The soul is divided into reasoning power, anger and desire. Reasoning power rules knowledge, anger deals with impulse, and desire bravely rules the soul’s affections. When these three parts unite into one action, exhibiting a composite energy, then in the soul results concord and virtue. When sedition divides them, then appear discord and vice. Virtue therefore contains three elements; reason, power, and deliberate choice. The soul’s reasoning power’s virtue is prudence, which is a habit of contemplating and judging. The irascible part’s virtue is fortitude; which is a habit of enduring dreadful things, and resisting them. The appetitive part’s virtue is temperance; which is a moderation and detention of the pleasures which arise from the body. The whole soul’s virtue is justice; for men indeed become bad either through vice, or through incontinence, or through a natural ferocity. They injure each other either through gain, pleasure or ambition. More appropriately therefore does vice
belong to the soul’s reasoning part. While prudence is similar to good art, vice resembles bad art, inventing contrivances to act unjustly. Incontinence pertains to the soul’s appetitive part, as continence consists in subduing, and incontinence in failure to subdue pleasures. Ferocity belongs to the soul’s irascible part, for when someone activated by evil desires is gratified not as a man should be, but as a beast would be, then this is called ferocity.

The effects of these dispositions also result from the things for the sake of which they are performed. Vice, hailing from the soul’s reasoning part results in avarice; the irascible part’s fault is ambition, which results in ferocity; and as the appetitive part ends in pleasure, this generates incontinence. As unjust actions are the results of so many causes, so also are just deeds; for virtue is a naturally beneficent and profitable as vice is maleficent and harmful.

Theages, On the Virtues

'Plato knew as well as the Scholastic philosophers that the artist as such has no moral responsibilities, and can sin as an artist only if he fails to consider the sole good of the work to be done, whatever it may be.*1

But like Cicero, Plato also knows that “though he is an artist, he is nevertheless a man”*2 and, if a free man, responsible as such for whatever it may be that he undertakes to make; a man who, if he represents what ought not to be represented and brings into being things unworthy of free men, should be punished, or at the least restrained or exiled like any other criminal or madman.

It is precisely those poets or other artists who imitate anything and everything, and are not ashamed to represent or even “idealize” things essentially base, that Plato, without respect for their abilities, however great, would banish from the society of rational men, “lest from the imitation of shameful things men should imbibe their actuality,”*3.' - Ananda Coomaraswamy

*1 Laws 670E; Sum Theol. 1.91.3, I-II.57 ad 2.
*2 Cicero, Pro quinctio xxv.78.
*3 Republic 395c; cf 395-401, esp. 401BC, 605-607, and Laws 656c.

So we should do the other things, including pleasant things, for the sake of good things, and not good things for the sake of pleasant things.

Plato, Gorgias 500a

So this is how I set down the matter, and I say that this is true. And if it is true, then a person who wants to be happy must evidently pursue and practice self-control. Each of us must flee away from lack of discipline as quickly as his feet will carry, and must above all make sure that he has no need of being disciplined, but if he does have that need, either he himself or anyone in his house, either a private citizen or a whole city, he must pay his due and must be disciplined, if he's to be happy. This is the target which I think one should look to in living, and in his actions he should direct all of his own affairs and those of his city to the end that justice and self-control will be present in one who is to be blessed. He should not allow his appetites to be undisciplined or undertake to fill them up - that's interminably bad - and live the life of a marauder. Such a man could not be dear to another man or to a god, for he cannot be a partner, and where there's no partnership there's no friendship. Yes, Callicles, wise men claim that partnership and friendship, orderliness, self-control, and justice hold together heaven and earth, and gods and men, and that is why they call this universe a world order, my friend, and not an undisciplined world-disorder.

Plato, Gorgias 507c-508a

'It is fitting' for each of us to do these things 'according to the customs of one's country'. For God is always simultaneously present everywhere, with all of his divine powers. But we are limited to one form among those many forms produced by God, the human form, and within the human form are limited to one form of life for now and one choice of life, and are divided up into a little portion of the universe and of the earth itself. So different people partake in a different instance of divine goodness, and they do so in a different way at different times and places. You can at least see that when it is day with us, it is night for others, and when it is winter in one place, it is summer in another, and that these sorts of flora and fauna prevail here, and elsewhere other sorts: the earth and the things on it partake of divine goodness in a divided way.

Simplicius, On Epictetus' Handbook 94.8-21

There is a strand of thought in some circles which seeks to delegitimize our Greco-Roman heritage.

