Abstract
This chapter presents a study of Panaetius’s best-known innovation in Stoic ethics—the notion of decorum in both a wider and a narrower sense. In its wider sense, decorum appears on a list of four natural human starting points for virtue. Based on the uniquely human sense of beauty and the analogy between visible beauty and beauty of mind, it is the outer manifestation of virtue that leads humans to recognize virtue as a good and to strive to become virtuous. In the narrower sense, it includes moderation, the traditional fourth cardinal virtue, but also, motivated by the human desire to win the approval of others, socially pleasant behaviour. Decorum in this sense goes beyond morally correct conduct; it may be a social virtue, but not a moral one.
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