The Virtues in General

Our word "virtue" comes from the Latin vir, which means power; a virtue is the perfection of a power. Human virtues are firmly established and readily responsive dispositions in the powers of human beings, especially in reason and in the appetites. Aquinas divides the virtues into the theological, containing faith, hope, and charity, and the cardinal, including prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance; all the other virtues fall under these seven. While the theological virtues are received by grace (and thus, are often called "infused" virtues), the cardinal virtues are acquired by effort (also known as "acquired" virtues). A truly liberal education considers what efforts individuals and communities ought to make in order to seek, to preserve, and to promote the virtues.

The Virtues in Particular

“Thus, the theological virtues, whose object is God, are superior to the others. Among these charity is greatest, because it joins us most closely to God. Next, hope is greater than faith, because hope in a way moves our affections to God, while faith causes God to exist in us as an object of thought. Among the other virtues, prudence is the best, because it governs the others. And after it comes justice, by which one is well ordered not only in oneself, but also toward others. After that comes courage, by which one scorns mortal dangers for the sake of the good. And after that comes temperance, by which one scorns the greatest bodily pleasures for the sake of the good” –Thomas Aquinas (On the Cardinal Virtues, 3. reply)

The Purpose of the Virtues

The purpose of the virtues is to dispose us to act in accord with reason and to receive grace fruitfully. Without virtue, good action is difficult; with virtue, however, good action is not only easier to attain, but they are also more inherently desirable and enjoyable. In fact, one distinguishing mark of the possession of a virtue is taking pleasure in a good action. Free from evil and free for good thoughts and actions, when our faculties that are perfected with virtue they incline us toward what is truly noble and beneficial. The greatest action that man's highest faculties can perform, with the aid of grace, is the contemplation of God. Thus, all the virtues ultimately dispose us for the activity of contemplating God.

Examples from Western History, Literature, and Art

• Heroic
  • Jesus Christ (The New Testament, Jn: 13:33-35)
    • “My children, I will be with you only a little while longer. You will look for me, and as I told the Jews, ‘Where I go you cannot come,’ so now I say it to you. I give you a new commandment:love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
  • St. Augustine (The Confessions, Chapter 1)
    • “Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and Thy wisdom infinite. And Thee would man praise; man, but a particle of Thy creation; man, that bears about him his mortality, the witness of his sin, the witness, that “Thou resistest the proud”: yet would man praise Thee; he, but a particle of Thy creation. Though awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless until it rests in Thee.”
  • St. Paul (1Cor 13:4-8)
    • Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.
  • Socrates (Symposium 211e-212b)
    • “But how would it be, in our view... if someone got to see the Beautiful itself, absolute, pure,, unmixe, not polluted by human flesh or colors or any other great nonsense of mortality, but if he could see the divine Beautiful itself in its one form? Do you think it would be a poor life for a human being to look there and to behold it by that which he ought, and to be with it? Or haven’t you remembered... that in that life along, when he looks at Beauty in the only way that Beauty can be seen––only then will it become possible for him to give birth not to images of virtue (because he’s in touch with no images), but to true virtue (because he is in touch with true Beauty). The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given birth to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he.”
  • Dante and Virgil (Purgatorio XVII.91-105)
    • My son, there’s no Creator and no creature who ever was without love––the natural or mental; and you know that...The natural is always without error, but mental love may choose an evil object or err through too much or too little vigor. As long as it’s directed toward the First Good and tends toward secondary goods with measure, it cannot be the cause of evil pleasure; but when it twists toward evil, or attends to good with more or less care than it should, those whom He made have worked against their Maker. From this you see that––of necessity––love is the seed in you of every virtue and of all acts deserving punishment.
  • Adam’s learning (Paradise Lost 12.561-587)
    • Henceforth I learn that to obey is best, / And love with fear the only God, to walk / As in his presence, ever to observe / His providence, and on him sole depend, / Merciful over all his works, with good / Still overcoming evil and by small / Accomplishing great things, by things deemed weak / Subverting worldly strong, and worldly wise / By simply meek, that suffering for truth’s sake / Is fortitude to highest victory, / And, to the faithful, death the gate of life: / Taught this by his example whom I now  / Acknowledge my redeemer ever blessed.” / To whom thus also the angel last replied: / “This having learned, though hast attained the sum / Of wisdom… / Only add / Deeds to thy knowledge answerable; add faith, / Add virtue, patience, temperance; add love, / By name to come called ‘charity,’ the soul / Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loath / To leave this Paradise but shalt possess / A paradise within thee, happier far.”
  • Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116
    • Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments. Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds, / Or bends with the remover to remove. / O no! it is an ever-fixed mark / That looks on tempests and is never shaken; / It is the star to every wand'ring bark, / Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. / Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks / Within his bending sickle's compass come; / Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, / But bears it out even to the edge of doom. / If this be error and upon me prov'd, / I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

