Second Commentary on the Doctrine of Abstinence

designates abstinentia. Thus, in Valerius Maximus d), there exists an inscription concerning abstinentia and continentia, where the examples of these virtues are promiscuous. But these different words signify different things as well. Hence, Quintilian e): If continentia is a virtue, certainly abstinentia is as well. And Tullius f): By nothing can those who preside over the republic more easily win the goodwill of the multitude than by ABSTINENTIA and CONTINENTIA. How, therefore, does one word differ from the other? Briefly, yet distinctly, the two men already praised, Valla and Popma, respond: that continentia is in the temperate man, [while] abstinentia is attributed to the innocent one. To continere is to restrain oneself from desires and the allurements of pleasures; to abstinere is to keep one's hands and mind from the property of others, offering violence to no one, snatching away nothing from anyone. Therefore, continentia is a virtue restraining passions and subjecting them to the command of reason, or a virtue by which reason tempers the emotions of the mind, especially concerning the pleasures of the body, called egkrateia (ἐγκράτεια) by the Greeks. But abstinentia is a virtue by which we restrain ourselves from the property of others, and it is opposed to avaritia (avarice) and rapacitas (rapacity). Thus Cicero: In our province, so far as ABSTINENTIA is concerned, we conduct ourselves in such a way that not a single three-as coin is spent on anyone. g) Thus Cornelius Nepos: Aristides so excelled in ABSTINENTIA...