When in Rome?
When in Rome?
...Would a Roman have said that?
Minds today are in the grip of an idea frequently expressed by a seemingly urbane platitude, 'when in Rome, do as the Romans do'.
However, is this something a Roman would have said?
Most certainly many would have.
But what does the phrase mean?
Two interpretations are possible:
The first interpretation takes the phrase as an argument for Society Sez moral theory. This claims that morality is relative, and that there is no such thing as absolute right or wrong in any circumstance.
The second interpretation can take the phrase to advocate for a general respect for other peoples way of addressing life's challenges, leaving open the possibility that conduct that appears questionable to surface inspection, might reveal itself to be praise-worthy under closer examination and compared with objective moral reality.
The latter interpretation is in no way controversial except to ideologues, but it is also not what is typically meant by the phrase when it is used today. Rather, the former meaning is what is implied and how it is understood, whether the speaker and the hearer are cognizant of its implications or not.
What are these implications?
In a broad way the implication of the Society Sez interpretation rules out any possibility of behaving in the way the latter interpretation rightly recognizes as being fair minded. Because it rules out the validity of asking the question 'is this right objectively?' - the latter interpretation is predicated on the validity of the question - in favor of the claim that 'whatever we find to be the case, is right' for no other reason than because it is how we find things.
At this point I hope it is coming into focus that not all is well here. Most people instinctively grasp that something has gone very wrong when we are told to stop thinking about things, shut up, and go with the flow.
In greater detail, the implications of Society Sez interpretation are vast. The idea that morality is always fictitious and without any objective basis is like a large lever, wedged against epistemology and anthropology.
The force of the lever against epistemology (how we know things) is seen in descriptors like socially constructed, which claim that we don't know moral truth, rather, we make it up as we go along to suit our desires. The force of the lever against anthropology (what is a human being) behaves in the same way, because a part of moral understanding comes from understanding how we should behave towards a person, in light of our knowing that they are persons.
(Make no mistake, to claim that a human being cannot know something objectively, like morality, is inevitably to say something about what the human being intrinsically is.)
Meanwhile in their long and cosmopolitan history the Romans did not come to see people in the truncated way assumed by Society Sez interpretation, because they did not regard human knowledge to be this limited in the area of right and wrong.
And here the Roman experience with alien peoples who lived, and fought, and died in remote places that had nothing to do with one another should not be passed by without drawing attention to the fact that such life and death stakes would naturally lead to the quality of Roman insight exceeding what passes for cosmopolitanism among todays city dwelling elite, who are ever ready to chime in approvingly at this or that faux-intellectual declaiming in contemporary verbiage that respect for objective right and wrong is something only dirty peasants might do.
So what was the Roman insight?
While listening to lectures given by the late (and very much missed) Professor Daniel N. Robinson, I was treated to his rich insight into what is the greatest Roman contribution to the history of ideas, what was called the Ius Gentium or the Law of Peoples (later to be known as the Ius Naturale, or Law of Nature).
In explaining what is meant by this nomenclature, I can't outdo Cicero who wrote:
"True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions." - Marcus Tullius Cicero
By far the people who most affected the thought life of the Romans- with the exception of the Jewish intellectual revolution that would become known as Christianity - were the Hellenes, of whose philosophy Cicero had been an eager explorer since his childhood. And in the distant exposition of Hellenic insight found in Homer's Iliad we find the same truth Cicero and the Romans affirmed:
Among the Trojans was a certain Dares, a rich and blameless man, a priest of Hephaestus; he had two sons, Phegeus and Idaios, well skilled in all kinds of battle; these two, peeling off from the throng, charged against the son of Tydeus, they from their chariot, and he on foot charged from the ground. Then when they had advanced almost upon each other, Phegeus was first to hurl his long-shadowed spear; over the son of Tydeus’ left shoulder the spear-point passed, nor struck him. But the son of Tydeus attacked next with his bronze-headed spear; and not in vain did his cast escape his hand, but he struck Phegeus in the chest between the breasts, and knocked him from his chariot. And Idaios abandoning the splendid chariot leapt away, nor had he courage to stand over his slain brother; nor indeed would even he have escaped dark death, had not Hephaestus brought him from danger and saved him, concealed in darkness, so that the old man, his priest, not be wholly broken with sorrow. - The Iliad, pg. 89, translated by Caroline Alexander.
In the above scene from the Iliad, we can see the blind poets insight into what would be shown more fully later. That in the midst of war and slaughter between Greeks and their foreign enemies, the Trojans, the seer sees the same common humanity, noting as he does the love a Trojan father - the priest of Hephaestus - has for his sons. This common human nature transcends the clashing spears and ringing shields of the combatants like thunder rolls across the sky.
But Gutenberg, aren't you being a bit grandiose, after all who cares if some people drive on the left hand side of the road and others on the right?
I would be being grandiose, if the premise of this question were correct, namely it assumes that all law is akin to a EULA agreement (and no one even reads those!).
Here we come back to the question of epistemology. The Ius Gentium referred to above, is predicated on human beings having the same fundamental moral knowledge - by virtue of the plain truth that they are human beings - such as it being wrong to harm someone without justification.
Not everyone is going to know that in a certain locality everyone has agreed to drive on the left hand side of the road, the same way that they will fundamentally know that it is absolutely wrong to go into a strangers house and help themselves to dinner without asking. They will know this is true of other countries just as they will know it is true of their own country.
Strangers are no less sure such fundamentals are operative in foreign communities they approach in the name of trade, diplomacy, and war, than they are that those communities invariably all speak a language. Because speaking is something people do, it is in their nature. Someone who sees a fully grown adult human being, understands that sans some terrible disability, that they know how to communicate via language - there is no doubt about it.
In Conclusion
When we hear the phrase 'when in Rome, do as the Romans do', (or the many other versions of the idea) we ought to understand it as the Roman Cicero would have understood it, in its legitimate second sense, and not the way it is meant today among the fashionable. Ultimately their error is condescending and harmful to human flourishing, even as it is packed in verbiage that tries to imply otherwise. No amount of verbiage can repair a fundamental mistake, or save those who fall victim to the consequences of it.