Examples from Western History, Literature, and Art

• Heroic
  • Socrates’s Apology
    • [Socrates:] “[A]ny man who has the spirit of philosophy, will be willing to die, but he will not take his own life, for that is held to be unlawful.”
    • Here he changed his position, and put his legs off the couch on to the ground, and during the rest of the conversation he remained sitting.
    • “Why do you say, enquired Cebes, that a man ought not to take his own life, but that the philosopher will be ready to follow the dying?
    • Socrates replied: And have you, Cebes and Simmias, who are the disciples of Philolaus, never heard him speak of this?
    • Yes, but his language was obscure, Socrates.
    • My words, too, are only an echo; but there is no reason why I should not repeat what I have heard: and indeed, as I am going to another place, it is very meet for me to be thinking and talking of the nature of the pilgrimage which I am about to make. What can I do better in the interval between this and the setting of the sun?
    • Let us reflect in this way, too, that there is good hope that death is a blessing, for it is one of two things: either the dead are nothing and have no perception of anything, or it is, as we are told, a change and relocating for the soul from here to another place. If it is complete lack of perception, like a dreamless sleep, then death would be a great advantage… If, on the other hand, death is a change from here to another place, and what we are told is true and all who have died are there, what greater blessing could there be, gentleman of the jury? If anyone arriving in Hades will have escaped from those who call themselves jurymen here, and will find those true jurymen who are said to sit in judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aecus and Triptolemys and the other demi-gods who have been upright in their own life, would that be a poor kind of change? Again, what would one of you give to keep company with Orpheus and Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer?I am willing to die many times if that is true.... You too must be of good hope as regards death, gentlemen of the ury, and keep this one truth in mind, that a good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death, and that his affairs are not neglected by the gods
  • St. Thomas More’s final words
    • Roper’s Life of Thomas More: “Wherewithal Master Pope, taking his leave of him, could not refrain from weeping. Which Sir Thomas More perceiving, comforted him in this wise, “Quiet yourself, good Master Pope, and be not discomforted, for I trust that we shall, once in heaven, see each other full merrily, where we shall be sure to live and love together, in joyful bliss eternally.” 
  • St. Paul’s hope (Phil 1.20-23)
    • My eager expectation and hope is that I shall not be put to shame in any way, but that with all boldness, now as always, Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me life is Christ, and death is gain. If I go on living in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. And I do not know which I shall choose. I am caught between the two. I long to depart this life and be with Christ, [for] that is far better. 
  • Churchill’s “We Shall Fight on the Beaches”
    • Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
  • St. Thomas More’s soliloquy in The Booke of Thomas More by Shakespeare et al.
    • “It is in heaven that I am [made] thus and thus, / And that which we profanely term our fortunes / Is the provision of the power above, / Fitted and shaped just to that strength of nature / Which we are born [with]. Good God, good God, / That I from such an humble bench of birth / Should step as ‘twere up to my country’s head / And give the law out there; I, in my father’s life / To take prerogative and tithe of knees / From elder kinsmen, and him bind by my place / To give the smooth and dexter way to me / That owe it him by nature! Sure these things, / Not physicked by respect, might turn our blood / To much corruption. But More, the more thou hast / Either of honour, office, wealth and calling, / Which might accite thee to embrace and hug them, / The more do thou in serpents’ natures think them: / Fear their gay skins, with thought of their sharp state, / And let this be thy maxim: to be great / Is, when the thread of hazard is once spun, / A bottom great wound up, greatly undone.” (3.1.1-21)
• Tragic
  • Entrance to Dis in Inferno (III.1-9)
    • THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO THE SUFFERING CITY, THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE ETERNAL PAIN, THROUGH ME THE WAY THAT RUNS AMONG THE LOST. JUSTICE URGED ON MY HIGH ARTIFICER; MY MAKE WAS DIVINE AUTHORITY, THE HIGHEST WISDOM, AND THE PRIMAL LOVE. BEFORE ME NOTHING BUT ETERNAL THINGS WERE MADE, AND I ENDURE ETERNALLY. ABANDON EVERY HOPE, WHO ENTER HERE.

