Virtus
Although originally the ancient Roman virtue of virtus was used to describe specifically martial courage, it eventually came to represent a host of qualities including valor, manliness, excellence, courage, character, and worth, perceived as masculine strengths. Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics divided these cardinal virtues into prudentia (prudence), iustitia (justice), temperantia (temperance, self-control), and fortitudo (courage). But as the goals and ideals of the empire changed, the meaning of the word also shifted. No longer did virtus mean that a person was a brave warrior but it could also mean that he was a good man, someone who did the right thing. Especially during the later Empire the Roman upper class no longer thought of themselves as unmanly if they did not serve in the military as long as they complied with the appropriate tradition of public conduct in their navigation of the cursus honorum. The term did not apply in the private sphere bu...