ABSTRACT
Building upon the ideological foundations of ancient Greek society where both mortals and disguised immortals might present themselves in need of a domestic haven and just treatment (dikaiosuné), the Latin world also came to invest deeply in the ius hospitii not only as an axis along which
to gauge the mores of human exchange in a given society, but also as one of the organizing principles that should define the mission civilisatrice of the Roman cultural project. Indeed, Ladislaus J. Bolchazy argued forcefully that “The ius hospitii brought Romans from magico-religious xenophobia to altruism … with its insistence on kind treatment of a stranger, and its latent concept of the brotherhood of man, the ius hospitii became one of the factors which paved the way for the reception of the more advanced and reasoned teachings of Stoicism and Christianity.”4 Arthur Golding’s translation of the stoical Seneca’s De Beneficiis (1578), for example, not only acknowledged “how sacred a thing the table of hospitalitie is,” but reminded its early modern readers strategically of the manner in which the poor scholar Aeschines paid most fulsome tribute to the great Socrates: “Syr, I fynd nothing of sufficient worthinesse too bestowe vppon you, and by that meanes I feele myself too bee poore. Therfore I giue vntoo you the only thing that I haue, euen myself.”5 Whereas Seneca concerned himself with the moral treasures that might be secured by adopting the identities of host, patron, and donor, Cicero was more given to appreciating at length the social value of “this bond of hospitalitie.” In early modern translations of works such as De officiis and the Epistles by the revered “Tully,” the reader was repeatedly reminded that hospitality was not only an obligation and a fundamental adhesive agent in Roman culture, but that this “ domesticall friendship” might operate as a remarkably efficient vehicle for social preferment:
For it is (as methinketh) verie seemlie, noble mennes howses to be open for noble geastes. And yt also is an honour to the state: that outelandish men in our cite do not want this kinde of liberalitie. It is also exceeding profitable to them, who honestlie desire to be able to do much: to preuaile in power, and fauour, by their geastes, amonge forein nations.6
