Beyond Socrates: The (Pre)history of enkrateia

The term enkrateia appears for the first time in Greek testimonies from the fourth century BC with the meaning of “mastery” or “control over” pleasures. This paper analyzes certain cases of cognates of enkrateia that precede this noun, in order to identify the anticipations of the idea of self-control in the fields of oratory, tragedy and philosophy of the fifth century BC. I will try to show that at this time the verb krateo and the adjective enkrates begin to develop a usage that we can call ‘behavioral’ or ‘ethical’ – since it refers to the character ( ethos ) of the person –, which, in the following century, allowed for the formation of the noun enkrateia to represent this usage.