The four virtues

Also called the cardinal virtues, wisdom, courage, justice, temperance, phronesis, andreia, dikaiosune, sophrosune

Plato, 4th century BC; the Stoic list in the 3rd century BC; “cardinal” from Ambrose

The four virtues meaning

The four virtues are wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance. The Stoics treated them as one knowledge with four faces: to have one is to have all. Painters later gave each face an object to hold.

Unicode

Scales, ⚖ U+2696, are the only one of the four with a character of their own. The character is justice’s attribute, not the set.

Four names for one good character. Later centuries put an object in each hand.

The name. Latin cardo, a hinge. Ambrose’s name for the four on which the other virtues were said to swing.

Download drawing

Where it comes from

Plato, in Republic IV, assigns the four to the parts of the city and of the soul. Diogenes Laertius, reporting the Stoics, says the primitive virtues are prudence, manly courage, justice, and temperance. Prudence is knowledge of what is good, bad, and indifferent. The virtues follow one another, and the person who has one has all, because the precepts are common. Chrysippus says so in the first book of his treatise on Laws. The passages are Diogenes Laertius 7.92 and 7.125.

Cicero, De Inventione II.53, fixes the number at four. Ambrose coins “cardinal,” from cardo, a hinge. Seneca, consoling his mother, substitutes pietas for courage. Marcus Aurelius names his own set in Meditations 3.6: if you find anything better than justice, truth, temperance, and fortitude, turn to it with all your soul.

The pictures come later. Prudence holds a book, a mirror, or a serpent. Justice holds a sword, scales, and sometimes a crown. Fortitude holds armour, a club, a lion, a tower, or a broken column. Temperance holds a bridle, a wheel, or water and wine in two jugs. The set is standard by the Vivian Bible of 845 and on the tomb of Clement II at Bamberg. Giotto painted seven virtues in grisaille along the Scrovegni Chapel dado, about 1305, each facing a vice. Raphael’s lunette in the Stanza della Segnatura, 1511, seats Fortitude with a lion and a Della Rovere oak, Prudence with two faces and a mirror, and Temperance with a bridle. Justice, with scales and sword, is on the ceiling, because Plato made her the harmony of the other three.

Stoic

One knowledge, four faces

The Stoic claim is not that a person collects four hobbies. It is that the person who really has justice already has the other three, because the same knowledge is at work. The objects in the paintings are a later memory system. Scales are not the definition. They are how a chapel made justice recognizable.

In popular culture

card · 15th century

The tarot trumps

The tarot keeps Justice with her scales, Strength with her lion, and Temperance pouring between two cups.

Three pictures from a card pack, not the argument that the four are one knowledge.

Source

study · 2011

Representing Justice

A Yale study traces the figure of Justice from Raphael into twenty-first-century courthouses. The scales left the chapel and became the law’s.

The courthouse inherits an attribute. It does not inherit the Stoic claim that the virtues are inseparable.

Source

book · 2010s

The four virtues, repackaged

The modern Stoic revival sells the list as a medallion and as a run of books, courage first among them.

The packaging is contemporary. The list is not.

Source

catalogue · late antique

Pseudo-Andronicus

A catalogue under his name counts forty-four Stoic virtues arranged under the four.

Subordinate virtues are what the list looks like when someone writes every branch down.

Source

Worth knowing

Cardinal means hinge. The other virtues were said to swing on these four. Source
Raphael’s Prudence has an old man’s face on the back of her head, looking at the past. Source
Diogenes Laertius 7.92 gives no separate definition for temperance and courage. The gap is still argued over. Source

Questions

What are the four Stoic virtues?

Prudence, courage, justice, and temperance. In Greek: phronesis, andreia, dikaiosune, sophrosune. The Stoics say that whoever has one has all.

Why are they called cardinal?

From Latin cardo, a hinge. Ambrose uses the word. The other virtues are said to swing on these four.

What objects stand for each virtue in art?

Scales for justice, a mirror for prudence, a lion or a column for fortitude, and two jugs for temperance. The objects are medieval. The list is older.

Near this

Sources

Named when the entry depends on a text, a date, or a standard. Catalog numbers are not invented.

Your margin

Private. It stays in this browser and never joins the canon.

symbol.wiki, edited as Sigilla. Last reviewed 20 October 2026. A reading of public tradition, not a ruling.