Equity is often used as a watchword for rectifying the imbalances inherent in society. However, equity is more closely associated with inequality than with equality. As a notion that is asked to restore an initial situation that has been altered, or to distribute to each according to merit, equity often has the effect of reproducing original inequalities rather than correcting them.
The beauty of equality and the dynamism of fairness are at the heart of a striking phrase by Cato the Elder who, at the beginning of the 2ndcentury B.C., described an entire vision of his ideal world, capable of integrating both the collective dimension and individual drive. In a first movement, Cato presents us with the realms of equality, i.e. "law, liberty and the public thing", to outline, in a second movement, the field of merit, the individual pursuit of "glory and honors", where equality gives way to equity. Deconstructing this statement takes us into a political lexicon of astonishing precision, thanks to one of the protagonists of a society in the process of asserting itself as a Mediterranean empire and rethinking its own internal hierarchies.
