Conquering Virility

The ideal of conquering virility was embodied in Rome. This virility was manifested in the doctrine of the stsate and in the notions of auctoritas and imperium. The state was under the aegis of the Olympian deities (particularly the Capitoline Jupiter, who was detached, sovereign, ungenerated, and exempt from any naturalistic myths and generations) and originally is was not separated from the initiatory "mystery" of regality (adytum et initia Regis) that had been declared inaccessible to ordinary people. The imperium was understood in terms of power and the mystical and dreadful foce of comman that was the prerogative not only of polticial leaders, but of the patricians and heads of households.

The Roman symbol of fire reflected a similar spirituality, as did the strict paternal right and the articulations of a law that Vico did not hesitate to call "heroic law", since it informed the Roman ethic of honor and faithfulness...The early Romans characteristically perceived the supernatural as numen (as sheer power) rather than as deus; this represents the counterpart of a peculiar spiritual attitude. Other characteristics of the Roman world include the absence of pathos, lyricism and mysticism toward the divine, the presence of precise law for the necessary and necessitating rite, and clear and sober views.

In their reflection of a virile and "magical" attitude, these themes corresponded to the themes found in the early Vedic, Chinese, and Iranian periods and to the Achaean-Olympian ritual as well. The typical Roman religion had always been diffident toward the abandonment of the soul in god and toward the outbrsts of devotion; it restrained, by force if necessary, anything that diminished that serious dignity proper to the relations between a civis Romanus and a god. Although the Etruscan component attempted to influence the plebeian strata of society by introducing the pathos of terrifying representations of the nether-world, Rome at its best, remained faithful to the heroic view proper to early Hellas. Rome had personified heroes, but it also knew the imperturbability of mortal men who had no fear and no hopes concerning the afterlife, and who could not be dissuaded from a conduct inspired by duty, fides, heroism, order and dominion.

Julius Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World, 270