The definition of impious goes beyond its etymological meaning. Unholy is considered someone who does not possess the virtue of piety, but its meaning is much broader, since it refers to a hostile attitude towards what piety represents.
Therefore, an impious person is not someone who simply does not have the characteristic of believing in God and his teachings, but someone who despises them and does not respect his philosophy.
The concept of impious therefore has a whole series of negative connotations related to evil. By not believing in God, the wicked have no law other than his own instincts and therefore allow himself to be governed by them. As a result, he is cunning, violent, arrogant, and has a whole host of flaws associated with the human condition.
Mercy as a virtue
The wide reading that Greeks and Romans carried out of the virtue of piety is what results in the concept of impious being used as a kind of compendium of all the evils of the human being.
On the one hand, impiety is a characteristic that is assigned to anyone who does not believe in God, which is why both the atheist and the agnostic are included under this qualifier. That is to say, the mere doubt about the existence or not of God already supposes to be considered impious.
Of course, faced with such extreme criteria, the same qualification is obtained by those who disrespect religious traditions, representatives of the Church, or sacred objects.
But, in addition, in times of Rome, in which the secular and the religious were intimately united, not respecting God meant not respecting parents, civil authority or the country.
Piety was the representation of all the good that man possesses within him, and as a result, impiety was its opposite.
In fact, there is a Latin saying that says "Piety is the foundation of all virtues".
Therefore, although piety today is considered a kind of religious sentiment and to that area we circumscribe its meaning, in ancient times it was attributed a much wider range of characteristics.
Hence, the Latin word "Impíus" can be translated with a wide variety of meanings, all of them deeply negative, and not only in relation to the religious sphere. While on the one hand its meaning is "irreverent" or "not religious", meanings such as "Inhuman", "evil", "harmful" or "perverse".
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