VIII. THE DUCAL PALACE 371

outlines. But the imperfect scholarship of later ages seems to have gone to Plato, only to find in him the system of Cicero;¹ which indeed was very definitely expressed by him. For it having been quickly felt by all men who strove, unhelped by Christian faith, to enter at the strait gate into the paths of virtue, that there were four characters of mind which were protective or preservative of all that was best in man, namely, Prudence, Justice, Courage, and Temperance,* these were afterwards, with most illogical inaccuracy, called cardinal virtues, Prudence being evidently no virtue, but an intellectual gift: but this inaccuracy arose partly from the ambiguous sense of the Latin word “virtutes,” which sometimes, in mediæval language, signifies virtues, sometimes powers (being occasionally used in the Vulgate for the word “hosts,” as in Psalm ciii. 21, cxlviii. 2, etc., while “fortitudines” and “exercitus” are used for the same word in other places), so that prudence might properly be styled a power, though not properly a virtue; and partly from the confusion of Prudence with Heavenly Wisdom. The real rank of these four virtues, if so they are to be called, is however properly expressed by the term “cardinal.” They are virtues of the compass, those by which all others are directed and strengthened; they are not the greatest virtues, but the restraining or modifying virtues, thus Prudence restrains zeal, Justice restrains mercy, Fortitude and Temperance guide the entire system of the passions; and, thus understood, these virtues properly assumed their peculiar leading or guiding position in the system of Christian ethics. But in Pagan ethics, they were not only guiding, but comprehensive. They meant a great deal more on the lips of the ancients than they now express to the

* This arrangement of the cardinal virtues is said to have been first made by Archytas. See D’Ancarville’s illustration of the three figures of Prudence, Fortitude, and Charity, in Selvatico’s “Cappellina degli Scrovegni,” Padua, 1836.

¹ [See the De Officiis, i. §§ 20 seq., for Justice; §§ 61 seq. for Fortitude; and §§ 93 seq. for Temperance.]

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