Humanitas. A word that we have forgotten, but of which we carry the memory in the flesh and in our history. And that now, in an era of coronavirus emergency, emerges clearly and distinguishes us, just as it was in Roman times, from what remains of the barbarian legacies. Humanitas, for the ancient Romans, was that ethical value for which one sees in the other, a human being.
A value that comes from afar
This is far from obvious if we think about what happened even in Europe before the last world war, or in the United States with slavery until 1865. Or what still happens today in those countries where exterminations and repressions take place. The Roman playwright Terentius summed it up as follows: “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto”, “I am a human being, I do not consider anything human to be foreign to me”.
Europe often mocks Italy and Italians for their way of doing things. And often many Italians let themselves be convinced that elsewhere there are better people, more civilized than us.
Our humanitas today
Today we can open our eyes and realize that Italians are those who more than any other Western people embody this ancient virtue of humanitas. While countries that define themselves - and that we define ourselves - more developed still weave Darwinian selections of race that let the weakest die, the our health - much reviled by some - is spending every drop of blood to save every human life endangered by the virus. They treated us like a plague while we helped China, then in trouble.
And now there China reciprocates and all the others find themselves in the same conditions as us. We are living this difficult time of segregation and limitation of the most intimate freedoms singing, smiling at life and at our neighbor and filling us with (virtual) hugs. We Italians are those of humanitas. We Italians are the ones who care about humanity. We must be proud of it. And we will rise from this global upheaval brighter than before. With the awareness of the value of our humanitas.
# Italian in the heart