Examples from Western History, Literature, and Art

• Heroic
  • Pious Aeneas in Aeneid II.921-935
    • “Then come, dear father. Arms around my neck: / I’ll take you on my shoulders, no great weight. / Whatever happens, both will face one danger, / Find one safety. Iulus will come with me, / My wife at a good interval behind. / Servants, give your attention to what I say. / At the gate inland there’s a funeral mound / And an old shrine of Ceres the Bereft; / Near it an ancient cypress, kept alive / For many years by our father’s piety. / By various routes we’ll come to that one place. / Father, carry our hearthgods, our Penates. / It would be wrong for me to handle them–– / Just come from such hard fighting, bloody work–– / Until I wash myself in running water.”
  • Antigone Antigone 494-503
    • Yes, it was not Zeus that made the proclamation; / nor did Justice, which lives with those below, enact / such laws as that, for mankind. I did not believe / your proclamation had such power to enable/ one who will someday die to override / God’s ordinances, unwritten and secure. / They are not of today and yesterday; / they live forever; non knows when first they were. / These are the laws whose penalties I would not incur from the gods, through fear of any man’s temper.
  • Fanny Price in Mansfield Park (Chapter 9)
    • They entered. Fanny's imagination had prepared her for something grander than a mere spacious, oblong room, fitted up for the purpose of devotion: with nothing more striking or more solemn than the profusion of mahogany, and the crimson velvet cushions appearing over the ledge of the family gallery above. “I am disappointed,” said she, in a low voice, to Edmund. “This is not my idea of a chapel. There is nothing awful here, nothing melancholy, nothing grand. Here are no aisles, no arches, no inscriptions, no banners. No banners, cousin, to be 'blown by the night wind of heaven.' No signs that a 'Scottish monarch sleeps below.'”
    • “You forget, Fanny, how lately all this has been built, and for how confined a purpose, compared with the old chapels of castles and monasteries. It was only for the private use of the family. They have been buried, I suppose, in the parish church. There you must look for the banners and the achievements.”
    • “It was foolish of me not to think of all that; but I am disappointed.”
    • Mrs. Rushworth began her relation. “This chapel was fitted up as you see it, in James the Second's time. Before that period, as I understand, the pews were only wainscot; and there is some reason to think that the linings and cushions of the pulpit and family seat were only purple cloth; but this is not quite certain. It is a handsome chapel, and was formerly in constant use both morning and evening. Prayers were always read in it by the domestic chaplain, within the memory of many; but the late Mr. Rushworth left it off.”
    • “Every generation has its improvements,” said Miss Crawford, with a smile, to Edmund.
    • Mrs. Rushworth was gone to repeat her lesson to Mr. Crawford; and Edmund, Fanny, and Miss Crawford remained in a cluster together.
    • “It is a pity,” cried Fanny, “that the custom should have been discontinued. It was a valuable part of former times. There is something in a chapel and chaplain so much in character with a great house, with one's ideas of what such a household should be! A whole family assembling regularly for the purpose of prayer is fine!”
  • Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment (Epilogue, II.)
    • “There was a New Testament under his pillow. Mechanically he took it out. It was hers, the very one from which she had read to him the raising of Lazarus. At the beginning of his prison life he had been afraid that she would pester him with religion, talk about the gospels and press books  on him. But to his great astonishment she did not once speak of it, and never even offered him a New Testament. He himself had asked her for it not long before his illness and she had brought it to him without a word. He had not yet opened it. He did not open it even now, but an idea flashed through his mind: ‘Could not her beliefs become my beliefs now? Her feelings, her aspirations, at least…’

Examples from Western History, Literature, and Art

• Heroic
  • Erasmus on More
    • For More says he owes to his literary studies his much better health, his popularity and influence with an excellent prince and all men both friends and strangers, his own greater happiness and happiness he gives his friends, the services he can now rendered to his country and his relations and kinsfolk, and a greater ease in pleasing heaven. At first liberal studies had a bad name for depriving their devoted adherents to the common touch. There is no journey, no business however voluminous or difficult, that can take the book out of Morris hand; and yet it would be hard to find anyone who is more truly a man for all seasons and all men, who was more ready to oblige, more easily available for meeting, more lively conversation, or who combined so much real wisdom with such charm of character.
  • Penelope (Odysseus’s praise of Penelope, Odyssey 19.107-114)
    • “Lady, no mortal man on the endless earth could have cause to find fault with you; your fame goes up into the wide heaven, as of some king who, as a blameless man and god-fearing, and ruling as lord over many powerful people, upholds the way of good government, and the black earth yields him barley and wheat, his trees are heavy with fruit, his sheepflocks continue to bear young, the sea gives him fish, because of his good leadership, and his people prosper under him.”
  • Athena (Eumenides, 881-891)
    • I will not where are you telling the good things I offer, so that you can never say that you, an elder dod, we’re driven unfriended from the land by me in my youth, and by my mortal citizens. But if you hold Persuasion has her sacred place of worship, in the sweet beguilement of my voice, and you might stay with us, but if you wish to stay then it would not be justice to inflict your rage upon the city, your resentment or bad luck to armies. Yours the barrens portion in this land if you will, in all justice, with full privilege.

• • Athena as Mentor to Telemachus in The Odyssey 1.269.-324
    • I will urge you to consider some means by which you can force the suitors out of your household. Come now, pay close attention to me and do as I tell you. Tomorrow, summon the Achaian warriors into assembly and publish your word to all, let the gods be your witnesses. Tell the suitors to scatter and go back to their own holdings, and as for your mother, if the spirit urges her to be married, let her go back to the palace of her powerful father, and they shall appoint the marriage and arrange for the wedding presents in crates amount, but for yourself, I will counsel you shrewdly, and hope you will listen… You should not go on clinging to your childhood. You are no longer of an age to do that…  so you too dear friend, since I can see you are big and splendid, be bold also, so that in generations to come they will praise you… So spoke the goddess grey-eyed Athena, and there she departed like a bird soaring high in the air, but she left in his spirit of determination and courage, and he remembered his father even more than he had before, and he guessed the meaning, and his heart was full of wonder, for he thought it was a divinity.  At once he went over, a godlike man, to sit with the suitors.
  • Cardinal Morton from Thomas More’s Utopia (book 1)
    • While there I was much obliged to than most Reverend Father John Morton, Cardinal Archbishop of Canterbury, and at that time also Lord Chancellor of England. He was and then, my dear Peter (for More already knows what I am about to say) no more venerable for his authority than for his prudence and character. He was of medium height, not stooped over though he was of an advanced age. His looks inspired reverence, not fear. In company he was not standoffish, but grave and serious. Sometimes he enjoying handling suitors roughly, but harmlessly, so as to gauge the intelligence and presence of mind each would display. He was delighted with such qualities, provided they were devoid of all imprudence mama since they were related to his own character, and he embraced them as valuable in getting things done. His speech was polished and pointed; he was very skilled in the law; his intelligence was incomparable; his memory was so excellent as to be prodigious. These extraordinary natural gifts he had improved by study and practice. The king seems to relied very much on his advice and while I was there he seemed to be the mainstay of the Commonwealth. This was not surprising: thrust immediately from school into the court  at a very young age, active and important affairs throughout his life, continually world about by violent changes of fortune, he had learned practical wisdom in the next of many and serious parables, and wisdom so won is not easily forgotten.

