ABSTRACT
This chapter describes Roman concepts of fidelity as they are expressed in different institutions, particularly military, governmental, and educational arrangements. It distinguishes Roman history into three periods; the Republic, ends when the Gracchi brothers are assassinated, the Transformation culminates in Augustus attempt to modernize Rome, and the Imperial or Corrupt Age carries us to the disintegration of the state in the West. Of all the ancient peoples the Romans understood the importance of credit in cooperative ventures most clearly, as their worship of Fides, the goddess of credibility, indicates. Fides was the first virtue to be deified, and the seminal source for all others. Fides, obsequium, and pietas express the Roman understanding of formal organization. Education prepares one for the future, but the Romans, convinced that to master future uncertainties one had to have firm links with the past, allowed no child to forget his predecessors.
