Charmides
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- Benjamin Jowett
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~10,700 words · 51 passages
Cite this work
- APAPlato. (n.d.). Charmides (Benjamin Jowett, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/charmides
- MLAPlato. Charmides. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/charmides.
- ChicagoPlato. Charmides. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/charmides.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
What is temperance, the virtue of self-command? Six definitions are tried before a strikingly beautiful boy and his guardian, and none holds.
Context and history
It ends without an answer, like the short Socratic dialogues, and the closing joke is serious: the dialogue on self-control is carried by a youth everyone in the room is infatuated with. One of the speakers is Critias, who years later would be one of the Thirty Tyrants — and Plato, his kinsman, does not hide it.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
His approving answers reassured me, and I began by degrees to regain confidence, and the vital heat returned. Such, Charmides, I said, is the nature of the charm, which I learned when serving with the army from one of the physicians of the Thracian king Zamolxis, who are said to be so skilful that they can even give immortality. This Thracian told me that in these notions of theirs, which I was just now mentioning, the Greek physicians are quite right as far as they go; but Zamolxis, he added, our king, who is also a god, says further, 'that as you ought not to attempt to cure the eyes without the head, or the head without the body, so neither ought you to attempt to cure the body without the soul; and this,' he said, 'is the reason why the cure of many diseases is unknown to the physicians of Hellas, because they are ignorant of the whole, which ought to be studied also; for the part can never be well unless the whole is well.' For all good and evil, whether in the body or in human nature, originates, as he declared, in the soul, and overflows from thence, as if from the head into the eyes. And therefore if the head and body are to be well, you must begin by curing the soul; that is the first thing. And the cure, my dear youth, has to be effected by the use of certain charms, and these charms are fair words; and by them temperance is implanted in the soul, and where temperance is, there health is speedily imparted, not only to the head, but to the whole