Examples from Western History, Literature, and Art

• Heroic
  • Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address 
    • With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
  • Eumaios (“seeker of the good”) to the beggar/Odysseus in The Odyssey 8.83-84
    • “The blessed gods have no love for a pitiless action, but rather they reward justice and what men do that is lawful.”
  • The City of Peace and the City of War on Achilles’ shield in Iliad XVIII.490-510
    • On it he wrought in all their beauty two cities of mortal Men. And there were marriages in one, and festivals. / They were leading the brides along the city from their maiden chambers / Under the flaring torches, and teh loud bride song was arising. / The young men followed the circle of the dance, and among them / The flutes and lyres kept up their clamor as in the meantime / The women standing each at the door of her court admired them. / The people were assembled in the market place, where a quarrel / Had arisen, and two men were disputing over the blood price / for a man who had been killed. / One man promised full restitution / In a public statement, but the other refused and would accept nothing. / Both then made for an arbiter, to have a decision; / And people were speaking up on either side, to help both men. / But the heralds kept the people in hand, as meanwhile the elders / Were in session on benches of polished stone in the sacred circle / And held in their hands the staves of the heralds who lift their voices. / The two men rushed before these, and took turns speaking their cases, / And between them lay on the ground two talents of gold, to be given / To that judge who in this case spoke the straightest opinion. / But around the other city were lying two forces of armed men / Shining in their war gear.
  • Aeneas in Aeneid XII.1264-1298
    • The man [Turnus] brought down, brought low, lifted his eyes / And held his right hand out to make his plea: / “Clearly I earned this, and I ask no quarter. / Make the most of your good fortune here. / If you can feel a father’s grief––and you, too, / Had such a father in Anchises––then / Let me bespeak your mercy for old age / In Daunus, and return me, or my body, / Stripped, if you will, of life, to my own kin. / You have defeated me. The Ausonians / Have seen me in defeat, spreading my hands. / Lavinia is your bride. But go no further / Out of hatred.” / Fierce under arms, Aeneas / Looked to and fro, and towered, and stayed his hand / Upon the sword’s hilt. Moment by moment now / What Turnus said began to bring him round / From indecision. Then to his glance appeared / The accurst swordbelt surmounting Turnus’ shoulder, / Shining with its familiar studs––the strap / Young Pallas wore when Turnus wounded him / And left him dead upon the field; now Turnus / Bore that enemy token on his shoulder–– / Enemy stil. For when the sight came home to him, / Aeneas raged at the relic of his anguish / Worn by this man as trophy. Blazing up / And terrible in his anger, he called out: / “You in your plunder, torn from one of mine, / Shall I be robbed of you? This wound will come / From Pallas: Pallas makes this offering / And from your criminal blood exacts his due.” / He sank his blade in fury in Turnus’ chest. / Then all the body slakened in death’s chill, / And with a groan for the indignity / His spirit fled into the gloom below.
  • The Green Knight’s mercy on Sir Gawain in SGGK 4.2389-2399
    • “Then the other lord laughed and lovingly said, / “I hold it made whole, any harm that I had. / You are cleanly confessed, sir, and cleared of your faults. / You paid penance today on the point of my blade. / I dispense with your promise; you’re polished as clean / As if you’d not erred since you stepped on this earth. / I give you the girdle and all its gold fringes. / Since its green like my gown, Sir Gawain, you’ll perhaps / Remember our meeting when making your way / Among princes of price, a palpable token / Of the chance of the Green Chapel among chivalrous knights.”
• Tragic
  • Caesar in Cicero’s On Duties III.83-85
    • Cicero says that Caesar “undermined all laws, divine and human, in order to establish that dominance which his erroneous belief had targeted for himself. What is distressing in this situation is that the ambition for civil office, military command, power and glory is usually nursed by men of the greatest and most outstanding talent” (I.26). He says later, “I present to you the man who lusted to become king of the Roman people and lord of all the world––and who achieved his aim! Anyone who says that this ambition is honourable is a lunatic; it justifies the extinction of laws and liberty, and regards the squalid and accursed subjugation of them as magnificent… How many more such foes and friends, then, do you imagine confronted the king who exploited the Roman people’s army to subjugate the Roman people itself, and forced the state which was not only free but also the ruler of the world to become his slave? What blemish, what scars do you think he had on his conscience? Can anyone’s life appear useful in his own eyes, when its status is such that the man who deprives him of it will be held in the greatest gratitude and esteem? Thus if the things which seem most useful of all are not in fact useful, because they are steeped in shame and disgrace, that should be enough for us to believe that nothing is useful which is not honourable.”

