Another [virtue][1] compared to the virtue of citizenship,[2] and a greater one;[3] we use the same word for a kind of agreement and harmony of the desiring and the calculating faculties.[4]
'For in respect of moderation I myself [am] most righteous,[5] and I would rival Bellerophontes in moderation.'[6]
Aristotle says,[7] what we learn by doing, we do by learning; or rather, by learning mastery over pleasures we become moderate, and by becoming moderate, we overcome the pleasures.
Sôphrosunê: allê para tên politikên aretên, meizôn: tôi de autôi onomati chrômetha en homologiai tini kai sumphôniai epithumêtikou pros logismon. to gar es sôphrosunên egô dikaiotaton kan tôi Bellerophontêi sôphrosunês amphisbêtêsaimi. ho phêsin Aristotelês: ha gar poiountes manthanomen, tauta manthanontes poioumen. êgoun to kratein hêdonôn manthanontes sôphrones ginometha, kai genomenoi sôphrones kratoumen tôn hêdonôn.
[1] The second of the four cardinal virtues in the Socratic/Platonic and Stoic traditions: wisdom, moderation, courage, justice. See also
sigma 890,
sigma 892.
[2] Here and later in the entry, Aristotelian ideas are drawn on.
Aristotle at
Politics 3.2.1-11 (= 1276b16-1277b34) outlines his view of the difference between the goodness of a good man and the goodness of a good citizen.
[3] A signal that the background of this part of the entry is not Stoic, since for the Stoics all virtues were equal.
[4]
Plotinus,
Enneads 1.2.1.21f. (Henry p.157 n.2)
[5] Reading
dikaio/tatos with Adler's apparatus criticus, from
tau 8, instead of the manuscripts'
dikaio/taton.
[6] For comment on this proverb/quotation and its source see
tau 8.
[7] As Adler records,
Thomas Gaisford put a marginal note in his copy of his 1834 edition of the
Suda identifying
Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 2.2 as the source for this sentiment; but it is not a verbatim quotation, as the compiler signals by saying 'or rather ...', and repeating the idea in different words. Adler was harsh to add
non est Aristot: it is in fact a fair, if simplified, paraphrase.
Aristotle himself had said '... we both become moderate out of abstaining from pleasures, and, having become so, are particularly able to abstain from them' (
Nicomachean Ethics 2.2.9 [= 1104a33-6]).
Henry, P. "Suidas, Le Larousse et le Littré de L'antiquité grecque." Les Etudes classiques (1937): 155-62
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