This effort is itself subversive.

The impact and influence that the Greek and Roman civilizations had on the identity, nature, and development of Europe is so enormous and profound that it cannot be calculated.

The philosophy, the theology, the poetry, the art, the science and mathematics, the political systems, even to some extent the military and athletic cultures… we owe so much of all of this, so much of who we are, to Greece and Rome.

None of this is to diminish the beauty and importance of other European civilizations, all of which I love.

But the idea that we should deconstruct our Greco-Roman inheritance and view it with an eye of suspicion because of some occasional outside influences or syncretism, some of which are conjectural, is ludicrous and modernist hogwash. I can hardly think of anything more subversive and destructive than that.

But if we are persuaded by me, we’ll believe that the soul is immortal and able to endure every evil and every good, and we’ll always hold to the upward path, practicing justice with reason in every way.

Plato, Republic 621c

The place beyond heaven - none of our earthly poets has ever sung or ever will sing its praises enough! Still, this is the way it is - risky as it may be, you see, I must attempt to speak the truth, especially since the truth is my subject. What is in this place is without color and without shape and without solidity, a being that really is what it is, the subject of all true knowledge, visible only to intelligence, the soul's steersman. Now a god's mind is nourished by intelligence and pure knowledge, as is the mind of any soul that is concerned to take in what is appropriate to it, and so it is delighted at last to be seeing what is real and watching what is true, feeding on all this and feeling wonderful, until the circular motion brings it around to where it started. On the way around it has a view of Justice as it is; it has a view of Self-control; it has a view of Knowledge - not the knowledge that is close to change, that becomes different as it knows the different things which we consider real down here. No, it is the knowledge of what really is what it is. And when the soul has seen all the things that are as they are and feasted on them, it sinks back inside heaven and goes home.

Plato, Phaedrus 247c-e

That's because what everyone loves is really nothing other than the good. Do you disagree? Now, then. Can we simply say that people love the good? But shouldn't we add that, in loving it, they want the good to be theirs? And not only that. They want the good to be theirs forever, don't they? In a word, then, love is wanting to possess the good forever. ... All of us are pregnant, Socrates, in body and in soul, and, as soon as we come to a certain age, we naturally desire to give birth. Now no one can possibly give birth in anything ugly; only in something beautiful. That's because when a man and woman come together in order to give birth, this is a godly affair. Pregnancy, reproduction - this is an immortal thing for a mortal animal to do, and it cannot occur in anything that is out of harmony, but ugliness is out of harmony with all that is godly. Beauty, however, is in harmony with the divine.

Plato, Symposium 206a-d

"Virtue seems, then, to be a kind of health, fine condition, and well-being of the soul, while vice is disease, shameful condition, and weakness."

Plato, Republic 444e

The One is all things and no one of them; the source of all things is not all things; and yet it is all things in a transcendental sense - all things, so to speak, having run back to it: or, more correctly, not all as yet are within it, they will be.

But a universe from an unbroken unity, in which there appears no diversity, not even duality?

It is precisely because there is nothing within the One that all things are from it: in order that Being may be brought about, the source must be no Being but Being's generator, in what is to be thought of as the primal act of generation. Seeking nothing, possessing nothing, lacking nothing, the One is perfect and, in our metaphor, has overflowed, and its exuberance has produced the new: this product has turned again to its begetter and been filled and has become its contemplator and so an Intellectual-Principle.

That station towards the One (the fact that something exists in presence of the One) establishes Being; that vision directed upon the One establishes the Intellectual-Principle; standing towards the One to the end of vision, it is simultaneously Intellectual-Principle and Being; and, attaining resemblance in virtue of this vision, it repeats the act of the One in pouring forth a vast power.

This second outflow is an image or representation of the Divine Intellect and the Divine Intellect represented its own prior, The One.

This active power sprung from essence (from the Intellectual-Principle considered as Being) is Soul.

Plotinus, Enneads 5.2.1

Make a start, then, with small things. A drop of oil is spilled, a little wine is stolen; say to yourself, ‘Such is the price at which equanimity is bought; such is the price that one pays for peace of mind.’ For nothing can be acquired for no price at all.

