The Neoplatonists distinguish different levels of virtue. Merely natural virtue depends on the blend of hot, cold, fluid, and dry in the body. The lowest level of the proper virtues, civic virtue, is connected with metriopatheia (Porphyry   Sentences 32, 23,4; 25,6-7 Lamberz), moderation of emotions; the next level up, purified virtue, as described by Plotinus   below, with apatheia or freedom from emotion. At the level of civic virtue, Theodore of Asine is reported as holding in accordance with Plato’s Republic   that men and women have the same virtue and need the same education. The Republic is explicitly about civic virtue (demotike, Rep. 6, 500D8; politike 4, 430C3).

Porphyry distinguishes four levels of virtue, civic (politikai), purificatory (kathartikai), contemplative (theoretikai), and paradigmatic (paradeigmatikai), Sentences 32. Olympiodorus   below and the Anonymous Prologomena ch. 26, insert virtues of character (ethike) produced by habituation before the civic virtues on the grounds that they are not rational. Plato’s Gorgias and Phaedo   were selected for the curriculum on the grounds that they dealt with social and purificatory virtues respectively. Iamblichus  , celebrating the role of the theurgic priest, adds at the top hieratic or theurgic virtue, on whose relation to the paradigmatic virtues different authors disagree. Olympiodorus no longer lists theurgic virtue as one of his five but he does discuss the role of theurgy immediately after discussing his five virtues.

Different levels of virtue are already present in Plotinus 1.2 [19], on which Porphyry Sentences 32 is virtually a commentary. Moreover, both authors take the four cardinal virtues of Plato’s Republic, wisdom, courage, temperance and justice, and give them different definitions at different levels of virtue. It is naturally at the level of civic virtue that the definitions are closest to Plato’s, since that is the level which Plato is discussing. [SorabjiPC1  :337]