Despite the modem recovery of virtue theory in ethics, conceptions of temperance remain largely unexamined. In this study I offer an examination ofcertain interpretive threads oftemperance as a virtue beginning in classical philosophy and moving through early to medieval Christian conceptions. I find contemporary notions oftemperance to be sorely lacking when compared and contrasted to these historical conceptions. Aristotelian and Thomistic accounts of temperance are particularly important to the normative statement of temperance I offer here. To fully understand temperance one must...