Cicero: The Cardinal Virtues and their Subparts

CICERO HAS NEVER BEEN regarded as a philosophical innovator; rather, he was a philosophical conservative: a traditionalist who handed down, we may assume quite faithfully, the teachings of the Stoics which he regarded as important, especially in his early works, which is where we should place his De inventione.

We might expect Cicero then faithfully to hand down the Stoic teaching of the four cardinal virtues, and he does not disappoint.  He also appends to the four cardinal virtues, the Chryppian sub-parts that were ordered underneath these four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.  The entire virtue taxonomy of Cicero is of course under the umbrella of living in agreement with the law of nature, a law which is ultimately founded upon a cosmic reason.

Cicero defines prudence using the characteristic Stoic categories of the morally good, the morally evil, and the morally indifferent.  "Prudence is knowledge of things that are good or bad or neither.  Its parts are memory, understanding, and foresight."  Prudentia est rerum bonarum et malarum neutrarumque scientia.  Partes eius: memoria, itnelligentia, providentia.  De inv., 2.160.

Justice for Cicero is "the habit of mind (habitus animi) that preserves the common utility while also giving to each what is his due."  Jusititia est habitus animi communi utilitate conservata suam cuique tribuens dignitatem.     De inv., 2.160.  Justice, of course, is the most extrinsic of the virtues since it is concerned with those other than the subject: the common good or the private good of another person.  Yet even here , in the most extrinsic of the virtues, we find the characteristic Stoic interiorization of virtue.  While concerned with externals, the focus is on the interior disposition, the habitus animi, of the virtuous person.  "In this way, the traditional Platonic and Aristotelian matter of Cicero's definition--concern for the common good and the private good of others--is given a Stoic form."  Houser, 27.

Cicero further explores justice and finds species or sub-parts of justice.  However, he divides these into to general categories depending upon whether the "law of nature" (ius naturae) or the "law of custom" (consuetudine ius) is involved.

Under the rubric of the law of nature, Cicero finds six sub-parts or species of justice: religion (religio), piety (pietas), consideration (gratias), retribution (vindicatione), honor (observantia), and truth (veritas). These sub-parts will be adopted and developed by St. Thomas Aquinas.

Under the rubric of the law of custom, Cicero finds three sub-parts: agreements (pactum), equity (par), and written judgments (iudicatum).  The notion of equity will be used by St. Thomas Aquinas, but the other two sub-parts--agreements and written judgments--are too legally-focused for St. Thomas Aquinas to be concerned with.

Houdon's Cicero inveighing against Cataline. 1803. Louvre Museum

Courage or fortitude is next.  Courage is defined as the "considered undertaking of dangers and endurance of hardships."  Fortitudo est considerata periculorum susceptio et laborum perpersio.  De inv., 2.163.  To some extent, the Ciceronian notion of fortitude is broader than the Aristotelian notion of fortitude.  The latter saw it as resolve in the face of death.  The sub-parts of fortitude or courage are identified by Cicero as magnificence (magnanimitas), confidence (fidentia), patience (patientia), and perserverance (constantia).*

Temperance Cicero defines as the "domination of reason over desire and over other incorrect inclinations of the mind, domination that is firm and attains the mean."  Temperantia est rationis in libidinem atque in alios non rectos impetus animi firma et moderata dominatio.  De inv., 2.164.  Here is the characteristic Stoic ratio or logos.  An interesting feature of the definition is that we have here not the "political" rule of Plato of reason over the passion, but more of a "tyrannical" rule of reason over passion.  Reason dominates over desire and passion in the Stoic view of things.**  Another interesting feature is the broadening of this virtue relative to the Aristotelian notion.  While Aristotle limited temperance to sex and nutrition, Cicero clearly extends it to cover any potentially improper inclination (libido).  Cicero does, however, adopt the Aristotelian notion of "mean."

Three subordinate virtues are identified by Cicero as being ordered under temperance: continence (continentia), clemency (clementia), and modesty (modestia).  Clemency is defined as "sympathy of the higher ranks for the lower," and "it seems a peculiarly Roman virtue and original with Cicero."  Houser, 29.  On the other hand, the other two notions, continence and modesty, are clearly Stoic in origin.  We find these for example, in Stobaeus, Plutarch, and Diogenes Laertius.