Examples from Western History, Literature, and Art

• Heroic
  • King Leonidas at the Battle of Thermopylae (Histories by Herodotus, book 7.219-228)
    • Then the Hellenes deliberated, and their opinions were divided; for some urged that they should not desert their post, while others opposed this counsel. After this they departed from their assembly, and some went away and dispersed each to their several cities, while others of them were ready to remain there together with Leonidas… However it is reported also that Leonidas himself sent them away, having a care that they might not perish, but thinking that it was not seemly for himself and for the Spartans who were present to leave the post to which they had come at first to keep guard there. I am inclined rather to be of this latter opinion, namely that because Leonidas perceived that the allies were out of heart and did not desire to face the danger with him to the end, he ordered them to depart, but held that for himself to go away was not honourable, whereas if he remained, a great fame of him would be left behind, and the prosperity of Sparta would not be blotted out:...and the Hellenes with Leonidas, feeling that they were going forth to death, now advanced out much further than at first into the broader part of the defile; for when the fence of the wall was being guarded, they on the former days fought retiring before the enemy into the narrow part of the pass; but now they engaged with them outside the narrows, and very many of the Barbarians fell: for behind them the leaders of the divisions with scourges in their hands were striking each man, ever urging them on to the front. Many of them then were driven into the sea and perished, and many more still were trodden down while yet alive by one another, and there was no reckoning of the number that perished: for knowing the death which was about to come upon them by reason of those who were going round the mountain, they displayed upon the Barbarians all the strength which they had, to its greatest extent, disregarding danger and acting as if possessed by a spirit of recklessness… This conflict continued until those who had gone with Epialtes came up; and when the Hellenes learnt that these had come, from that moment the nature of the combat was changed; for they retired backwards to the narrow part of the way, and having passed by the wall they went and placed themselves upon the hillock, all in a body together except only the Thebans: now this hillock is in the entrance, where now the stone lion is placed for Leonidas...Such were the proofs of valour given by the Lacedemonians and Thespians; yet the Spartan Dienekes is said to have proved himself the best man of all, the same who, as they report, uttered this saying before they engaged battle with the Medes:—being informed by one of the men of Trachis that when the Barbarians discharged their arrows they obscured the light of the sun by the multitude of the arrows, so great was the number of their host, he was not dismayed by this, but making small account of the number of the Medes, he said that their guest from Trachis brought them very good news, for if the Medes obscured the light of the sun, the battle against them would be in the shade and not in the sun...The men were buried were they fell; and for these, as well as for those who were slain before being sent away by Leonidas, there is an inscription which runs thus: “Here is the place that they fought, four thousand from Peloponnesus, And here, on the other side, three hundred ten thousands against.”
  • Scaevola’s fortitude in Livy’s Lives 
