Culture

Discipline is the steady habit of mastering oneself, training the will and the appetites to obey reason and to serve a good purpose, even when it is hard or unpleasant. It is closely tied to the cardinal virtue of temperance but reaches into every area of life: study, work, prayer, the body. The Romans prized it above almost everything: their soldiers drilled relentlessly, their farmers worked from dawn, and they admired the man who could endure hardship without complaint (think of Cincinnatus, the farmer-dictator who saved Rome and then quietly returned to his plow). Its opposite vices are laziness on one side and being a slave to one's impulses on the other, doing whatever you feel like, whenever you feel like it. St. Paul, writing to the Romans' neighbors, compared the Christian life to an athlete's training: 'Every athlete exercises self-control in all things... I discipline my body and keep it under control' (1 Corinthians 9:25-27). Real freedom, both the Romans and the saints knew, is not doing whatever you want; it is being so trained in the good that you are free to do what you ought.

By the early 1700s, England held thirteen colonies along the Atlantic coast, and they fell into three regions shaped by climate and economy. The New England colonies (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island) had rocky soil and cold winters, so they turned to fishing, shipbuilding, trade, and small farms. The Middle colonies (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware) had rich soil and were called the 'breadbasket,' growing wheat; they were also the most diverse in people and faith. The Southern colonies (Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia) had warm climates and long growing seasons that favored large plantations growing tobacco, rice, and indigo, worked increasingly by enslaved Africans.

Two colonies stand out for religious freedom. Maryland was founded in 1632 by the Catholic Lord Baltimore (the Calvert family) as a refuge for English Catholics, who faced persecution at home. To protect the Catholic minority as Protestants arrived, Maryland passed the Act of Toleration (1649), one of the first laws in the colonies granting freedom of worship to all Christians, a landmark even though it was later repealed.

Pennsylvania was founded in 1681 by William Penn, a Quaker. Quakers believed in an 'inner light' in every person, refused to fight or swear oaths, and welcomed all faiths. Penn governed fairly, dealt honestly with the Lenape, and made his colony a model of tolerance and peace. New York had begun as Dutch New Netherland (New Amsterdam) before England took it in 1664.

Key facts: - New England: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island - Middle: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware (the 'breadbasket') - Southern: Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia (plantations) - Maryland: 1632, Lord Baltimore, Catholic refuge; Act of Toleration, 1649 - Pennsylvania: 1681, William Penn, the Quakers, fair dealing with the Lenape - New York: formerly Dutch New Amsterdam, taken by England 1664

Where the Greeks sculpted idealized, perfect bodies, the Romans of the Republic prized something different: honesty. Their portrait busts are veristic, from verus, 'true', showing real faces with wrinkles, balding heads, warts, and hard-set jaws. To a Roman, these signs of age and experience were marks of dignity and gravitas, the seriousness earned by a life of service to the Republic. A man wanted to be remembered as he truly was, a wise, weathered elder, not a flattering ideal. The Republic also turned engineering into an art. Borrowing and perfecting the arch, the Romans could span great distances and bear enormous weight. They invented a kind of concrete (using volcanic ash) that let them build on a scale the world had never seen. Their aqueducts carried water for dozens of miles on graceful tiers of arches, sloping so gently that gravity alone kept it flowing. Their roads, paved, drained, and famously straight ('all roads lead to Rome'), bound the empire together; some are still walked today. The Romans were less interested than the Greeks in art for beauty's sake; they wanted art and architecture that worked, that served the state, the family, and posterity. That practical, building genius is itself a kind of beauty, and those same Roman roads would one day carry the Gospel across the world.

Add today's vocabulary to your glossary. Write one sentence: 'How does Roman art (honest faces, useful buildings) reflect Roman values like discipline and gravitas?'