Lex Personae

Somewhere along the line I encountered a piece of wisdom that stuck in me like a winter thorn. Rules are for people that need them. Its basic tier, the young might say. Perhaps. The old take it for granted. Rules are for people that need them. If I had to add my own wisdom, it would be that you need to lay a watchful eye on the ones who think they don’t need rules. One who thinks so highly of themselves, to be exempt from hierarchical demand, almost always has some glaring defect to hide from your watchful eye. (Libertarians.)

You know who had a lot of rules? Jews. The Old Testament had 614 Commandments, as I recall. However, when you supplicate the 614 with Gematria the actual number of taboos becomes 6 Gorillion. For the uninitiated, Gorillion is a unit of measurement that requires too many zeroes to be committed to writing. You know who else had a lot of rules?

Rome. Now, I have read the Bible, and I have read many of the documents of the source material of the Roman religionists of yore. You might ask; why does this matter? Why are we discussing this in the Current Year? Why not? I have been in Nationalism for roughly a decade, during which time I have seen a very predictable tale played on infinite rewind play out over and over. And I know that in the past, the story remained the same. This is how I know that unless the trajectory is changed, the story will seek the same outcome through the illusion of separate venues. It is a variable inevitability that can be altered by comparatively minor changes. A group gets together, has ideas, and then somewhere along the line someone decides standards are for cucks and not much later the group has become no better than a filthy rabble and disbanded in embarrassing ways. A staunch set of morals and codes would effectively eliminate many of the discrepancies in group think. Not perfectly, of course. But which is easier for an infiltrator or informant to manipulate; a group with precise morals agreed upon by the crowd, or a ragtag of opinionated Spergs who can easily be pitted against each other because there is no higher authority than the almighty thought?

You know which is true. Besides, a strictly adopted moral code is hard to imitate, if you don’t believe in it. More than that pitiful commentary as to the state of affairs we live in, in which we actually have to have this talk, there is an obvious scientific principle one can observe. Traits matter, much more than pronouns. Society was built up from virtues and morals, not opinions. That is an objective fact. Thousands of years after her inglorious entropic demise, we sing songs of Rome’s meteoric and prophetic rise. In large part Rome rise due to the systemisation of her codes of ethics. Consider a machine with countless parts that largely operated on a civic wavelength? A State apparatus with bulwarks in place to ensure the contiguity of the higher ideals down to the least of men? And more than that, Rome captures the imagination in the same way Greece captured her for a very simple reason; she stands for things we have lost, or never had. Other civilisations have had epic rises, but few I know sing praises to the Imperial rice patties of mighty China.

So, we shall investigate the accepted lists of Rome’s codes of ethics, from the private to the public sphere, there was a template for both which is worthy of investigation. You either live or die by your own or someone else’s rules. Hence the saying, ‘the rule of the day.’ An informed man might one day think to have a choice. To tie it in, Roman rule and Jewish law inspires the cradles of modern civilisation. So we’re told. In the case of the United States, cultural conservatives proudly claim the Biblical root of our law, but will be reminded by libertarians and others that the Biblical rule played a backseat driver to the Anglo-Saxon Common Law and Roman Canon of Law. Anyway, here we go:

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Private Values:

These are traits, folkways and morals the average Roman was judged on. It is hard to imagine how their adoption and codification could hurt, and easy to imagine why their abandonment in the late Western Empire would have contributed to the disintegration and reabsorption of the Roman race into the petty tribes to follow. These values and morals focused on self-improvement, and should be seen as advantageous to anyone claiming interest in Will to Power as it has been defined by those adhering to the Männerbund Principle. In Rome, their adherence assisted in the development of the State, which in turn took on a definitive persona based upon the lives of Her citizenry.

Virtus (Virtue)
Above all things the Roman prized Virtus. You shall note I have heretofore avoided use of the Romano-English “Virtue,” for this very reason. The moderner is ill equipped to understand its scope. If you search my archives you shall find a separate entry on Virtus. Suffice to say, Virtus is manfulness. It was the articulation of the label “Vir,” which (cognate to Old Norse Wer and Old English Were) means Man. Manfulness was a culmination of all morals, a balance therefrom. Virtus was bravery, nobility, truthfulness and all the others. It was your representation, your conduct. You display Virtus by elegantly resolving social issue, or bravely facing martial conflict. It is a wholly transcendental value.

