 In response, then, to Passi and Aristotle, Marinella concedes the empirical point, that women are colder but (i) disputes that women are colder absolutely (because, as Castiglione pointed out, temperature is relative, and hence women might be colder than men and yet temperate ‘in themselves’), and (ii) disputes the relation between heat and nobility, first citing various examples of those who are hotter than, but not nobler than, some others. She points out that regional climactic differences historically considered to affect body temperature exceed and confound sex differences—so African and Spanish women will be hotter than German men. If, as Marinella’s opponents believe, greater heat necessarily leads to greater virtue, then they should concede that African women will be more virtuous than German men. But those who argue that women are less noble than men because they have less heat than men, will not allow that men living in colder climates are less noble than women living in warmer climates. So they should abandon the general principle that heat correlates with greater nobility. Moreover, Marinella claims that some individuals will have had ‘natures’ hotter than Plato and Aristotle (it is not clear what the evidence for this is, but it is clear that she supposes there is some independent measure of heat other than virtue). And she assumes we can all agree that no one has ever been more virtuous than Plato and Aristotle. So, once again, her opponents must concede that it is not a universal truth that greater heat leads to greater virtue. We might expect Marinella, having disputed the relation between heat and nobility, to abandon any attempt to argue that women are superior to men in virtue of their body temperature. But she does not acknowledge an inconsistency in arguing both that there is no correlation between greater heat and greater virtue and that women are superior because they are colder. If one were to object to her argument that men who live in colder climates ought to be cooler than women who live in warmer climates, and therefore better than those women, she would reply that those men had effectively become women: