be derived.[5] The latter sense of the term, which gave paradeigma a functional role independent of larger ontological claims, was not far removed from the way in which early Greek historians like Herodotus and Thucydides began to conceive of the import of historical examples. In his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides first made explicit an idea at best implicit in Herodotus’ Histories: the study of history had utility in the present because it allowed one to learn from the examples—both good and bad—of one’s historical predecessors, and to act with prudence in confronting situations similar to those they faced.[6] Later historians like Xenophon and Ephorus gave paradeigma an even more prominent role in their work by introducing an extradiegetic authorial voice meant to identify exemplary conduct unambiguously and ensure that it would be recognized as such by the reader. This innovation was increasingly put in the service of didactic and moralistic aims by the Greek historian Polybius, as well as historians of ancient Rome like Livy, for whom the Latin term corresponding to paradeigma was exemplum.[7] Aside from the prominent place accorded exempla in ancient histories, orators like Cicero helped to make exempla a standard feature of Roman rhetoric.[8]
In Roman thought and culture, the idea of the exemplum was closely linked to the figure that modern parlance knows as the exemplar, an individual whose body of accomplishments as a whole is considered exemplary and worthy of emulation. Romans memorialized great personages in a manner that linked their great deeds to an underlying greatness of character, as reflected in physical monuments like public statuary and imagines (images of ancestors displayed in the atria of noble residences}, which often touted the high points of the individual’s résumé in pictorial or even list form. Exemplarity became intertwined not just with specific acts, but with the overarching biographies of exceptional people, setting the stage for the exemplary personal narratives later associated with the venerated figures of Christendom. Unsurprisingly, given the dominant values of Roman society, exemplars tended to be revered politicians and military leaders, national heroes whose most admirable actions involved the subordination of self and personal relationships to patriotic duty. Despite the fact that these
