Nonetheless, dignitas is the crucial
attribute of that special group of citizens
who aspire to high political office. As a
public citizen one needs to walk the streets
in freedom in order to exhibit one’s personal
capacity ‘in the round’, as it were, through
the daily drama of mutual friendship and
complaisance towards clients and acquaintances.
As Cicero explains in his most
influential moral tract, dignitas is a form of
political charisma: it manifests itself as a
kind of beauty displayed on the person.
And, like the beauty of the philosophers, it
consists in order, balance and harmony. One
assembles dignitas out of a compound of
personal features: a good appearance
(neither negligent nor affected); a careful gait
(neither halting nor mincing, hurried nor
listless); a finely calibrated mode of speech
(neither loquacious nor curt, appropriate to
the situation at hand); even one’s choice of
house (De Officiis: I. 126–39). In short, in
one’s dignitas one displays one’s sense
of civic poise and balance. Yet one can
only achieve this through ceaseless small
efforts of self-projection, self-assertion and
self-display.