Cornell University Press, 1979. Volume 40. Hardcover. Red cloth covered hardcover with gilt lettering to spine. Dust jacket has a 0.5 cm closed tear at the upper lefthand corner on front cover. Dust jacket was placed in a clear cover after photographing. B&W photos and illustrations. Includes a list of abbreviations, appendix and an index. 281 pp.

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ISBN: 9780801411359

A distinguished classicist examines some of the ways in which certain Greek ethical concepts, especially those related to soph-osyne (self-knowledge, self-restraint, moderation) and the other Platonic virtues, are reflected in mythology, politics and education, oratory, and the visual arts.

Helen North considers how the Platonic virtues were regarded, how they affected the understanding of political and social life, how they were embodied in mythical figures and expressed in mythical and historical or semi-historical exemplary accounts, and how they were portrayed in art at certain important stages of their development. She moves from archaic Greek myth in Chapter 1 through the political and rhetorical applications of sophrosyne/ temperantia in classical Athens and Rome, which she treats in two central chapters.In a final chapter, concerned chiefly with the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, she returns to some of the early myths and exemplary figures and shows how they survived, together with allegories and symbols popularized in the postclassical period, in religious and secular art into the eighteenth century.

Professor North's aim, as she says in her preface, is to provide "a kind of Ariadne's thread to serve as a guide through the labyrinthine iconography of sophrosyne/ temperantia all the way from its beginnings in the coins and sarcophagi of late antiquity to its end in such specimens as the Reynolds window for the Ante Chapel of New College, Oxford, and Canova's tomb for Pope Clement XIV in Rome."

Bringing together a wealth of material from many disciplines, Professor North's book offers fresh perspectives on the ways in which the Greeks and Romans interpreted ethical ideals. Like her Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature (Cornell University Press, 1966), it is scrupulously documented and engagingly written.

Price: $36.95