What a Wise Greek Taught Me About Will Power

I have never been capable of refusing a treat. Pleasure feels like treasure to be grabbed, and inside my brain, a steel wall clangs down, dividing the dangled joy from its consequences. Reaching for that cupcake, I am five again, oblivious to any connection between the cream-cheese frosting and the pounds I need to lose.

With less alacrity, I reach for How to Have Willpower: An Ancient Guide to Not Giving In. All the latest pop psych tells us to use devotion, not discipline. Do not coerce yourself. Eat intuitively. But this gentle approach slinks out of sight when the cupcakes appear. Maybe I need more traditional wisdom.

Michael Fontaine, professor of classics at Cornell University and the editor and translator of this gem, first relays Prudentius’ suspicion that “we allow pressure or temptations to get the best of us, indeed, in some ways even want it.” Of course. We want the cupcake. And as Schopenhauer reminded us, people can do what they will, but they cannot will what they will. “We can’t choose or opt out of our desires.”

And yet, we have choices. Three of them, to be precise. “We can demonize bad behavior as sin, blame it on Satan or witches” (anyone old enough to remember the Church Lady hissing “Is it Satan?”?) “and seek theological relief. Alternatively, we can pathologize bad behavior as addiction, blame it on genes, chemicals and imbalances, or substances, and seek medical relief.” Ozempic, anyone? Finally, “we can take responsibility for bad behavior, blame it on no one but ourselves.” Blind worship of pleasure is what I have chosen. Granted, I have my German father’s build, and sugar is kind of addictive, but okay. I am willing to accept, with Cicero, that “stupidity (stultitia) unleashes and incites these perturbations”—and with Prudentius that vice is elective stupidity. Why, he asks, “ascribe every sin of the world and of men to an evil enemy’s mischief? That’s shifting the blame. In reality, sins grow up from our minds.”

Plutarch is in the book too, telling us how to resist coercion, but it is Prudentius I need. Peer pressure has never been the problem. Pleasure’s pressure is what I must learn to ignore. (Or must I? Still the rebellious little voice, unconvinced. “Your clothes don’t fit,” I tell it, jaw clenched tight.)

Prudentius was a Latin Christian poet fascinated by the bloody agonistic duel that is fought inside the psyche. To dramatize it, he conjures an epic battle between two fierce warrior women (of course they are women) to show Virtue defeating Vice with grisly dispatch. They fight seven battles of the will, but honestly, the only one I care about is Temperance vs. Indulgence.

“Out of the western ends of the earth,” he writes—the West is always blamed for vice—“comes a new foe, Indulgence, one for whom reputation means nothing (she long ago lost it): perfumed curlicues, restless eyes, with a voice bored and languid. Wrecked by excessive refinement, her reason for living is pleasure.” Ah, yes.

Indulgence is not an aggressive gal; overt aggression would be unpleasant. “For bullets she’s tossing out violets and blandishing rose petals.” Thus she lures the Virtues into her trap: “the alluring, illicit aroma is breathing delicate venom all through their faltering bones. The sickly sweet bouquet is overcoming mouth, mind, and weapons, gently massaging their ironclad muscles and crushing their mettle.” She could just as easily have used cupcakes. In any event, the Virtues drop their weapons “from languid hands…transported by dreams of surrender.”

Temperance, the strongest Virtue, is appalled. “What madness is churning your minds and clouding your senses?” she demands. Exactly what my skinny mother longed to ask every time I reached for more cheesecake. “Want to sashay?” Temperance taunts the tempted. (This translation is great fun.) “Have the train of some gown sweeping over your footsteps? Maybe a silken cloak, to cascade on your vulnerable bodies? Please. Don’t you have the immortal shirt that nurturing Faith’s deft fingers wove?”

I have friends who wear that shirt. They keep their portions tiny, refuse dessert, and say things I would never say, like, “Here, take the rest of the cake home, I can’t have it in the house.” Can’t have it in the house? A five-layer chocolate cake with ganache? I find this incomprehensible—precisely because I cannot have it in the house for more than a day. I will gobble it up, thrilled at such a treat. You would think I grew up starved for food or affection or joy, but no. I just find what is delicious delicious.

“Please,” Temperance is now saying, straight to me. “Nourished by feasts such as those, you’ll be carried away by a shameful bout of Indulgence, and enter her dissolute whorehouse!?” Temperance vows to “clear the way for all of the virtues,” so that together they can defeat Indulgence in Christ’s name.

But how?

Temperance does not hesitate, though you would think that, being Temperance, she might. “Stepping directly in front of the fiery chariot-horses, she lifts up a crucifix, training the hallowed wood smack-dab on the reins.” Shades of a vampire hunt. Spooked, the horses bolt, dragging the driver through the dirt until the driver, Indulgence, is caught and mangled by the wheels, “wrapped face-first down into the axle. Thus, she becomes a gruesome brake for the runaway chariot.” Even I pale. All this for a cupcake?

Temperance delivers the death blow herself, hurling a boulder that “smashes the breathing holes on her face, and her lips crush inward and mingle with palate. Teeth are knocked loose in her mouth, and her tongue has been shredded to pieces. Chunks of blood are filling her throat, now torn….. She’s choking on bone-bits mashed to a pulp and spitting up globs that she’s already swallowed.”

And I? Have lost my appetite. Best. Diet. Book. Ever.

Read more by Jeannette Cooperman here.