For Cicero, continence is defined as "that by which cupidity is ruled by the governance of good counsel."  Continentia est per quam cupiditas consili guvernatione regitur. De inv., 2.164.  The extent of continence is, of course, directly tied to the understanding of what cupidity comprehends.  If cupidity is understood to be limited to nutritional or sexual desires (as was largely understood to be the case by the medieval schoolmen, then continence will likewise be limited by this understanding).  It appears that Cicero had a broader notion of continence than was later to be the case with the scholastic understanding of the term, which limited it to nutritional and sexual desires.

Cicero was again not an original thinker.  "Cicero himself tended toward syncretism."  Houser,30.  But he was the link or bridge as it were between the original Greek Stoic thinkers and the later medieval thinkers.  "The main challenge for the scholastic masters was to try to bring a millenium-old Stoick skeleton present in lists of virtues they found in old books like Cicero's."  Houser, 30.
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*Houser observes: "Cicero's definition of magnificence shows he actaully had magnanimity in mind, and with this emendation the list of virtues subordinate to courage is thoroughly Stoic, and all four will be adopted by Philip [the Chancellor], Albert [the Great], and Aquinas."  Houser, 28.
**The Stoic conception of the passions and desires as being slave to reason is, of course, totally the opposite of Hume's famous formulation that reason is the slave to the passions.

Natural Law's Modern Cousin Germain: Distributive Justice, Part 1

JUSTICE MAY BE SAID TO BE PART of the requirements of practical reasonableness arising from life within community. It is intricately related to the notion of the common good. Indeed, Finnis defines justice as:

An ensemble of requirements of practical reasonableness that hold [sic] because the human person must seek to realize and respect human goods not merely in himself and for his own sake but also in common, in community.

NLNR, 161. Finnis identifies three elements always found in justice: (i) other-directedness; (ii) duty; and (iii) equality. Each of these elements deserves a little elaboration.

"Other-directedness" identifies the fact that justice involves relationships with other persons, and thus involves inter-subjective or inter-personal relationships. Strictly speaking, one cannot be just to himself; there must be at least two persons and a practical situation or some interaction between them for justice to enter into the scene. (The expression "doing justice to oneself" is "justice" only loosely, and involves a sort of artificial division of self. Indeed, this is what Plato does in comparing the justice among men with the "justice" within man. In his famous description, Plato divides man into three "selves" or component of self: reasonableness, desire, and spiritidness: justice within the state is nothing other than justice within the soul write large: "καὶ δίκαιον δή," he tells Glaucon in his Republic, οἶμαι φήσομεν ἄνδρα εἶναι τῷ αὐτῷ τρόπῳ ᾧπερ καὶ πόλις ἦν δικαία." “Just too . . . I presume we shall say a man is in the same way in which a city was just.” Rep. IV, 441d.)

From William Blake's "Marriage of Heaven and Hell"

The question of duty is intrinsic to nature: it involves the notion of "debt" or debitum, and "owing" of something to someone. Famously, justice is defined as suum cuique, to give to each his own, which implies debt or obligation. Duty has another face: right. Where there is right there is duty; where there is duty there is right. Justice implies right; injustice implies wrong.

Equality is a third element in justice. However, the term equality must not be taken in a strict sense, but in an analogical sense. The equality is a fitting equality, and includes a sense of proportion or fittingness, or of equilibrium or balance. The equality here is not a Procrustean equality: the equality here is encapsulated in the Blakean insight: "One law for the lion and ox is oppression."

In a sense, any failure of practical reasonableness by an individual who is living in community will affect relations in the community. Accordingly, this is why "justice" as a virtue is frequently seen to comprehend or include all other virtues. This justice, which is more a quality of character (habitus) might be defined as "in its general sense," as an "always a practical willingness to favour and foster the common good of one's communities." NLNR, 165.

Finnis adopts the traditional classifications of justice: distributive justice and commutative justice. This traditional division reaches as far back as Aristotle, who himself divided his treatment of justice into distributive justice (διανεμητικὸν δίκαιον or dianemētikon dikaion) (Nicomachean Ethics, 1132b28; 1132b 24, 32) and "corrective" justice (διορθωτικόν δίκαιον or diorthōtikon dikaion) (e.g., Nicomachean Ethics, 1131a1, 1131b25, 1132b25) which dealt with the relationships between individuals, the synallagmata (συναλλάγματα) or contractual arrangements between citizens. We shall discuss distributive justice in this posting and the next, and commutative justice following that.

