How to be a (Roman) man

Cicero’s ideal of manly virtue stressed the performance of self-control and bravery, not boastful egotism and domination

by Catharine Edwards  BIO

Roman bust, mid-1st century CE. Courtesy the Met Museum, New York

is professor of classics and ancient history at Birkbeck, University of London, and a fellow of the British Academy. Her publications include a translation of Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars (2008), The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome (2nd ed, 2025) and Orator: The Life of Cicero and the End of the Roman Republic (2026).

Edited byNigel Warburton

What does it mean to be a man? In the early 21st century, masculinity is contested and fraught with anxiety; influencers offer models of manliness involving fast cars, sexual conquests, and building up muscle. Before the rise of feminism, they suggest, in some supposed Golden Age, everyone had a shared sense of what it meant to be a man – and being a man was unproblematically good. The Roman Empire, in their view, offers men today an inspirational example of power, hierarchy and achievement, which is why men think about it so much – unlike women, who are too immersed in their feelings…

Manliness certainly was celebrated in the works of Cicero, republican Rome’s most eloquent statesman. In the mid-1st century BCE, his persuasive powers in the law courts and the senate were second to none; his speeches went on to inspire would-be orators well into the 20th century. He is often seen as the very embodiment of the Roman republic. The political world in which he flourished was a self-consciously masculine one; to be accused of acting like a woman was, for a Roman man, a grievous insult. Yet in Cicero’s writing we can find other strains too.

For Roman men, anything labelled feminine was necessarily to be avoided, something to be ashamed of. But what exactly did it mean to act like a man? Ancient Rome in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE saw the rise of a succession of military leaders who were promoted as masculine role models. The great general Marius won a series of victories in Spain, North Africa and on Italy’s northern frontier. For several years in a row, he was elected consul, one of Rome’s two chief executive officers. Unlike many other Roman politicians, he didn’t have an aristocratic background. One Roman writer imagines Marius fending off accusations that he was coarse in his manners:

elegance is becoming to women but toil to men. All virtuous men ought to have more fame than riches. Arms, not fine trappings, bring glory.– from The War Against Jugurtha by Sallust(All translations are adapted from the Loeb Classical Library.)

Here was a model of manliness forged on the battlefield.

Given the military might of ancient Rome, it is surely unsurprising that Romans often associated masculinity with courage in battle. The word virtus, a term cognate with the Roman vir (meaning man as opposed to woman), clearly means ‘courage in war’ when it is first recorded in the mid-5th century BCE. Courage in battle could be taken as the foremost manifestation of Roman masculinity. The historian Sallust, writing in the 40s BCE, praises earlier generations of Romans for their pre-eminent manliness in war: ‘whenever their virtus repelled dangers, they rendered aid to their allies and friends.’ And yet, while Rome continued to boast ever more notable military successes in the middle and later republic (from the 3rd to the 1st century BCE), the battlefield was by no means the only arena in which Roman masculinity might be put to the test.

Statue of Cicero. Courtesy the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

When Cicero was 16, like others of his social standing, his transition to adulthood was marked by a special ceremony, most likely at the feast of the Liberalia in 90 BCE. This was the moment when he first put on the toga of manhood, a cumbersome length of woollen fabric worn by Roman citizen men, a garment associated with civilian as opposed to military life. Years later, as consul in 63 BCE, Cicero played a leading role in uncovering and suppressing a conspiracy against the Roman state, and boasted that this was a victory won by ‘citizens in togas’. It was his speeches that had convinced his fellow senators and the Roman people of the dangers posed by Catiline’s conspiracy, leading to decisive action against those involved. Cicero had used his voice as consul to save Rome, he declared in a speech a few years later. Throughout his life, he insisted his victory was comparable to those of Rome’s greatest generals. Masculine achievements weren’t confined to the battlefield; rhetoric and oratory could also conquer.

By the time he secured the consulship, Cicero was regarded as Rome’s top orator. Public speaking was highly prized by members of Rome’s governing elite. Its end result mattered hugely – winning over one’s listeners. But the way Rome’s politicians spoke and even how they dressed could also serve to demonstrate their manliness. Codes of civilian masculinity governed behaviour in public spaces such as the Forum, the law-courts and the senate. Markers of manliness in this sphere were subject to relentless public scrutiny. As the later expert on oratory Quintilian put it, the orator’s dress needs to be ‘resplendent and manly: for when it comes to one’s toga and shoes and hair, excessive care as well as negligence are equally blameable’. The toga, for instance, must be correctly draped; he notes a little later, ‘throwing back the fold from its bottom onto the right shoulder is foppish and effeminate’.

Orators were alert to........

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