Charmides

After returning from battle, Socrates watches a whole wrestling school turn as Charmides enters—as if the beautiful young man were a statue. But the youth has come with a headache, and Socrates’s cure begins somewhere unexpected.

In an Athenian palaestra, amid the noise of young men crowding for a place beside Charmides, the talk turns from beauty to healing. Socrates says a leaf alone will not do: the body cannot be made well apart from the soul, which must first be treated with “fair words” that plant temperance. With Charmides and his guardian Critias before him, he begins to test what self-control really is—and whether wisdom can be spoken into a person as readily as medicine can be given. What must Charmides learn before Socrates can cure his headache?

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