The Ethical Values Formation in the Roman Empire as a Cultural Phenomenon

The purpose of the article is to study the influence of cultural and psychological motivation on the formation of ethical values in the Roman Empire. The article identifies the main factors of influence of the internal and external environment of the Roman Empire on the formation of moral values of the Roman Emperor. It is relevant to form a system of Ideas, notions and values of the ancient Rome society based on the synthesis of different cultures, propaganda, image building and moral reform. The research methodology consists in studying the evolution processes of the ancient tradition under moral and psychological appeals analysis. The study also applied the methods of historicism, analysis, synthesis, structural and problemchronological to study the mechanisms of formation of the Roman attitudes under the Augustus’ reign. The scientific novelty is to find out the evolution of the ethical values formation and reconstruct the system of values that guided the Roman elite. Conclusions. We believe that the idea of the Romans as war planners in the modern sense, who were guided in decisionmaking by the assessment of military, political and economic information, is an illusion created by Roman propaganda. Therefore, the main factor that allows us to find out the evolution of the mechanisms of functioning of the Empire’s foreign policy is the study of the problems of forming the Roman mentality during the reign of Augustus. It is proved that during the first and second centuries AD, there was a synthetic process of the Hellenistic and Roman literary traditions, the main ethical features of which were Greek “universality” and Roman “stability”. The openness to cultural affairs by Roman intellectuals promoted the formation of such moral values like dignity, modesty, constancy, and a propensity to self-denial. It is noted that under a mixed constitution, the prominent worldviews are “great equality” and moral reform, which can only be carried out by a leader (Emperor) who is able to restore the state in a down economy following his own civil and moral qualities. It was based on concern for the status and “dignity” of the Empire. Therefore, the actions of the Romans should be interpreted from the point of view of the “great strategy”, which is a complex of political ideas, notions and values