ABSTRACT
FQ II draws on various traditions of temperance. Aristotle’s sōphrosynē is the virtue of moderation in bodily pleasures, chiefly food and sex; temperance in this sense came to stand often for virtue in general, which Aristotle understands as the harmonizing of appetite with reason so as to hit the ‘mean’ or ‘mark’ (ie, target) between extremes of excess and defect. The person thus harmonized does not need to exercise self-control; if he must and does do so, he is showing continence (enkrateia), which brings Aristotle closer to the Stoic conception of temperance as self-control. Continence also brings Aristotle closer to Plato, for whom temperance is the aspect of virtue by which the spirited element in the soul keeps the appetites under the control of reason, and thus the whole in harmony. Plato is important for the tradition of temperance in other ways as well: he transmits the Pythagorean emphasis on the mathematical or musical character of harmony, which is found explicitly in FQ II ix 22 and is implicit when Spenser uses terms like measure, rule, and equal; there is something more generally Platonic in Spenser’s idea of temperance as wisdom, often of a heavenly nature (i 31, 44, 54). Since temperance in this sense was readily adopted by Christianity, it came to be thought of as a virtue of purity and selfdenial derived from grace, one of the seven ‘gift virtues’ set against the seven deadly sins.
