Vices. The seven deadly sins, also known as the capital vices, or cardinal sins, is a grouping and classification of vices within Christian teachings, although it does not appear explicitly in the Bible. Behaviours or habits are classified under this category if they directly give birth to other immoralities. According to the standard list, they are pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth, which are also contrary to the seven heavenly virtues. These sins are often thought to be abuses or excessive versions of one's natural faculties or passions. This classification originated with the desert fathers, especially Evagrius Ponticus, who identified seven or eight evil thoughts or spirits that one needed to overcome. Evagrius' pupil John Cassian, with his book The Institutes, brought the classification to Europe, where it became fundamental to Catholic confessional practices as evident in penitential manuals, sermons like The Parson's Tale from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and artworks like Dante's Purgatory. The Catholic Church used the concept of the deadly sins in order to help people curb their inclination towards evil before dire consequences and misdeeds could occur; the leader-teachers especially focused on pride and greed, both of which are seen as inherently sinful and as underlying all other sins to be prevented. To inspire people to focus on the seven deadly sins, the vices are discussed in treatises and depicted in paintings and sculpture decorations on Catholic churches as well as older textbooks. The seven deadly sins, along with the sins against the Holy Ghost and the sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance, are considered especially serious in the Western Christian traditions. While the seven deadly sins as we know them did not originate with the Greeks or Romans, there were ancient precedents for them. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics lists several positive, healthy human qualities, excellences, or virtues. Aristotle argues that for each positive quality two negative vices are found on each extreme of the virtue. Courage, for example, is human excellence or virtue in facing fear and risk. Excessive courage makes one rash, while a deficiency of courage makes one cowardly. This principle of virtue found in the middle or mean between excess and deficiency is Aristotle's notion of the golden mean. Aristotle lists virtues like courage, temperance or self-control, generosity, greatness of soul, proper response to anger, friendliness, and wit or charm. Roman writers like Horace extolled the value of virtue while listing and warning against vices. His first epistles say that to flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom. The modern concept of the seven deadly sins is linked to the works of the fourth-century monk Evagrius Ponticus, who listed eight evil thoughts in Greek as follows: gluttony. prostitution, fornication. avarice. pride-sometimes rendered as self-overestimation, arrogance, grandiosity. sadness-in the Philokalia, this term is rendered as envy, sadness at another's good fortune. wrath. boasting. acedia-in the Philokalia, this term is rendered as dejection. They were translated into the Latin of Western Christianity, thus becoming part of the Western tradition's spiritual pietas, as follows: Gula. Luxuria/Fornicatio. Avaritia. Superbia. Tristitia. Ira. Vanagloria. Acedia. These evil thoughts can be categorized into three types: lustful appetite. irascibility. mind corruption. In AD 590 Pope Gregory I revised this list to form the more common list. Gregory combined tristitia with acedia, and vanagloria with superbia, and added envy, in Latin, invidia. Gregory's list became the standard list of sins. Thomas Aquinas uses and defends Gregory's list in his Summa Theologica although he calls them the capital sins because they are the head and form of all the others. The Anglican Communion, Lutheran Church, and Methodist Church, among other Christian denominations, continue to retain this list. Moreover, modern day evangelists, such as Billy Graham have explicated the seven deadly sins. Most of the capital sins, with the sole exception of sloth, are defined by Dante Alighieri as perverse or corrupt versions of love for something or another: lust, gluttony, and greed are all excessive or disordered love of good things; sloth is a deficiency of love; wrath, envy, and pride are perverted love directed toward other's harm.