ABSTRACT
It is time now to take stock of our results. This book has argued that we find in the Memorable Deeds and Sayings of Valerius Maximus a theology of virtue, a polytheistic and multi-centered one, to be sure, and one already tending to organize itself around the emperor as a living god, but one where traditional gods communicated and acted in the human realm according to a logic revealed in the anecdotes of Rome’s sacred history. At the outset of our study, we made a self-conscious decision not to dismiss rhetorical statements out of hand as “mere rhetoric,” but rather to accept the style as part of the man, the means employed by the human being, the author called Valerius Maximus, to express his point of view. His work is complex. We followed initially three divine guides, traditional gods of Rome. Having examined in some detail the roles of Juno, Vesta, and Jupiter in the anecdotes of the Facta et dicta memorabilia, we turned to ritual vocabulary and the more general intersections of virtue and religion. We may now sketch our conclusions regarding Valerius’ general presentation of gods, the function of traditional Roman religion in his exempla, and the relation of religion to the virtues or values he upholds. We shall also, however, have to sketch the role of one god in particular, one not of our own choosing, but one, nevertheless, whose presence we felt throughout our study, one intimately connected in fact to
to exempla and to religion.