Epictetus, Handbook 12

But there is a third order [of men] - those godlike men who, in their mightier power, in the keenness of their sight, have a clear vision of the splendour above and rise to it from among the cloud and fog of earth and hold firmly to that other world, looking beyond all here, delighted in the place of reality, their native land, like a man returning after long wanderings to the pleasant ways of his own country. ... It is to be reached by those who, born with the nature of the lover, are also authentically philosophic by inherent temper; in pain of love towards beauty but not held by material loveliness, taking refuge from that in things whose beauty is of the soul - such things as virtue, knowledge, institutions, law and custom - and thence, rising still a step, reach to the source of this loveliness of the Soul, thence to whatever be above that again, until the uttermost is reached, The First, the Principle whose beauty is self-springing: this attained, there is an end to the pain inassuageable before.

But how is this ascent to be begun? Whence comes the power? In what thought is this love to find its guide? The guiding thought is this: that the beauty perceived on material things is borrowed.

Plotinus, Enneads 5.9.1-2

All things which participate intelligence are preceded by the unparticipated Intelligence, those which participate life by Life, and those which participate being by Being; and of these three unparticipated principles Being is prior to Life and Life to Intelligence.

... Since the cause of more numerous effects precedes the cause of fewer, among these principles Being will stand foremost; for it is present to all things which have life and intelligence (since whatever lives and shares in intellection necessarily exists), but the converse is not true (since not all that exists lives and exercises intelligence). Life has the second place; for whatever shares in intelligence shares in life, but not conversely, since many things are alive but remain devoid of knowledge. The third principle is Intelligence; for whatever is in any measure capable of knowledge both lives and exists. If, then, Being gives rise to a greater number of effects, Life to fewer, and Intelligence to yet fewer, Being stands foremost, next to it Life, and then Intelligence.

Proclus, Elements of Theology 101

It must be that what can be spoken and thought is, for it is there for being
And there is no such thing as nothing.

Parmenides, fragment B6

I normally avoid politically tinged posts, because politics isn’t my purpose here, but I feel it needs to be stated unambiguously that I do not believe paganism, including Platonism, is compatible with many contemporary cultural trends, such as transgenderism, sexual promiscuity (male or female), homosexuality, drug abuse, etc. I do not hate or shun any such people and I believe that the pagan path can help them, as it can help anyone, but I also cannot sign off on any of those behaviors, however politically incorrect it might make me.

The reader must not suppose ... that the gods are nothing more than so many attributes of the first cause; for if this were the case, the first god would be multitude, but The One must always be prior to the many. But the gods, though they are profoundly united with their ineffable cause, are at the same time self-perfect essences; for the first cause is prior to self-perfection. Hence as the first cause is superessential, all the gods, from their union through the summits or blossoms of their natures with this incomprehensible god, will be likewise superessential; in the same manner as trees from being rooted in the earth are all of them earthly in an eminent degree. And as in this instance the earth itself is essentially distinct from the trees which it contains, so the highest god is transcendently distinct from the multitude of gods which he ineffably comprehends.

Thomas Taylor, footnote to Sallust's On the Gods and the World

Man was generated and constituted, for the purpose of contemplating the reason of the whole of nature, and in order that, being himself the work of wisdom, he might survey the wisdom of the things which exist. For if the reason of man is contemplative of the reason of the whole of nature, and the wisdom also of man perceives and contemplates the wisdom of the things in existence, - this being acknowledged, it is at the same time demonstrated, that man is a part of a universal reason, and of the whole of the intellectual nature.

Archytas the Pythagorean

Philosophy is the purification and perfection of human life. It is the purification, indeed, from material irrationality, and the mortal body; but the perfection, in consequence of being the resumption of our proper felicity, and a reascent to the divine likeness. To effect these two is the province of Virtue and Truth; the former exterminating the immoderation of the passions; and the latter introducing the divine form to those who are naturally adapted to its reception.

Hierocles, Commentary on the Golden Verses

"Jove is a circle, triangle and square,
Centre and line, and all things before all."

Pherecydes of Syros, quoted by Thomas Taylor in Works of Plato v.1 p.18

Our ancestors and men of great antiquity, have left us a tradition, involved in fable, that the first essences are Gods, and that the divinity comprehends the whole of nature. The rest indeed is fabulously introduced, for the purpose of persuading the multitude, enforcing the laws, and benefiting human life. For they ascribe to the first essences a human form, and speak of them as resembling other animals, and assert other things similar and consequent to these. But if among these assertions, any one separating the rest, retains only the first, that is to say that they considered the first essences to be Gods, he will think it to be divinely said.

Aristotle, Metaphysics 1074b