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Just back from the siege of Potidaea, Socrates visits a wrestling school and meets the young Charmides, celebrated for his beauty, and his guardian, Critias…
Just back from the siege of Potidaea, Socrates visits a wrestling school and meets the young Charmides, celebrated for his beauty, and his guardian, Critias. Pretending to have a cure for Charmides' headache that must also cure the soul, Socrates asks him what sophrosyne, self-control or temperance, really is. Charmides and then Critias offer definitions, as quietness, as modesty, as doing one's own business and as knowledge of oneself, and each is examined and found wanting.
Context and significance
Written in the early fourth century BC, the dialogue carries a dark irony, since Charmides and Critias, Plato's own relatives, later became leaders of the brutal oligarchy of the Thirty Tyrants in Athens. The version here is by the Oxford scholar Benjamin Jowett. Read Laches and Lysis.
About the author
Plato (c. 428–348 BC) was born into an aristocratic family in Athens and became the devoted student of Socrates. After his teacher's trial and execution in 399 BC, he travelled, returned to Athens and founded the Academy, a school that lasted for centuries and counted Aristotle among its students.
Almost all his writings are dialogues in which Socrates questions his fellow citizens about justice, love, knowledge and the soul, from the Apology to the Symposium and the Republic. Known to Arab philosophers as Aflatun, he was read closely by al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd, and Western philosophy has been called a series of footnotes to him.