    • [T]he king's guards immediately seized and brought him back standing alone before the king's tribunal; even then, amid such menaces of fortune, more capable of inspiring dread than of feeling it, "I am," says he, "a Roman citizen, my name is Caius Mucius; an enemy, I wished to slay an enemy, nor have I less of resolution to suffer death than I had to inflict it. Both to act and to suffer with fortitude is a Roman's part. Nor have I alone harboured such feelings towards you; there is after me a long train of persons aspiring to the same honour. Therefore, if you choose it, prepare yourself for this peril, to contend for your life every hour; to have the sword and the enemy in the very entrance of your pavilion; this is the war which we the Roman youth declare against you; dread not an army in array, nor a battle; the affair will be to yourself alone and with each of us singly." When the king, highly incensed, and at the same time terrified at the danger, in a menacing manner, commanded fires to be kindled about him, if he did not speedily explain the plots, which, by his threats, he had darkly insinuated against him; Mucius said, "Behold me, that you may be sensible of how little account the body is to those who have great glory in view;" and immediately he thrusts his right hand into the fire that was lighted for the sacrifice. When he continued to broil it as if he had been quite insensible, the king, astonished at this surprising sight, after he had leaped from his throne and commanded the young man to be removed from the altar, says, "Be gone, having acted more like an enemy towards thyself than me. I would encourage thee to persevere in thy valour, if that valour stood on the side of my country. I now dismiss you untouched and unhurt, exempted from the right of war." Then Mucius, as if making a return for the kindness, says, "Since bravery is honoured by you, so that you have obtained by kindness that which you could not by threats, three hundred of us, the chief of the Roman youth, have conspired to attack you in this manner. It was my lot first. The rest will follow, each in his turn, according as the lot shall set him forward, unless fortune shall afford an opportunity of you."
  • Abdiel to the fallen angels (Paradise Lost 5.877-907)- commitment in the face of the opposition
    • “O alienate from God, O spirit accursed, / Forsaken of all good; I see thy fall / Determined and thy hapless crew involved / In this perfidious fraud, contagion spread / Both of thy crime and punishment… / That golden scepter which thou didst reject / Is now an iron rod to bruise and break / Thy disobedience…” / So spake the seraph Abdiel, faithful found, / Among the faithless, faithful only he; / Among innumerable false, unmoved, / Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified, / His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal; / Nor number nor example with him wrought / To swerve from truth or change his constant mind / Though single. From amidst them forth he passed, / Long way through hostile scorn, which he sustained / Superior, nor of violence feared aught; / And with retorted scorn his back he turned / On those proud towers to swift destruction doomed.
  • Starbuck (Chapter 41, “Moby Dick” in Moby Dick 123)
    • “Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses a Job’s whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals—morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask. Such a crew, so officered, seemed specially picked and packed by some infernal fatality to help him to his monomaniac revenge.”