Justice in the abstract is not really justice; there must be justice in the concrete circumstances of life in the community. Justice is not a vague internal disposition alone; it is an active virtue that is found within the concrete circumstances of life in common and therefore is intrinsically tied with the common good. As one particularizes from general justice, one may identify two broad classes of problems that arise in co-ordinating the "ensemble of conditions for individual well-being in community" which give rise to the classical division of general justice into two basic prongs of particularized justice: distributive justice and commutative justice.

First, there are issues arising from the distribution of resources and burdens of communal life. How do we distribute educational resources among the population? How do we distribute the taxes among the people? These and similar questions relating to the distribution of resources and burdens of the common stock among the community are the questions of distributive justice. The proper allocation of resources and burdens of communal life through application of the requirements of practical reasonableness is known as distributive justice. The issues that relate to the individual well-being in a community with respect to his individual relations with other individuals or groups involves questions of commutative justice. Distributive justice is thus more public in focus, whereas commutative justice is more private in focus, though both involve life in common.

Within the context of distributive justice, justice may be defined in this manner:

A disposition [of common or public resources or burdens] is distributively just, then, if it is a reasonable resolution of a problem of allocating some subject-matter that is essentially common but that needs (for the sake of the common good) to be appropriated to individuals.

NLNR, 166-67.

Finnis categorizes the "subject-matters" that may come within the scope of distributive justice into three: (i) natural common resource or common stock; (ii) produced common resources or common stock; and (iii) the incidents of communal enterprise (the tasks, labor, expense of life in common). The first involves matters like the natural resources within the boundaries of a community: its energy resources, its lands, forests, rivers, etc. The second involves products of common life: weapons, sea-walls, dikes, roads, public buildings, public enterprises, public treasury, etc. The third involves things like public offices (policemen, judges, etc.) and financing the public fisc (taxes, borrowing).

The issue of "common enterprises" or "public enterprises" is given further treatment by Finnis since these features of life in common can become overweening or unbalanced as a result of wrong perceptions or emphases of the common good. The "common good" ought not to be understood in a purely communal or communistic sense. The "common good" comprehends within it notions of individual good:

The common good which is the object of all justice and which all reasonable life in community must respect and favour, is not to be confused with the common stock, or the common enterprises, that are among the means of realizing the common good. Common enterprises and the exploitation and creation of the common stock of assets are alike for the common good because they are for the benefit of individual members of the community. . . . An attempt, for the sake of the common good, to absorb the individual altogether into common enterprises would thus be disastrous for the common good, however much the common enterprise might prosper.

NLNR, 168. In short, the "common enterprise" or "common stock" was made for man, not man for the "common enterprise" or "common stock."

It is therefore a fundamental aspect of general justice that common enterprises should be regarded, and practically conducted, not as ends in themselves but as means of assistance, as ways of helping individuals to 'help themselves' or, more precisely, to constitute themselves.

NLNR, 169. The Finnisian notion of the common good is not an advocacy of communism or socialism, but is one biased in favor or the individual and private initiative since it is grounded upon the "principle of subsidiarity," which for Finnis is itself a "principle of justice." NLNR, 169. The principle of subsidiarity sets itself against such an absorption of individual man into a monolithic state.

Thus, even if there are inefficiencies to the "common enterprise" as a result,* the common good and its ordering to individual good and self-direction, prevents the "common enterprise" from overcoming the individual. This is one reason why private ownership of property is, in justice, mandated.

The good of personal autonomy in community . . . suggests that the opportunity of exercising some form of private ownership, including means of production, is in most times and places a requirement of justice. . . . [A] regime of private ownership will be a requirement of justice, provided that the increased stock of goods yielded by such a regime is not hoarded by a class of successful private owners but is made available by appropriate mechanisms (e.g., profit sharing; trade under competitive market conditions; redistributive taxation; full employment through productive investment; etc.) to all members of the community, in due measure.

