Charmides, Lysis and Laches

Summary

This volume gathers three short dialogues in which Socrates asks what a single virtue is and ends without a definition that survives examination. Each is set among real Athenians whose later lives give the questions an edge Plato's first readers would have felt. In the Charmides, Socrates has just come home from the bloody fighting at Potidaea (432 BC) and goes to the wrestling school of Taureas. Critias introduces his ward and cousin Charmides, the most admired youth in Athens, who has been complaining of morning headaches. Socrates poses as a doctor who knows a leaf for the headache, but says the cure is useless without a charm he learned from a Thracian physician of the god-king Zamolxis: the body cannot be healed without the soul, and the charm consists of fair words that implant sophrosyne, rendered by Jowett as temperance. To learn whether Charmides already has it, Socrates asks him to say what it is. Charmides proposes quietness, then modesty, then 'doing one's own business', a phrase he has borrowed from Critias. Critias takes over and reshapes the definition into self-knowledge, linking it to the Delphic inscription 'Know thyself', and finally into a knowledge of knowledge and of ignorance. Socrates doubts that such a knowledge is possible and, granting it, asks what good it would do; the only knowledge that makes life go well, he says, is the knowledge of good and evil. The inquiry fails, yet Charmides resolves to be charmed by Socrates daily. Readers knew that Critias and Charmides would later be among the oligarchs of 404-403 BC. In the Lysis, Socrates is drawn into a new palaestra by Hippothales, who is embarrassing himself with songs in praise of the boy Lysis. Socrates shows him how to speak to a beloved by gently humbling Lysis, whose parents do not trust him with the mule-cart because he does not yet know how. He then asks Lysis and his friend Menexenus what a friend is. Is the lover or the beloved the friend? Is like the friend of like, or opposite of opposite? Socrates tries the thesis that what is neither good nor bad loves the good because of the presence of evil, as the sick body loves medicine for the sake of health, and then pursues a 'first friend' for whose sake all else is loved. The boys' tutors break up the party before any answer holds. In the Laches, two undistinguished sons of famous fathers, Lysimachus and Melesias, ask the generals Nicias and Laches whether their boys should learn to fight in armour. The generals disagree, and Socrates turns the question to what courage is. Laches calls it standing firm, then endurance of the soul; Nicias, borrowing a Socratic saying, calls it knowledge of what is to be feared and hoped. Both accounts collapse, and Socrates proposes that the old men go back to school alongside their sons.

Plot or Argument

• Charmides: the headache and the Thracian charm

  Back from Potidaea, Socrates meets Critias and the beautiful Charmides at the palaestra of Taureas. Pretending to have a cure for headache, he reports the teaching of Zamolxis' physicians that eyes cannot be healed without the head, nor the body without the soul, and that temperance must first be implanted by 'fair words' (Stephanus 153a-158e).

• Charmides: quietness, modesty, minding one's own business

  Charmides, blushing, defines temperance as doing things quietly, then as modesty, then as doing one's own business. Socrates counters with cases where speed or boldness is better and with the absurdity of a city where no one writes or makes anything for another (158e-162b).

• Charmides: Critias and the knowledge of knowledge

  Critias defends the last definition, recasts it as self-knowledge in the spirit of the Delphic 'Know thyself', and then as a science of science and of its absence. Socrates questions whether any knowledge can take itself as its object and, granting that it can, whether it would tell a patient a true physician from a false one (162b-172c).

• Charmides: the dream of a world run by knowledge

  Socrates imagines a city where every art is practised by those who truly know, then asks which knowledge would actually make us happy. Critias is driven to answer the knowledge of good and evil, which is not the knowledge of knowledge they had defined. Charmides nevertheless asks to be charmed daily (172c-176d).

• Lysis: Hippothales' songs and the lesson of the mule-cart

  Outside the walls, Socrates finds Hippothales mocked by Ctesippus for his verses about Lysis. Socrates demonstrates a better way to speak to a beloved: he leads Lysis to admit that his parents restrict him because he lacks knowledge, and that people will trust us wherever we are wise (203a-211a).

• Lysis: who is a friend to whom?

  With Menexenus, Socrates tests whether the lover, the beloved or both are friends, then appeals to poets and natural philosophers who say like loves like or opposite loves opposite. Each answer produces an absurdity: the bad cannot be friends, the self-sufficient good need no one, and enemies would be friends of friends (211a-216b).

• Lysis: the sick body, medicine and the first friend

  Socrates suggests that what is neither good nor bad becomes the friend of the good because of the presence of evil, as the body courts medicine because of disease. He then argues that every chain of things loved for the sake of another must end in a 'first friend', and that desire, not evil, may be the deeper cause. The tutors arrive and the company breaks up unresolved (216c-223b).

