How to Have Willpower

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, challenge 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, emphasise 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 judgement. In a delightfully different work, Prudentius, a Latin Christian poet, dramatises 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.