The Problem of Faithless Heroes
Monday Memo: 4/6 AD 2026
In ancient Greek, “hero” meant defender, protector. Although we now use the word for those who do not wage battle against the gods and monsters of the ancient world, the term still implies a defense of values. Your chosen heroes reveal your priorities. Who we choose to stand behind—and who we believe stands for us—exposes the foundation of our own character.
This brings us to the contemporary crisis: the rise of the “faithless” hero. We see leaders who openly flout the marks of faithfulness—to the Romans, fides—yet maintain a fanatical following. To understand the consequences of the faithless hero, we must look to the Roman Republic’s concept of fides: justice, consistency, and obligation. At the height of the republic, being faithful was not something you declared about yourself, it was the community’s audit of your honor. Faithfulness was a rigorous, public commitment to one’s responsibilities and agreements. To possess fides was to be predictable: you paid your debts, you kept your word, and you honored your elders.
Fides was the glue that held the republic together. If a leader lacked it, they were not just a bad person; they were an empowered threat to civilization. Alongside fides stood virtus, or “manly virtue.” This was the Roman standard for excellence, comprising strength, loyalty, and a willing personal courage during war when called to serve the Senate and People of Rome. Society demanded this of anyone who wished to be an elite: moral purity both in public and behind closed doors. It was not enough to be strong in war; one had to be morally upright at home. You need a reliable elite for domestic justice and to have foreign elites think their governments should trust and deal with you.
What does it mean when leaders are obviously faithless and the people stand behind them? If a hero is a defender, what is a faithless leader defending?
We cannot blame the leaders for this decay without first looking at the society. A hero is a mirror, not of who we are, but of who we would be if we could. If we find ourselves represented by those who treat duties as inconveniences and lies as a default communication strategy, we must ask what that says about our own priorities. Some have traded the social glue of fides for what they think is a defensive wall; but walls do not hold if faithless men keep the gates.
