1. For an exhaustive study of the history and application of the term hairesis, cf. J. Glucker, Antiochus and the Late Academy (Göttingen, 1978), 159–92.

2. See, for instance, E. Bevan, Stoics and Sceptics (Oxford, 1913), 32. I have questioned the usefulness of such claims in Hellenistic Philosophy, 2d ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1986), 2–4.

3. I have explored a number of aspects of this large topic in “Socrates in Hellenistic Philosophy,” CQ n.s. 38 (1988): 150–71.

4. Cf. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. L. H. Martin, H. Gutman, and H. Hutton (University of Massachussetts Press, 1988), 16–49.

5. Support for this claim can be drawn from the careful work of Helen North in her book Sophrosyne, Self-knowledge and Self-restraint in Greek Literature (Ithaca, N. Y., 1966). North (69) finds mastery of passion the “new emphasis in Euripides' interpretation of” sophrosyne; and she also writes (70): “Certain Sophists appear to have been among the first to develop systematically the concept of sophrosyne as the control of man's lower impulses and appetites.” This seems to me to be correct provided that we include Socrates among “certain Sophists.”

6. I go a step further than T. Irwin who, in a note on Gorgias 491d 4 in his translation for the Clarendon Plato series (Oxford, 1979), says that “though Socrates suggests that the many recognize the possibility of self-control, it is actually quite hard to find evidence of this view in pre-Platonic Greek.” Irwin's best example is Antiphon, D-K 87 B58 (also cited by Dodds in his commentary on the Gorgias), where sophrosyne is characterized as follows: ὄστις τοῦ θυμοῦ ταῖς παραχρῆμα ἡδοναῖς ἐμφράσσει αὐτὸς ἑαυτὸν κρατεῖν τε καὶ νικᾶν ἠδυνήθη αὐτὸς ἑαυτόν. For all we know, Antiphon here may reflect the influence of Socrates' oral discourse.

7. Note the very similar passage, Rep. 4.430e, also an elucidation of sophrosyne. Here, in support of analyzing sophrosyne as κόσμος τις and ἡδονῶν τινων καὶ ἐπιθυμιῶν ἐγκράτεια (cf. also Symp. 196c), Socrates invokes the expression κρείττω αὑτοῦ as one that is in popular use, and then pokes fun at it. The fun involves the difficulty of supposing that one and the same person can be both master and subject of himself. Plato surely makes so much of this point precisely because self-mastery was not a notion whose implications for the structure of the self were familiar in everyday discourse.

8. North, Sophrosyne, 118ff., notes the importance of enkrateia for Xenophon's portrait of Socrates. At Mem. 1.5.4 Socrates proposes that it should be regarded as the foundation of arete.

9. For the testimonia on this, cf. G. Giannantoni, Socraticorum reliquiae (Naples, 1983), vol. 1, no. IV A 96. I am not suggesting that Aristippus had a use for the term enkrateia in its Socratic sense of mastering pleasures and passions. Xenophon's Socrates (Mem. 2.1.1–34) tries to persuade Aristippus that he needs to cultivate enkrateia by arguing that the life of a ruler is superior to that of a subject. Aristippus nimbly sidesteps the argument by insisting that there is a third option, a life neither of rule nor of slavery, but of “freedom,” which is the best route to happiness. It is in virtue of this notion and his claim to be able “always to make the best of circumstances” (Diog. Laert. 2.66) that we may credit Aristippus with an interest in autonomy or self-mastery.

10. Epicurus makes this statement in his Letter to Menoeceus (Diog. Laert. 10.135). For the Stoics' claim, cf. SVF 3:332.

11. Zeno's successor Cleanthes called the state of the soul which is displayed in the cardinal virtues “strength and power” (ἰσχὺς καὶ κράτος), Plut. St. rep. 1034D (SVF 1:563), and in the same context listed as the first such virtue enkrateia (the field of which is “steadfastness”), followed by courage, justice, and sophrosyne. For a similarly prominent placing of enkrateia, cf. Chrysippus in SVF 3:297.

12. In characterizing Zeno as καρτερικώτατος and λιτότατος, Diogenes Laertius (7.26) uses two terms that became ubiquitous among historians for praising virtuous political leaders or peoples uncorrupted by luxury: cf. DS 10.12.11, 37.3.2, 37.5.1; Dion. Hal. 6.96.2, etc.

13. References of the form “L-S 2B” are to A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley [L-S = Long-Sedley], The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1987), where numerical headings (as here “Tranquillity and Virtue” under the general rubric of “Early Pyrrhonism”) are subdivided alphabetically.

14. See L-S 65A–B.

15. See L-S 21B–C, F, I, T.

16. Cf. Chrysippus, L-S 66A: “For this reason, then, owing to the extreme magnitude and beauty [of justice], we seem to be talking fiction and not on the level of man and human nature.”

17. One may compare Alexander the Great's supposed contacts with the Cynic Diogenes, and the probably fictional exchange of letters between Antigonus Gonatas and Zeno (Diog. Laert. 7.7–9).

18. My citations from Menander, unless a play is specified, are taken from Jaekel's Teubner edition of the Sententiae.

19. Cf. Jaekel 2, 50, 124, 384, 436, 565, 684, 843.