In a speech delivered in 1794, roughly one year after the execution of Louis XVI, Robespierre boldly declared Terror to be an ‘emanation of virtue’. In adapting the concept of virtue to Republican ends, Robespierre was drawing on traditions associated with ancient Greece and Rome. But Republican tradition formed only one of many strands in debates concerning virtue in France and elsewhere in Europe, from 1680 to the Revolution. This collection focuses on moral-philosophical and classical-republican uses of ‘virtue’ in this period – one that is often associated with a ‘crisis of...