The third virtue, σωφροσύνη, temperantia, is likewise represented under a political aspect. It is a virtue by which men's bodily appetites are regulated according to the dictates of the laws of the state, ‘are so disposed towards bodily pleasures as the law enjoins’. In Eth. Nic. III cc. 13, 14, there is no regular definition of it; but we gather from the contents of the two chapters that it is a virtue of self-control, which consists in a mean state with regard to the indulgence in bodily pleasures, (pains having less to do with the virtue); and in a due measure or estimate of the value of them. It is thus a ‘mean’ between ἀκολασία, ‘excessive indulgence in them’, and ἀναισθησία, total ‘insensibility’. II 7, 1107 b 4.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
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