According to Aristotle in the excerpts from Nicomachean Ethics virtue is a mean between two extremes. A “mean” meaning your drive or emotion is not too constrained, or too unconstrained. A better explanation would be the emotion of fear. If you let your fear get too unconstrained it turns you into a coward, and if you let it get too constrained you become rash. To be virtuous you must be courageous, which is the mean of the two examples. However, the amount of virtue a person has or needs is dependent on the person, because everyone is different. To relate virtue to the Pythagorean women's concept of harmonia we must take what Aristotle is saying, and apply that to behavior. We need to understand that a person can be good, or too bad and we …show more content…
Theano says the moral excellence of a wife is not surveillance or her husband but companionable accommodation. Meaning to ignore his foolishness and wait for him to realize that she is better for him, and repent. Theano want’s Nikostrate to be honorable, and take care of the home. She should realize that he loves her "on the basis of good judgement, but her [courtesan] on the basis of passion (Late Pythagorean)." She says “My dear, this is how you must live: not defending yourself against courtesans, but distinguishing yourself from them by your orderly conduct toward your husband (Late Pythagorean).” She ends her letter by saying “By patiently enduring you will quench your suffering sooner(Late Pythagorean).” This demonstrates harmonia because the wife, Nikostrate, is acting temperately, moderately, and ethically. Also if follows the idea that if she betters herself, she will better her home, and husband too. Erica marin summed it up best when she commented, “she is saying that if she is truly better that them, then she shouldn't go down to their level, and she should prove with everyday actions why she is, and always will be, more superior to a courtesan (Marin,2015).”
Supporting Aristotle’s, and the Pythagorean women's ideas of virtue, Confucius, in the experts from the Analects says that “Exemplary persons (junzi) understand what is appropriate (yi); petty persons