Charmides

and I agree with the one who dedicated the inscription to that effect at Delphi.¹ For it seems to me that the inscription was set up as the god’s greeting to those who enter, in place of ‘Rejoice!’, 164e on the view that this greeting, ‘rejoice’, is not the right one, and that we ought not to urge this on one another, but ‘Be temperate.’² That is how the god addresses those who enter his temple, differently from men; and that, I think, is what the dedicator had in mind when he dedicated it. To everyone who enters he says nothing other than ‘Be temperate!’ But he says it, as a prophet would, rather riddlingly.³ For ‘Know thyself’ and ‘Be temperate’ 165a are the same, as the inscription says and as I say; but one might think them different. That, I think, is what happened to those who dedicated the later inscriptions, ‘Nothing too much’ and ‘Pledge, and ruin is near.’⁴ For they thought ‘Know thyself’ was a piece of advice, and not the god’s greeting to those who enter; and then, so that they too, if you please, could dedicate useful advice no less, they wrote these up and dedicated them. My reason for saying all this, Socrates, is this. 165b Everything before this I give up to you — perhaps what you said about it was more correct, perhaps what I said, but nothing that we said was really clear — but now I am willing to give you an account of this, if you do not agree that temperance is knowing oneself.”

“But Critias,” I said, “you are treating me as though I claimed to know the answers to what I ask, and as though I will agree with you if only I want to. That is not how it is. I inquire with you, each time, into whatever is proposed, because I myself do not