• Laches: the exhibition of fighting in armour

  Lysimachus and Melesias ask Nicias and Laches whether their sons should study with the armour-master Stesilaus. Nicias praises the art; Laches mocks it with the story of Stesilaus' scythe-spear caught in a ship's rigging. Laches commends Socrates for his conduct in the retreat from Delium, and Socrates asks who among them is competent to judge (178a-190c).

• Laches: endurance, wise and foolish

  Laches defines courage as remaining at one's post, then, when reminded of Scythian cavalry and the Spartans at Plataea, as endurance of the soul. Socrates shows that wise endurance (a physician refusing a feverish patient drink, an investor) looks less like courage than foolish endurance in war, which Laches had called base (190c-194c).

• Laches: Nicias and the knowledge of fear and hope

  Nicias proposes that courage is knowledge of the grounds of fear and hope. Laches retorts that physicians and farmers know their dangers; Nicias replies that a physician does not know whether health or death is better for a patient. Socrates shows that such knowledge would be knowledge of all goods and evils, the whole of virtue rather than a part, and the generals concede. Socrates urges that all of them seek the best teacher (194c-201c).

Characters

• Socrates, narrator of the Charmides and Lysis; questioner in all three

  Freshly returned from the siege of Potidaea in the Charmides, praised for his steadiness at Delium in the Laches; disclaims knowledge of each virtue while showing the others that they lack it too.

• Charmides, young man, Plato's maternal uncle

  Celebrated for beauty and modesty; his blushing refusal to call himself temperate opens the inquiry. Historically he became one of the Ten in the Piraeus under the Thirty and died fighting the democrats in 403 BC.

• Critias, guardian of Charmides

  Clever, competitive and quick to take over an argument he has fed to his ward. Readers would remember him as the leading figure among the Thirty Tyrants.

• Chaerephon, Socrates' friend

  Excitable companion who rushes to greet Socrates at the start of the Charmides; in the Apology it is he who asks the Delphic oracle about Socrates.

• Lysis, boy, son of Democrates

  Modest, attentive and from a wealthy family; Socrates uses his father's restrictions to show how knowledge, not age or birth, earns trust.

• Menexenus, Lysis' friend

  Argumentative pupil of Ctesippus who answers most of the questions about friendship and is tied in knots by them.

• Hippothales, young admirer of Lysis

  His extravagant poems in praise of Lysis' family prompt Socrates' lesson on how a lover should talk.

• Ctesippus, Hippothales' friend

  Teasing young Paeanian who exposes Hippothales' songs; he reappears in the Euthydemus and among those present in the Phaedo.

• Lysimachus and Melesias, fathers seeking advice

  Sons of Aristides the Just and of the statesman Thucydides son of Melesias; ashamed that they achieved nothing themselves, they want better for their sons.

• Laches, Athenian general

  Plain soldier who loves speech only when it matches a speaker's deeds; defines courage as endurance. He was killed at Mantinea in 418 BC.

• Nicias, Athenian general

  Cautious, educated, familiar with Socrates and the music teacher Damon; defines courage as knowledge. His later caution and piety in the Sicilian expedition, which ended with his death in 413 BC, give the dialogue an irony Plato's readers would hear.

Lessons

• The Thracian charm: no cure for the part without the whole

  Socrates' opening fiction makes a serious claim: as eyes cannot be treated apart from the head, the body cannot be healed apart from the soul, and the soul is treated by words that implant self-command. The rest of the Charmides tests whether anyone knows what that self-command is. Students can see that Plato's interest in medicine is not decoration; it supplies the model of philosophy as care of the soul.

  • Why does Socrates insist on giving the charm before the leaf, and what does that order say about soul and body?
  • Is it honest of Socrates to pose as a physician? What does his pretence accomplish?
  • Where does modern medicine agree with Zamolxis' physician, and where would it hesitate?

• Knowing what you know, and knowing what is good

  Critias wants temperance to be a master knowledge that knows what every other art knows and does not know. Socrates grants the dream of a city run by real experts, then asks whether such a city would be happy. Only a knowledge of good and evil, he concludes, makes the other arts beneficial. The argument separates technical competence from wisdom about how to use it.

  • Why can't a 'knowledge of knowledge' tell a true physician from a quack?
  • In Socrates' dream, everything is done expertly. What is still missing?
  • Critias would rather withdraw his earlier admissions than seem ignorant. How does pride affect the way he argues?