Auctoritas (Authority)
Your authority is gleaned from persistent right conduct, the culmination of your relationship to others fostering a persona worthy of trust. Your authority compels others to follow you, to trust and feel safe by you. To foster authority one would have had to display piety and industry, to be a team player, one unpossessed of an arrogant ego. Consistency is key, as is thoroughness. To have authority, one must communicate with their charges and allies, to be available to their constituents. They must be persistent and consistent in their efforts, doing as they say and saying as they do. Revolutionary, I’m sure.

Comitas (Comedy)
Without good humour and wit, life is grim, depressing, and entirely unworthy of living. (Leben unwerte leben.) This concept of good humour extended to polity as well, a sense of chivalry and manners. Others should be put at ease to your presence, be comforted by your manner of speech. Others should feel enlightened by your wit, as opposed to dragged down and damned by it.

Clementia (Clemency)
This is frequently rendered as mercy. It is more complicated than this. One should be passive in their judgement, avoiding the fostering of poisonous grudges. One should anticipate the weakness of their colleagues and facilitate their growth. When they inevitably fail you, you should not despise them, but work within their limitations to see those limits grow. Forgive, if you cannot forget, when it comes to well-meaning but unadvanced allies.

Dignitas (Dignity)
Your pride and personal self-worth is vital to foster amicable relationships. Don’t be a sadsack; do not dwell forever on the damnable state of things. Seek the positive, even in dark times, and commit yourself to overcoming your own personal daemons. In times of suffering, to not despair and drag your inner world with you. Do not deflect your failings and curse your peers with malaise.

Firmitas (Firmity)
Strength of will, your ability to plot a course of action and stick to your guns. Tenacity, it is often called. Your will to power should inspire your comrades. Others should see in you something inspirational to aspire to. In times of trial, you can be one who remains firm in the face of adversity, not faltering nor taking the road of least resistance. Your ability to resist temptation and your ability to take the high road will prompt your brothers to follow suit.

Frugalitas (Frugality)
Live within your means. Do not presume you are owed so much more than your circumstances that you drain your material resources and damage family and peers. Your style should be natural and simple, not contrived and perplexed. Temperance in spending, in acquisition, as well as looking forward in the long game are values which enable resource sharing. Your own personal choices affect others, materially and spiritually, so live accordingly.

Gravitas (Gravity)
Your ability to put comedy away when needed and take life seriously. Grave affairs require respect for the situation. This requires your honest and consistent appraisal, as well as your earnest application of necessary action in terms of force or restraint. Calculated appeals to logic and reason make this trait erstwhile for everyman, while lesser men flail and wring their hands. Calm and collected is the rule of the day.

Honestas (Honesty)
No one trusts a liar. Truth shall, in fact, set you free. Dishonesty destroys the efforts of the other values and morals and creates tension among brothers. Truth is the best policy among trusted colleagues, lest that trust die and be replaced by anticipation. Note that honesty does not imply openness or forwardness; withholding sensitive data does not imply dishonesty. Purposeful obfuscation does, as does dubious conduct. Live life through slyness and trickery at your own peril, and the peril of those in your care.

Humanitas (Humanity)
Culture, refinement, eloquence; these things separate us from unlearned barbarians and subhumans. The ability to recognise superiority of civilisation without resorting to constraint and damnatory practise separates nobles from tyrants. Adhere to the customs of your kind, and enlighten them. All that you do in this regard should improve your learning, understanding and capacity. Let those who desire pestilence and ignorance rot, save those whom you can, and bring them up to speed.

Industria (Industry)
Your energy in your efforts defines you among other men. Your ability to produce effects in your trade, and your dedication to it can inspire those in your sway to improve their own lot. They also allow you to contribute more to your cause than you take from it.

Pietas (Piety)
Duty is a concept that transcends religious and social meaning. It should permeate your being. This involves a deep respect for natural law both politically and religiously. Its physical manifestation is difficult to explain, but easy to recognise. A pious man follows his morals and lives by them, and his existence is altered for it. Piety should crave patriotism and loyalty to a higher cause, and it should relate to others, as well.

Salubritas (Salubrity)
Wholesomeness has become a slogan among our men which amounts to nothing. It should be a sort of cleanliness and innocence which disbars a man from betraying his principles to filth and decadence. The salubrious man entreats clean living, and does not perpetrate moral abominations among his peers, nor actively betray them to their own diminishment.

Severitas (Severity)
Beyond your salubrity is your self-control. Your ability to not just avoid moral temptation, but to actively resist it, marks you as a higher man. There will be situations in which you are forced to engage in situations salubrity would have you avoid. Your severity sees you untainted by these, maintaining your upright attitudes.

Veritas (Verity)
Beyond honesty is verity. Not only should you avoid lieing, you should be truthful. Lieing rots the soul; it creates a duplicitous false persona within yourself that corrupts your innermost being. This biological fact does not care what your reasoning has been, and it will eventually destroy your ability to maintain anything truthfully. If one seeks to deny this fact of nature, than the process has already begun, untruth can only cheapen life and dissolve dignity. Be frank and truthful in your affairs, to not shy from speaking to what is right. It is a hard path, but ultimately superior than carrying on in deceit and darkness.

Public Values:

It is difficult for the moderner to understand, but in a collectivist society, the society has a life of her own and is considered for a transcendental personhood. In the past, the City or State was prefigured as a Goddess or God which embodied the penultimate manifestation of desired characteristics. This trend continued unabated until the puberty of the American Experiment where the Spirit of Colombia symbolised the American Spirit before it was replaced by the (((commercial))) variant Uncle Sam who really wanted you to buy war bonds. To the Germans there was the Spirit of Germania; to the Irish there was Roisin Dubh, and so forth. In addition to this, it was expected that a City/State should behave in a just and upright manner. These morals are ideals, as all morals are. Aspirational. Their aim was to guide a light which men could follow in the hopes of improving their kind’s future. These morals were designed to benefit the City/State as a whole. An organising body was, after all, an organism and thus privy to judgement. Another clear example of this is the generic phrase “Body of Christ,” used by Christians in indiscriminately assembling all believers in Iesvs Khristos into a person, or ‘bride.’ So it was with Rome, and so it should be with us that we individuals are cells in a larger body. Individualism is a cruel and decrepit lie which has only existed for the shortest of times. It’s followers are likely to degenerate into scum, and collectively, the disassembled individualist collective betrays themselves by predictable behaviour and undesired wanton side-effects. In your collective, demand cohesion and betterment. Do not settle for the lies of the enemy.

Abundantia (Abundance)
This was the idea that no man should starve, and that food should be available to all quadrants of society. Moreover, it was the idea that plenty and prosperity should be attainable for all. Even a Roman slave could become a freedman and escape the drudgery of his hereditary existence which is in some ways more than the American taxpayer can hope for. Consider the classical American idiom, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” A Roman ideal made flesh, again.

Aequitas (Equity)
Fair dealing. The government should strive to deal fairly with the civilian populace who in turn deal honestly among themselves and in return to the government.

Bonus Eventus (good tiding)
This is the remembrance of good omens, happenings and momentous occasions. The collective folk memory of passing tides which made the people what they are. The Calendar was originally purposed for this end, to recall those events which made Rome great. Those of us who exist as people’s without a unique calendar of tidings are at least bereft of a contiguous culture.

Clementia (Clemency)
Again, as with the private value, this one intones a sense of enduring mercy and forgiveness. In the macrocosmic scale it is the idea that other Nations should be respected and treated with dignity, not as equals or superiors or inferiors, but as their own separate entities. In conflict, this value safeguarded Rome from entering into atrocities, theoretically, and when Clemency was breached, the populace had recourse to attempt to reprimand leaders – in the Republic and early Empire.

Concordia (Concordance)
Understood harmoniously, this value saw Rome attempt to strive for balance and cooperation with other Nations… but more importantly, to strive for unity of purpose among the Roman people.

Felicitas (Felicity)
Happiness was an aspiration of the Roman people, in achievement of material and spiritual comfort and success. It was a celebration of the aspects of Rome that uplifted the City and people.

