Upcoming Lectures

The Virtue of Resistance: Christian Ethics in Ancient Rome

Dr. Anthony Briggman

Saturday, April 27, 4–5pm
Chairman’s Room, Pannill Commons
Hampden-Sydney College

What makes a person virtuous? How do we understand what it means to have virtue? How do we recognize it? What does it do for people as individuals and as members a society? In this lecture, we’ll hear about how the ancient Romans understood what it meant to be a virtuous person and how they connected virtue to martial values and other values that kept their society together. Then, we’ll hear how early Christians, who understood themselves as part of a quite different society, developed alternative ways of understanding virtue that deliberately subverted values associated with the Roman Empire. This lecture is free and open to the public.