to the contemporary political context of Valerius' work also exposes new gods lurking, so to speak, amid the ancient pulvinaria. The divi Caesares are powerful, living gods, who maintain a vigilant presence throughout Valerius' work, informing its very texture. Tiberius himself, moreover, is a manifest god on earth, actively promoting the virtues ordained by tradition as exalted by Valerius. How actively these new gods promote virtue becomes clear through comparison of Valerian virtue with Augustan moral legislation, coin propaganda, and ancient historical accounts of Tiberius' reign (especially Tacitus). In the Facta et dicta memorabilia, traditional Roman religion, as adapted to the political conditions of the early principate, constitutes a powerful component of the modified mos maiorum. Valerius' exempla, because they relentlessly advocate "traditional" values, allow a glimpse into the intoxicating potential of the new imperial gospel. Rome's traditional gods, the divi Caesares, and the worship of power all stand nakedly revealed in the intense and uncompromising pietas of Valerius Maximus.