Fidelitas (Fidelity)
Belief in the judicious nature of the State was encouraged. This value encouraged statesman to at least try to create a world that justified the Lord/Populace relationship between the Citizenry and Magistrates. This can be seen as well established in the Augustan Era where the law of the Emperor ushered in a sublime and unreplicated time of optimism, trust and purpose. Pax Romana.

Fortuna (Fortune)
This value saw it fit for the People to focus on the positive events and omens which occurred, and to frame them in accordance with their State’s furtherance.

Genius
The Spirit of the State, City or Nation. Acknowledging this as transcendent, that Civilisation is an entity, imbued the citizens with a special relationship to their land that we can scarcely understand at present.

Hilaritas (Hilarity)
The expression of happy times, celebration and positive conduct. That there should be festivals and recurring traditions propping up the governing body was and should be expected.

Iustitia (Justice)
The promulgation of sensible and reasonable laws, strictures, benefits and requirements.

Laetitia (Levity)
The people were encouraged to as a whole practise gratitude and display thanksgiving. This was generally in response to crisis, but also served as a rule of thumb.

Liberalitas (Liberality)
Generosity among leaders to their people, and the people among themselves. It was expected, tribally, that leaders should enrich their followers, personally and institutionally. Do ut des, was the gift principle common to Germania in Rome. This would eventually become known as bribery and take on negative connotations, but in earlier times, leaders bestowed gifts to followers who repaid them with loyalty.

Libertas (Liberty)
Freedom. Sovereignty. Liberty did not have the connotations that modernites imbue it with. Liberty was freedom from foreign power, not freedom to carry on indiscriminately.

Nobilitas (Nobility)
Upright and upstanding action was expected for public displays. Generosity, kindness and wisdom were demanded in the public sphere.

Ops (Opulence)
Acknowledgement of the riches of one’s land, in terms of physical and spiritual wealth.

Patientia (Patience)
This was the ability to weather hard times and endure crisis, while maintaining affiliation to the State and/or Cause.

Pax (Peace)
In peace time, it was expected that the peace should be celebrated as a blessing.

Pietas (Piety)
As with the private value, it was expected that the City/State should be seen as ceding to tradition and custom and honouring both Gods and Ancestors and later, Emperors as extensions of Roman Genius. Even in the late stages of decay before Christianisation, when Rome’s religious spirit had eroded, it was recognised that State Religion created common culture and loss of this meant loss of identity.

Providentia (Providence)
The concept of destiny as unique to the Roman State. There was the message that Rome had been chosen among nations to establish civilisation and create order. History has debatably proven them right, since all history since has been a struggle to accept or reject Roman power and wisdom. The concept was that nothing in life was random, and that every trial was an opportunity to further Roman destiny. This sense of concentrated purpose empowered Rome to survive a great span of history, where other cultures evaporated into aimlessness.

Pudicita (Pudicity)
This word is rendered as chastity, as *impudence* is known to be a state of moral undress and utterly slavish shamelessness. In public, it was expected that the Roman would place his best foot forward and strive to uphold dignity. Romans took this seriously, and taboos and scandals were judged harshly.

Salus (Salience)
A general concern for public health and welfare. The State is composed of her Citizens. This motivated health and welfare programs, and created the dole, among other things. Today it might well mean policing the various addictive maladies afflicting our peoples.

Securitas (Security)
This was the sense of confidence of a people in their destiny as established by wise governance. Today it is the lock on your back porch door to protect you from your dishonest neighbours.

Spes (Hope)
Hope as a public value was the, forgive me, audacity to believe that dark times could become bright. The faith that the system would overcome.

Uberitas (Fruitfulness)
This was an agricultural term, at times, and often referred to the relationship of man with land and his ability to prove his mettle by extracting food from it. However, family was regarded as esoteric farming, and this term likely referred also to familial fertility. Relationship to land was, contrary to popular opinion, important to many Romans both inside and outside the walls.

Virtus (Virtue)
In this instance, the virtue of the leadership reflected upon the people who were to be judged by leadership’s actions. This promoted pressure to perform great things to facilitate Roman destiny. Like with the private value, Virtus in government was expected from leadership. Lack of it resulted in Rome’s eventual catabolism. We should be so wise in wake of this as to foresee and avoid that fate.