Virtue has many descriptions. For greek philosophers one of the definitions of virtue is doing something you are suposed to do properly. So if a knife is suposed to cut, a virtuous knife is one which cuts well. If a husbands role is to take care of his wife, a virtuous husband is one who does it well. I think it was Aristhotles who said that humans virtue is rationaly, so a virtuous human is one who acts through wisdom. In stoicism there are multiple virtues a human should pursue beyond rationality, and the four most important ones are courage, wisdom, temperance and justice. So there are characteristics that every person should pursue. Consider them as qualities. In roman catolicism we have virtues, which are suposed to be qualities associated with good, and vices, or corruption, which are associated with evil. So your soul is saved by following the pursue of good qualities, such as humility, kindness, patience and others. There are seven jn total and they are the oposite of the much more knows seven deadly sins. The concept of virtue permeates all cultures, not just western ones, and every religion explores it. You can find such explorations on confucionism, buddhism, hinduism, Taoism, among others. My personal take on virtue is that its an atempt of the human rational mind to create a way of living that fits within human civilization. Our instincts and emotions were made for a far more competitive, dangerous and unstable world where the apt survive and the weak die. Many people are ruled by their instincts to eat, acquire, reproduce, dominate and other pursuits which in excess could be harmfull. So philosophers and religious figures have atempted to create rational ideas which tame these instincts and allow people to live harmoniously within society without violence and conflict. We live inside a society that is filled with ideas that are "unnatural" and we consider this the absolute truth, but many of the ideas that shape current reality , both good and bad, are traditions or ideas created by people of the past to try to make things work. Things such as institutions, democracy, justice, pacifism, cooperatives, are all developed rational ideas created to try to make humans work together. One very interesting thing from the Roman republic and empire is that all these ideas had to be created. Emperors had almost unlimited power and barely any constraint. There were no constitutions, separated powers, regulatory institutions and other things which could control powerfull people. What usually controled then was politics, fear, enemies and competition. So when these didnt exist, many of the Roman emperors had unlimited power and no restraints besides the ones they had inside their heads. They didnt even had gods telling them what to do like the catholic god, which is omnipresent. So IMHO the romans also saw stoicism as a way to tame their mind and allow them to be rational beings instead of sucumbing to their primal urges and individualistic desires. The five great emperors all seemed to use stoicism to guide their virtuous ways, but roman history is filled with emperors which lost their paths, their minds and even their lifes due to being consumed by their vices, emotions and corruptions. Current humans still need virtue to become the best versions of themselves. The diference is that we have far less power than many roman citizens (consider how most current humans would relate to their slaves), we live in a democratic state of law, violence is controled by the state, we have a long history of development of cultural ideas about democracy, justice and rights, and catolicism ideas have shaped our culture in ways that many times we cant even perceive. So in some ways we are "tamed" and live inside a "box" called civilization that the Romans were only starting to develop. So they depended far more on internal instead of external mechanisms of behavior and cognitive control. Answer from totalwarwiser on reddit.com