• Friendship needs a first beloved

  The Lysis tests easy formulas (like loves like, opposites attract) and finds that none explains why we love. Its most fruitful suggestion is that we love many things for the sake of something else, as a father values wine because it might save a son who has drunk hemlock, and that the chain must end in a 'first friend' loved for itself. Christian readers from Augustine onward recognised in this question the problem of ordering loves toward a final good, though Plato does not name that good here.

  • Why does Socrates think that good men who are fully self-sufficient could not be friends?
  • What is the 'first friend', and why does Socrates suspect that other things loved are 'illusions and deceptions'?
  • Socrates calls himself an 'old boy' among the boys. What kind of friendship is he modelling?

• Words and deeds in harmony

  Laches says he loves a speaker on virtue only when the man's life matches his words, in the Dorian mode of music; he has seen Socrates hold firm at Delium, so he will listen to him. The dialogue then shows Laches failing to define the courage he plainly has. Students learn both that example carries authority and that possessing a virtue is not the same as being able to explain it.

  • Why does Laches trust Socrates before Socrates has said anything clever?
  • Can a person have courage without being able to define it? What would be lost if no one could define it?
  • Laches gets irritated when he cannot say what he means. How should a student respond to the same frustration?

• Is courage endurance or knowledge?

  Laches' endurance and Nicias' knowledge each capture something: courage holds firm, and courage judges what is worth fearing. Socrates' examples (the physician who refuses a fevered patient drink, the soldier who stays because he knows he has the advantage) show that neither alone suffices, and Nicias' account, pushed further, swallows the whole of virtue. The dialogue leaves students with the question of how the virtues are united.

  • Why is the soldier who calculates his advantage less obviously brave than the one who stands without it?
  • Nicias says a physician knows disease but not whether death would be better for a patient. Who, in his view, does know?
  • Socrates' remedy for shared ignorance is to go to school. Why is that a fitting ending for a dialogue about educating sons?

Context

All three dialogues are set in the Athens of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) and use people whose later careers were notorious. The Charmides opens just after the battle at Potidaea (432 BC) and stars two future members of the oligarchy of 404-403 BC; the Laches takes place after the Athenian defeat at Delium (424 BC) and before Laches' death at Mantinea (418 BC), with Nicias still years from the Sicilian disaster; the Lysis is set in a new palaestra among well-born boys. Plato, born about 428 BC, was related to Charmides and Critias, and wrote these scenes with knowledge of how the story ended. Each dialogue treats a virtue central to Greek education: sophrosyne (self-control, sound-mindedness), philia (friendship or love in a wide sense), and andreia (courage).

Composition

No date of composition is recorded. Most scholars group the three among Plato's earlier, 'Socratic' or aporetic dialogues, written probably in the 390s or 380s BC, after Socrates' execution in 399 BC; the volume's 'c. 390s BC' is a conventional estimate, and the relative order of the three is disputed. The library's text is Benjamin Jowett's translation from The Dialogues of Plato (3rd ed., 1892), reproduced from Project Gutenberg #1580 (Charmides), #1579 (Lysis) and #1584 (Laches), each with Jowett's own introduction. Stephanus numbers given here refer to standard Greek editions; the attached text does not print them.

Reception

Ancient readers classed these as 'peirastic' (testing) dialogues; the arrangement attributed to Thrasyllus placed them together in the fifth tetralogy (Charmides, Laches, Lysis), with Theages. Aristotle's discussion of courage in the Nicomachean Ethics III and of friendship in Books VIII-IX takes up questions first posed here, and Cicero's Laelius on friendship continues the tradition. The opening of the Charmides became a key text for the ancient idea that speech can heal, studied by Pedro Lain Entralgo in The Therapy of the Word in Classical Antiquity. In modern scholarship the dialogues are central to debates about Socratic method, the unity of the virtues, and Socrates' relation to Critias. The volume was included in the Great Books of the Western World (2nd ed., 1990), volume 6.

Comparisons

• The Last Days of Socrates

  The Apology has Socrates recall his service at Potidaea, Amphipolis and Delium and the Delphic oracle that Chaerephon consulted; the Charmides and Laches show the same campaigns and the same friend, and the Crito's question of standing firm under danger turns Laches' 'endurance' into a matter of life and death.

• The Nicomachean Ethics

  Aristotle answers the Laches by defining courage as a mean between rashness and cowardice concerned chiefly with death in battle, and answers the Lysis by distinguishing friendships of utility, pleasure and virtue; reading them together shows how a definition can succeed where the Socratic search stalled.

