Sophrosyne for Men and Women
As seen in North’s far-ranging compilation, many ancient texts discuss men’s practice of sophrosyne, and one occasional component of that practice is that a husband also ought to restrain himself from extramarital sex.
In his On the Pythagorean Life, lamblichus repeats the view that sophrosyne is an essential virtue for both males and females, and that selfcontrol of sexual lust is one element of this virtue (31.195.8; 31.210.15; 31.211.4). In fact, lamblichus’s report of the speech of Pythagoras to the men of Kroton urges:They should also be resolved that they would know only their wives, and that their wives should not adulterate the line because their partners neglect or injure them. A man should think that his wife was brought to him in the sight of the gods, like a suppliant, taken with libations from the hearth. He should set an example of discipline and sophrosyne both to the household of which he is head and to those in the city.[1177]
However, based on a survey of the evidence, in most other texts sophrosyne is not so inextricably tied to the husband’s marital fidelity as it is to the wife’s.[1178] Phintys’s treatise On the Sophrosyne of a Woman clearly expresses this exact gender-perspective:
But I think that some things are characteristic for a man, and some for a woman, and some are common to man and woman, and some are more for a man than for a woman, and some more for a woman than for a man. On the one hand, characteristic activities for a man are to serve as a general, and to take part in government, and to speak in the assembly. On the other hand, characteristic activities for a woman are to keep the house and to stay indoors and to wait for and to take care of her husband. And I say common things are courage [avSpsiav], and justice [SiKaioauvav], and practical wisdom [^povaoiv].
For also it is fitting for both a man and a woman to have virtues of the body and likewise those of the soul. And just as it is beneficial for both to be healthy in body, thus [it is beneficial for both to be] healthy in soul. The virtues of the body are health, strength, keen perception, beauty. Some [virtues] are more suitable for a man to train in and to possess, and some more for a woman. For courageous deeds and practical wisdom are more [suitable] for a man, both on account of the state of his body and on account of the power of his soul, but sophrosyne [is more suitable] for the woman.[1179]Here it is the wife who needs to act sophron-ly in regard to household management,[1180] while the husband is expected to move and to act in public arenas - military and political - from which women are supposedly restricted. This socially conventional thinking gives a partial rationale for why female sophrosyne is primarily shown in a wife’s sexual loyalty to her “one and only” husband: marriage is the chief relationship of her adult life. Thus, sophrosyne is more for a woman than for a man,[1181] and, to extrapolate the logic of the treatise, this appears to be true “on account of the state of the woman’s body and the power of her soul.” Here the author does not explain what differentiates the bodies and souls of males and females; the difference is simply left unsaid. But the implication is that women as females need to possess more self-control in the realm of sexuality.[1182]
D.