Examples from Western History, Literature, and Art

• Heroic
  • Erasmus’ description of Thomas More
    • He enjoys good, but not rude, health, adequate at any rate to support all the duties of a good citizen, subject to no complaints or very few; there is every hope that he will enjoy long life, for his father is still alive at a great age, but wonderfully active and vigorous for his years. I have never seen a man less peculiar about his food. Until he reached manhood he was content to drink nothing but water, a habit he inherited from his father. Only, for fear of causing any embarrassment in this regard, he used to drink his beer out of the pewter tankard, so that the guests did not know––small beer next door to water, and often just water. As for wine, the habit in those parts being to invite your neighbor to drink in his turned from the same cup, he sometimes barely sipped it, so as not to seem entirely to dislike it, and at the same time to learn to follow common usage… Simple clothes please him best, and he never wears silk or scarlet or a gold chain, except when it is not open to him to lay it aside. He sets surprisingly little store by the ceremonies which ordinary men regard as a touchstone good breeding; these he never demands from other people nor tenders meticulously himself either in public assemblies or in private parties, but he thinks it effeminate and unworthy of the man to waste a good part of his time in such frivolities.
  • Penelope to the beggar/Odysseus in The Odyssey 19.325-334
    • [F]or how, my friend, will you learn if I in any way / surpass the rest of women, in mind and thoughtful good sense, / if you must attend, badly dressed and unwashed, the feasting / in the palace? Human beings live for only a short time, / and when a man is harsh himself, and his mind knows harsh thoughts, / all men pray that sufferings will befall him hereafter / while he lives; and when he is blameless himself, and his thoughts are blameless, / the friends he has entertained carry his fame widely / to all mankind, and many are they who call him excellent [arete].
  • Socrates’ temperance in Plato’s Symposium
    • Alcibiades says, “All this had already occurred when Athens invaded Potidaea, where we served together and shared the same mess. Now, first, he took the hardships of the campaign much better than I ever did––much better, in fact, than anyone in the whole army. When we were cut off from our supplies, as often happens in the field, no one else stood up to hunger as well as he did. And yet he was the one man who could really enjoy a feast; and though he didn’t much want to drink, when he had to, he could drink the best of us under the table. Still, and most amazingly, no one ever saw him drunk” (Symposium 219d-e).
    • [Aristomedes] saw that the others had either left or were asleep on their couches and that only Agathon, Aristophanes, and Socrates were still awake, drinking out of a large cup which they were passing around from left to right. Socrates was talking to them. Aristodemus couldn’t remember exactly what they were saying––he’d missed the first part of their discussion, and he was half-asleep anyway––but the main point was that Socrates was trying to prove to them that authors  should be able to write both comedy and tragedy: the skillful tragic dramatist should also be a comic poet. He was about to clinch his argument, though, to tell the truth, sleepy as they were, they were hardly able to follow his reasoning. In fact, Aristophanes fell asleep in the middle of the discussion, and very soon thereafter, as day was breaking, Agathon also drifted off. But after getting them off to sleep, Socrates got up and left, and Aristodemus followed him, as always. He said that Socrates went directly to the Lyceum, washed up, spent the rest of the day just as he always did, and only then, as evening was falling, went home to rest. (Symposium 223c-d) 
  • Purgatorio XXIII.64-75 on the Terrace of Gluttony said by Forse Donati:
    • All of these souls who, grieving, sing because / Their appetite was gluttonous, in thirst / And hunger here sanctify themselves. / The fragrance of the fruit and of the water / That’d sprayed through that green tree kindles in us / Craving for food and drink; and not once only, / As we go round this space, our pain’s renewed–– / I speak of pain but I should speak of solace, / For we are guided to those trees by that / Same longing that had guided Christ when He / Had come to free us through the blood He shed / And, in His joyousness, called out: ‘Eli.’”
  • Purgatorio XXIV 145-154 on the Terrace of Gluttony Dante says,
    • And like a breeze of May that––heralding / The drawing of the day––when it is steeped / In flowers and in grass, stirs fragrantly, / So did I feel the wind that blew against / The center of my brow, and clearly senseed / The movement of his wings, the air’s ambrosia. / And then I heard: “Blessed are those whom grace / Illumines so, that, in their breasts, the love / Of taste does not awake too much desire–– / Whose hungering is always in just measure.”
  • Purgatorio XXV.112-120
    • There, from the wall, the mountain hurls its flames; / But, from the terrace side, there whirls a wind / That pushes back the fire and limits it; / thus , on the open side, proceeding one  / by one, we went; I feared the fire on / The left and, on the right, the precipice. / My guide said: “On this terrace, it is best / To curb your eyes; the least distraction––left / Or right––can mean a step you will regret.”