Page 10 - GALIET EMBERS & SAPPHIRE: Milton IV

immortality of the soul, in vast dialogues, including Laches and Charmides, elevates the virtues of wisdom, temperance, fortitude, justice and sanctity. His Republic presents what, in time, came to be known as the four cardinal virtues of a thriving, well-organized polis: wisdom (σοφια or φρονεσις), courage (ανδρεια), temperance (σωφροσυνη) and justice (δικαιοσυνη).8 Wisdom 3⁄4 often translated as practical wisdom or prudence9 3⁄4 has, in Plato’s utopian context, the same meaning as φρονεσις: prudence.10 Courage suggests moral fortitude, and Justice tends to equate to temperance only when it is a personal attitude.11 Of all, temperance 3⁄4 as prudence, as practical wisdom 3⁄4 is an indispensable virtue necessary for justice’s harmony. Wisdom is personified in Milton’s Lady Chastity as sublimation and abstinence; vice in Comus as perversion and licentiousness. Wisdom, too, is personified by Prodicus12 as a natural, sober, white-robed Lady while vice as
of what is as is, is also identified with being. “For it is the same to apprehend and to be.” Fr. 4. Mainly, one cannot inquire about what is not. Waterfield, Robin. The First Philosophers. Parmenides. Fragment 4. (Clement Miscellanies 6.23.3) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 58.
8 Plato. Republic. IV, 427 e. Plato. Complete Works. Republic. Ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing, 1997.
9 Plato. Republic. IV, 429 a. Plato. Complete Works. Republic. Ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing, 1997.
10 Plato. Republic. IV, 433 b-c. Plato. Complete Works. Republic. Ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing, 1997.
11 Plato. Charmides. 161 b. Plato. Complete Works. Charmides. Ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing, 1997.
12 Fragment 1 of Prodicus. Waterfield, Robin. First Philosophers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 246-49.
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