How to Have Willpower by Prudentius

How to Have Willpower by Prudentius

Lively new translations of two classical works that offer wise advice about how to resist temptation

How to Have Willpower brings together two profound ancient meditations on how to overcome pressures that encourage us to act against our own best interests—Plutarch’s essay On Dysopia or How to Resist Pressure and Prudentius’s poetic allegory Psychomachia or How to Slay Your Demons. Challenging the idea that humans are helpless victims of vice, these works—introduced and presented in vivid, accessible new prose translations by Michael Fontaine, with the original Latin and Greek texts on facing pages—emphasize the power of personal choice and the possibility of personal growth, as they offer insights and practical advice about resisting temptation.

In the spirit of the best ancient self-help writing, Plutarch, a pagan Greek philosopher and historian, offers a set of practical recommendations and steps we can take to resist pressure and to stop saying “yes” against our better judgment. And in a delightfully different work, Prudentius, a Latin Christian poet, dramatizes the necessity to actively fight temptation through the story of an epic battle within the human soul between fierce warrior women representing our virtues and vices.

Plutarch and Prudentius insist that we allow pressure or temptations to get the best of us. But they also agree that we can do something about it. And their wisdom can help.

Michael Fontaine is professor of classics at Cornell University. His books include four other volumes in the Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers series, How to Drink, How to Grieve, How to Tell a Joke, and How to Get Over a Breakup (all Princeton).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780691220345
ISBN 10	0691220344
Title	How to Have Willpower
Author	Prudentius
Series	Ancient Wisdom For Modern Readers
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Princeton University Press
Year published	2025-08-12
Number of pages	232
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.