NLNR, 169. Yet private ownership is not an absolute right, since it must be understood within the context within which such right arises (the common good). There is no justification to be found in the right to private property for hoarding, for negligent administration of one's wealth, for unreasonable use of one's wealth in inordinate luxuries, in failure to put excess wealth to productive use, for the formation of oligopolistic or monopolistic ventures, for the exploitation of others. Finnis has a balanced view of the matter which, although lengthy, deserves full mention:

The point, in justice, of private property is to give the owner first use and enjoyment of it and its fruits (including rents and profits), for it is this availability that enhances his reasonably autonomy and stimulates his productivity and care. but beyond a reasonable measure and degree of such use for his and his dependants' or co-owners' needs, he holds the remainder of his property and its fruits as part (in justice if not in law) of the common stock. In other words, beyond a certain point, what was commonly available but was justly made private, for the common good, becomes again, in justice, part of the common stock; though appropriated to his management and control, it is now not for his private benefit but is held by him immediately for the common benefit . . . . From this point, the owner has, in justice, duties not altogether unlike those of a trustee in English law. He may fulfil them in various ways--by investing his surplus in production of more goods for later distribution and consumption; by providing gainful employment to people looking for work; by grants or loans to hospitals, schools, cultural centres, orphanages, etc., or directly for the relief of the poor. Where owners will not perform these duties, or cannot effectively co-ordinate their respective efforts to perform them, then public authority may rightly help them to perform them by devising and implementing schemes of distribution, e.g., by 'redistributive' taxation for purposes of 'social welfare', or by a measure of expropriation.

NLNR, 173.

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*This is conceded arguendo. In point of fact, as Finnis notes, the opposite is probably the case. Private ownership is, in most cases, more efficient than public ownership. As a "'rule of human experience," Finnis notes that natural and capital resources are more efficiently exploited and preserved and managed by private ownership than by public enterprises. Along with the benefits of private ownership, however, arises the danger of unjust hoarding by successful private owners and forgetfulness of the essential public role of private ownership. Ultimately private ownership is not for self-aggrandizement, but for the good of others, including "one's own," first, those most close, but also "one's own" in the sense of the broader community in which one finds oneself. Private ownership is one thing when the owner is greedy, exploitative, selfish, and not other-regarding, than when the owner is not greedy, is charitable, altruistic, and is other regarding. In the former instance, private ownership may become unjust, whereas in the latter instance, it may be just. Thus, one cannot say that private ownership is just irrespective of the intent or disposition of the owner. Therefore, private ownership implies the common good and must be understood within it. That is why Aristotle, for example, states that "property ought to be common in a sense, but private speaking generally . . . possession should be privately-owned, but common in use." Pol. II, 2:1263a26, 38-9; NLNR, 171. That is also why an appropriate view of private property will understand that "private ownership . . . is unconditionally just." NLNR, 172. Private ownership is conditionally just. There are "conditions which private owners must conform to if their ownership is to be distributively just." NLNR, 172. It is an error to be an absolutist in the right to private property. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (citations omitted) presents a balanced-natural law view on the matter:

2403 The right to private property, acquired by work or received from others by inheritance or gift, does not do away with the original gift of the earth to the whole of mankind. The universal destination of goods remains primordial, even if the promotion of the common good requires respect for the right to private property and its exercise.

2404 "In his use of things man should regard the external goods he legitimately owns not merely as exclusive to himself but common to others also, in the sense that they can benefit others as well as himself." The ownership of any property makes its holder a steward of Providence, with the task of making it fruitful and communicating its benefits to others, first of all his family.

2405 Goods of production - material or immaterial - such as land, factories, practical or artistic skills, oblige their possessors to employ them in ways that will benefit the greatest number. Those who hold goods for use and consumption should use them with moderation, reserving the better part for guests, for the sick and the poor.

2406 Political authority has the right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good.

Contra Consequentialismum: Moral Duties, Justice, and Law

RIGHT IS ONE SIDE OF THE MORAL COIN. The other side is duty. In our last blog posting on moral right, we observed that it is apparent that our claim to right as against others in our pursuit of happiness, that is, the pursuit of the good, brings with it its reciprocal: duty or obligation. As Oderberg states it:

Every right imposes a duty on every other person to respect it. Without duties correlative to rights, morality would again be self-contradictory, for it would permit what it prohibited--interference by others with the legitimate pursuit of the good on the part of an individual. Duties correlative with rights are simply the logical mirror of those rights--they reflect those rights into the eyes of other people.

Oderberg, 60.

