In her article ‘The virtues of masculinity’, Mary Harrington ends with an important warning about how contemporary culture is demonising traditional male traits:
‘for men whose personalities tend toward aggression, protectiveness, competition and stoicism, what honourable roles are left? We’d be foolish to shrug our shoulders as such men lose hope of being valued as protectors, and start looking for glory as wolves.’
Either protector — or wolf. But is it really that simple? For both the Romans and the Egyptians, the wolf symbolised valour. The word, meaning ‘value, worth’, derives from Old French valor, valour "valor, moral worth, merit, courage, virtue" (12c.), from Late Latin valorem (nominative valor) "value, worth" (in Medieval Latin "strength, valor"), from stem of Latin valere "be strong, be worth”. And the Middle English word also had a sense of “worth or worthiness in respect of manly qualities”.