Notwithstanding a growing scholarly consensus that Hellenistic emotion involves a dynamic cognitive process, the fundamental dualism—namely, reason versus emotion or, more specifically, god-focused reasoning versus emotional temptation to indulge feelings impulsively and irrationally—that underlies that process in the moralists’ schema is often underappreciated. Emotion scholarship tends to emphasize so-called positive emotions without adequately accounting for how emotion is made positive (i. e., righted or defeated) by godly reasoning. This does not happen as a matter of course—an emotional subject must strive to aid reason in its fight.