And yet duty is not exactly the mirror image of right. "[T]here is more to duty than rights." Oderberg, 60. What has happened since "The fundamental principle governing the relationship of human law (or simply "law") and morality is as follows: it is morality that determines what is and what is not a just law, hence law always follows morality."
--David S. Oderbergthe Enlightenment is that the scope of rights has become hyper-inflated, over-exaggerated, and therefore rights thinking has become unbalanced. "If you believe that the whole of morality is founded upon rights, you will naturally conclude that there can be no duty that does not correspond to some right." Oderberg, 60. This "correspondence theory" of rights and duty, where rights and duty correspond and perfectly match up, is just plain wrong. And it's easy to show why.

Good is the most fundamental aspect of morality. But no one is duty-bound, no one is obligated in conscience, to perform every possible good act. To impose such an Atlas-like burden on an individual would cripple him, would be to give him an impossible, Herculean task. Even Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta, who heroically did good to the poor, failed, and failed miserably, if this was the moral imperative. There was some good that she left undone, unattended, by the mere fact that she chose to do some good.

Additionally, duty is not coextensive with right. For example, all men have a duty to be generous to others in need, to provide alms to the poor out of their surplus. However, unless there is another source of duty (e.g., familial or contractual), our general duty to be generous with our surplus does not extend to the poor a moral right to our surplus. So if one walks by a beggar on the street with extra change in one's pocket, one may have violated a duty to be generous, but one has not violated the beggar's rights or been unjust to him.*

Rights and justice are intimately tied together; this is because justice is a virtue, a virtue "by which a person is inclined to accord another his rights." Oderberg, 61.** There is also a link between moral rights and the virtue of justice, on the one hand, and moral law on the other.

In its broadest sense, a law is a binding rational principle governing behavior, whether it be the behavior of molecules or of people. The moral law is that subset of principles which direct human beings toard their ultimate end of happiness. Rights and duties, then, originate in the moral law and governing human beings in their pursuit of happiness in all its particulars. . . . The fundamental principle governing the relationship of human law (or simply "law") and morality is as follows: it is morality that determines what is and what is not a just law, hence law always follows morality.

Oderberg, 62.***
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*The obligations of charity, or even natural sacrificial love, may exceed those of strict justice and natural duty. But this is a whole other area altogether, and is outside the natural law. When charity is involved we move from a jurisdiction sub lege to a jurisdiction sub gratia, from law to grace.
**Justice is a virtue, but, by analogy the term is used to refer to a state of affairs (e.g., just society) or a condition (e.g., just war, just wage). The State is subject to the demands of justice, in which case the state is regarded as a "moral person" akin to an individual. Justice is traditionally divided into three kinds: commutative justice, distributive justice, and what Oderberg calls civic justice. Oderberg defines them thus:

Commutative justice concerns relations between individuals, and is the virtue which inclines them to accord one another their rights. Distributive justice concerns the relationship of the state to the individual, in particular its obligations to respect the individual's rights. Civic justice is the converse of this, being concerned with the individual's obligations to the state--specifically, to contribute to the common good.

Oderberg, 61.
***From this principle it follows:

It is the duty of the legislator to frame laws that reflect morality and therefore provide the citizen with the state-authorized powers to do what morality already allows him to do, the state-authorized duties to do what morality already obliges him to do in conscience, and the state-authorized sanctions against those who would already be morally at fault for interfering with another person's pursuit of the good. . . .[A]lthough the legislator may, as a matter of fact, enact an unjust law, his duty, the requirement of morality, is that the law he enacts conform to it.

Oderberg, 62.

An Orphic Hymn to Justice

LXI.
TO JUSTICE.
The FUMIGATION from FRANKINCENSE.
THE piercing eye of Justice bright, I sing,
Plac'd by the throne of heav'n's almighty king,
Perceiving thence, with vision unconfin'd,
The life and conduct of the human kind
To thee, revenge and punishment belong,
Chastising ev'ry deed, unjust and wrong;
Whose pow'r alone, dissimilars can join,
And from th' equality of truth combine:
For all the ill, persuasion can inspire,
When urging bad designs, with counsel dire,
'Tis thine alone to punish; with the race
Of lawless passions, and incentives base;
For thou art ever to the good inclin'd,
And hostile to the men of evil mind.
Come, all-propitious, and thy suppliant hear,
When Fate's predestin'd, final hour draws near.


