Introduction
“Can woman cultivate moral excellence?” “Who is a good woman?” “How can she become good?” Questions like these are frequently considered in Greek and Roman philosophical literature,[1129] with the discourse becoming so standard that a topos (tokos) developed,[1130] one which I call “the good woman” topos.
My concept draws on Johan C. Thom’s description of a topos as a sort of mental landscape: “The moral universe in the GraecoRoman world is... divided into regions or topoi, each with its own internal structure, based on the questions it is meant to answer.”[1131] In such a way, treatments of “the good woman” together illustrate a “feminine moral topography,” a map of the ideological contours of the virtue, moral development, and resulting social responsibilities specific to women.[1132]One feature of the topical map of “the good woman” is especially prominent, and that is the concept of sophrosyne, a Greek virtue that combines the prefix *so(s)-, denoting “health” and “salvation,” with variations of phren, meaning “mind or heart.” According to Jerome D. Quinn, this explains why Philo “remarks that the term used for the health (hygeia) of the soul is sophrosyne... ‘the virtue that makes one’s thinking sane.’”[1133] Thus Quinn proposes the translation “sanity,” because it connotes the mental “balance” found in the Greek. Other possible translations include “soundness of mind,” “discretion,” “moderation,” “temperance,” “self-control,” “chastity,” and “restraint,” and the choice made usually depends on context. Since the word is difficult to capture in one English equivalent,[1134] and because I want to emphasize where and how it is being used in the texts, I have chosen to transliterate this word throughout.
As early as 1966, Helen North traced the varied demonstrations and discussions of this virtue through Greek (and some Latin) literature.
In a footnote on her first page she states this conclusion: “Feminine sophrosyne (chastity, modesty, obedience, inconspicuous behavior) remains the same throughout Greek history.”[1135] About a decade later, North began to delineate the outline of a particularly female sophrosyne, stating: “... sophrosyne is the most multifaceted of all the Greek virtues, and some of its aspects belong exclusively to men. What is the sophrosyne of women?”[1136] Her thesis attaches sophrosyne to both the “chastity” and “domesticity” of “the good woman.”[1137] She then shifts her focus from the “chastity” aspect of female sophrosyne and onto its “domesticity,” in order to consider the strong relationship of both masculine and feminine sophrosyne to household management (oikonomia).Similarly, in his recent essay on 1 Timothy 2:9-15, Abraham J. Malherbe cites much ancient literature on feminine expressions of sophrosyne, highlighting the ideas of Cicero, Musonius Rufus,[1138] Plutarch, Sophocles, Euripides, Antiphanes, and Crates, among others. Malherbe notes the clear conceptual links made between women’s sophrosyne and their overall selfcontrol, purity in orderliness, sexual behavior, moderate adornment, modesty, silence, and orderliness, all elements of the instructions for women found in the Pastoral Letters.[1139] But he does not examine how these items might be positioned in relation with each other, saying that the evidence he presents is only the first step.[1140]
How can we conceive of sophrosyne as a key feature on a mental map of women’s morality? Is sophrosyne akin to the peak of a high mountain, that she might reach at the end of an arduous climb? Is it like a spreading river delta where waters finally flow into the sea? No, the moral- philosophical writings testify that this virtue is more like a woman’s homebase, functioning as both the beginning and the ending of her life-journey. In fact, since her sophrosyne is to be demonstrated primarily within the social context of the household,[1141] a woman never travels far - both literally and metaphorically - from this particular place.
In order to clarify and to extend the work of North and Malherbe on feminine sophrosyne, this paper analyzes the topos as found in two examples of (neo-)Pythagorean literature[1142] that have also been briefly examined by Malherbe:[1143] (1) a treatise entitled On the Sophrosyne of a Woman, and ascribed to “Phintys, the Pythagorean daughter of Kallikratos” and (2) a short letter attributed to a certain “Melissa” and addressed to another woman named “Kleareta,” known as Melissa to Kleareta.[1144] Following the obvious lead of these texts themselves, I argue that the first and most essential demonstration of sophrosyne for a woman is to remain sexually faithful to her husband. Furthermore, all other prescribed female displays of the virtue (in adornment, speech and silence, child-bearing and childrearing, household management, and activities outside the house itself) manifest this one primary achievement: a woman’s uninterrupted practice of marital fidelity. To conclude, I consider the audience for whom these texts might have been produced in order to demonstrate the spread of sophrosyne as a moral virtue for women of differing social levels.
B.