• The Symposium

  The Lysis' search for a 'first friend' loved for its own sake anticipates Diotima's ladder of love rising to beauty itself; both dialogues treat erotic admiration of a beautiful youth as a starting point that must be redirected.

• On Friendship

  Montaigne's essay on his friendship with La Boetie claims a union beyond reasons ('because it was he, because it was I'); the Lysis, by contrast, keeps asking for the reason we love and cannot find one, so the two make a useful contrast between testimony and analysis.

• Meno

  The Meno asks whether virtue as a whole can be taught; these three dialogues try single virtues and keep finding that each leads back to knowledge of the good, the problem the Meno then confronts directly.

• Hippocratic Writings

  The Thracian physician's complaint that Greek doctors treat parts without the whole echoes debates within the Hippocratic writings about whether healing requires knowledge of the whole nature of man; Nicias' point that doctors know disease but not whether life is better than death marks the limit of the medical art.

Quotes

Medical Lens

The opening of the Charmides is one of the earliest Greek statements that bodily illness cannot be treated apart from the soul, and that words (the 'charm', Greek epode) can work as therapy. Historians of medicine cite it for the prehistory of psychosomatic thinking and of 'the therapy of the word'; it should be read as Socrates' framing device for a dialogue about self-control, not as a report of Thracian clinical practice. The Lysis uses the patient's attachment to the physician as its model of why we love what we lack, and imagines a father valuing wine as an antidote to hemlock. The Laches supplies two medical cases: a physician who refuses a patient with lung inflammation the food or drink he begs for, and Nicias' argument that a physician knows the course of disease but not whether death would be better for the sick man, a passage relevant to discussions of the limits of medical judgment at the end of life.

• Charmides (Stephanus 155b-157c)

  Critias arranges for Charmides, troubled by morning headaches, to consult Socrates as a physician; Socrates describes a leaf and a charm, and the Thracian doctrine of treating the whole person.

  Ancient Medicine Mind Body Philosophy AS Therapy Physicians Doctors
• Charmides (Stephanus 170e-171c)

  Socrates argues that only someone who knows medicine, not a possessor of a general 'knowledge of knowledge', can tell a true physician from a pretender.

  Physicians Doctors Medical Ethics
• Lysis (Stephanus 210a)

  Lysis' father would let a knowledgeable person open his son's sore eyes and sprinkle ashes in them, because he believes that person understands medicine.

  Ancient Medicine Physicians Doctors
• Lysis (Stephanus 217a-219a)

  The healthy have no need of the physician; the body, neither good nor bad, befriends medicine because of disease and for the sake of health.

  Physicians Doctors Mind Body
• Lysis (Stephanus 219d-220a)

  A father who prizes his son values wine, and even the vessel holding it, if he believes it will save a son who has drunk hemlock.

  Pharmacology Poisons
• Laches (Stephanus 192e)

  Socrates asks whether a physician who firmly refuses food or drink to a patient with inflammation of the lungs shows courage.

  Fever Infection Physicians Doctors Medical Ethics
• Laches (Stephanus 195c-196a)

  Nicias argues that doctors know health and disease but not whether death is better for a given patient, and that only the courageous know what is truly to be feared.

  Medical Ethics Death Dying Physicians Doctors

Creative Prompts

• Dialogue

  Write the conversation the next morning, when Charmides keeps his promise to be 'charmed' by Socrates. Have Socrates test whether Charmides' modesty is temperance or only good manners.

• Essay

  The Laches ends with grown men agreeing to go to school with their sons. Write an essay on what it would mean for parents and teachers today to make 'the education of the youths our own education'.

• Classroom

  Divide the class into Laches and Nicias camps. Each side lists three acts it considers clearly courageous and tests them against both definitions, then reports which definition fails first and why.

• Fiction

  Retell the Lysis from the point of view of Hippothales, hiding behind the other boys while Socrates shows him how a lover ought to speak.

Further Reading

• Memorabilia, Xenophon

  Xenophon's recollections of Socrates include conversations with Charmides and with Critias, and Socrates' views on friendship in Book II.

• History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides

  Narrates Potidaea, Delium, Mantinea and Nicias' fate in Sicily, the events behind these dialogues.

• Laelius on Friendship (De Amicitia), Cicero

  A Roman dialogue that continues the classical inquiry into friendship and virtue.

• The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis

  Lewis' chapter on friendship (philia) offers a Christian reflection on the love the Lysis cannot define.

• Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher, Gregory Vlastos

  Influential study of Socratic method in the early dialogues.

• The Therapy of the Word in Classical Antiquity, Pedro Lain Entralgo

  History of the idea of healing speech, with extended discussion of the Charmides.