Divae Iustitiae

Iustitiae obtestor pulcrae omnituentis ocellum,
Ad Iovi' Dictatori' sedet quae illustre tribunal,
Coelitus endotuens mores mortalium homonum,
Atque ultrix plectens humana nefantia facta,
Ex aequo veri coniungens disparile omne.
Nam quaecunque viris sententia pessima suasit,
Consiliis diris infanda volentibus quaeque
Sola iugum imponens iniustis iura ministris,
Iniustorum hostis, Sanatum mitis amica,
Verum adsis semper fausto Dea numine iusta,
Vitaï ut veniat finis, quam Morta profata est.

Above from Gottfried Hermann's Orphica (1805).

Above from The Book fo Orphic Hymns (1827).

Notes:

Derived from the word dikē, the term dikaiosynē (δικαιοσύνη) is a conceptual or abstraction of the root dikē. It means conformity with a standard of justice, usually law, and so it was used to refer to Solon's laws. Along with phronēsis (prudence), sōphrosynē (temperance), andreia (fortitude), dikaiosynē was considered one of the four cardinal virtues. It was used by the Greek translators of the Old Testament to translate the Hebrew sedaqa or sedeq, and was appropriated by the Evangelists and St. Paul when they speak of justification or righteousness in reference to both God and men (e.g., Romans 3:22, 10:3, 14:7; 2 Cor. 5:21). It appears to have a rich, ambiguous meaning, including such senses as adherence to law, integrity, and participation in the divine economy of salvation. It appears more than 90 times in the New Testament. For the Christian, then, it has therefore gained great theological significance.

The figure of Dikaiosynē shown above holding scales appears on the cupola of a chapel at the necropolis of al-Bagawat in the Kharga Oasis in Egypt. The necropolis is considered to be one of the earliest and best-preserved Christian cemeteries. Personified as a woman, Dikaiosynē is painted amidst typical biblical figures such as Adam, Even, Abraham, Isaac, Daniel, Jacob, Noath, Mary, and St. Paul. Also depicted are Eirēnē and Euchē, personifications of peace and prayer, respectively. This depiction of Justice or Dikaiosynē may be the first extant in a Christian setting. (See D. Curtis & J. Resnik, Images of Justice, 96 YALE L.J. 1727 n. 8 (1987) (citing A. Katnzenellenbogen, Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Mediaeval Art 28 (1939)).

Orphic Hymn to Themis

LXXVIII.
TO THEMIS.
The FUMIGATION from FRANKINCENSE.

ILLUSTRIOUS Themis, of celestial birth,
Thee I invoke, young blossom of the earth;
Beauteous-eyed virgin; first from thee alone,
Prophetic oracles to men were known,
Giv'n from the deep recesses of the fane
In sacred Pytho, where renown'd you reign;
From thee, Apollo's oracles arose,
And from thy pow'r his inspiration flows.
Honour'd by all, of form divinely bright,
Majestic virgin, wand'ring in the night:
Mankind from thee first learnt initial rites,
And Bacchus' nightly choirs thy soul delights;
For holy honours to disclose is thine,
With all the culture of the pow'rs divine.
Be present, Goddess, to my pray'r inclin'd,
And bless the mystic rites with fav'ring mind.

Divae Iuritis

Coeligena huc Iuritis ades patrima virago,
Muustea progenies telluris, Caesia dia,
Vaticinas quae prima aperis mortalibus fortes
Delporum Diis pro cortina oracula fatans
Puticulis ubi Puteolis regina cluebas,
Et Februo fandi donasti pectus habere
Augusta speciosa verendaque notctuvolga.
Priam etenim ritus hominum genus edocuisti
Nocturnis sacris Brumum fanatica ovando
Ex te enim castusque Deum cultusque verendi.
Huc adsis, huc Diva faventi numine blanda
Ad divina tui veneranda silentia sacri.

According to the Greek poet Hesiod, Themis was a daughter of Uranus and Ge, and was married to Zeus, by whom she became the mother of the Horae, Eunomia, Dice (Astraea), Eirene, and the Moerae. (Theog. 135, 901, ff.) Themis is personified in the Homeric hymns as the order of things, whether established by law, custom, or equity. In Homer's Odyssey, she is portrayed as regnant among the assemblies of men (e.g., Odyssey. ii. 68). Additionally, in Homer's Illiad, she convenes, pursuant to Zeus's command, the assembly of the gods. (Illiad. xx. 4.) Themis is a citizen of Olympus, and has a good relationship with Hera. (Illiad, xv. 87.) She is often shown holding a pair of scales. Themis is the source of our popular depiction of Lady Justice.