Age and maturity

Use in the book

Socrates asks "about the young men" (153d), and Critias, Charmides' cousin and guardian, glancing toward the door, sees some coming in, "trading insults with one another", the "advance guard and the lovers" of the boy now thought most beautiful (154a). Asked who the boy is, Critias answers, "You know him … but he wasn't yet grown up when you went away: Charmides" (154a–b), and Socrates remembers him: "He was nothing to sniff at even then, when he was still a child; by now … he must be quite the young man" (154b). Of the crowd's astonishment he says, "With us grown men that was less surprising. But I watched the boys too, and not one of them was looking anywhere else, not even the littlest: they were all gazing at him as if he were a statue" (154c).

Age then licenses the conversation. Proposing to strip the boy's soul before his body, Socrates says, "At his age he must surely be willing to have a conversation" (154e). When he asks Critias to "call the youngster over", the ground shifts from age to supervision: "Even if he were younger still, there would be nothing improper in his talking with us in front of you, his guardian and his cousin" (155a; see Guardian and cousin). Παῖς has its other use when Critias turns to his attendant: "Boy, call Charmides" (155b). Charmides remembers Socrates from his own childhood (156a).

Praise is scaled to age. Critias says the boy is thought "to surpass those his age", and "in every other respect, as far as his years allow, second to none" (157d); and of his blush Socrates as narrator says that "his bashfulness was becoming at his age" (158c; see Modesty and shame). Socrates then asks him to answer "properly and like a man", and the boy thinks it over "very much like a man" (160d–e) before answering that temperance makes a person "bashful", the word used of him at 158c (αἰσχυντηλός, aischyntēlos), and the answer can be read as a self-portrait.

The turn comes at 162d–e. Charmides has hinted that the definition's author may not know what he meant, and Critias, in Socrates' eyes, is angry (162d; see Anger). Socrates steps in: "it is no wonder that he doesn't know, at his age. You, though, may reasonably be expected to know, both because of your age and because of the study you have given it." Invited to take the argument over, Critias does (162e). The same word, τηλικοῦτος, that at 154e made Charmides old enough to converse now makes him young enough to be excused. The rest of the dialogue tests that expectation. Critias, "used to being admired on every occasion", is soon "ashamed in front of the company" (169c). It is the boy who draws the conclusion: "how could I know, when not even you two are able to discover what it is, as you say?" (176a–b2).

Places to read

1. 153d–154cSocrates asks about the young men; Charmides, not yet grown up when Socrates left, comes in, and young men, grown men and boys all watch him.
2. 154e–155b2At his age he must surely be willing to converse; even younger, he could properly talk with them before his guardian; Critias sends his attendant: "Boy, call Charmides."
3. 156aCharmides knows of Socrates from people his age and remembers him from his boyhood.
4. 157dCritias praises Charmides above those his age, and second to none as far as his years allow.
5. 158cThe narrator finds Charmides' bashfulness becoming at his age.
6. 160d–eAsked to answer like a man, Charmides thinks it over very much like a man, and answers that temperance makes one bashful.
7. 162d–eThe boy's ignorance is no wonder at his age; Critias may be expected to know, because of his age and his study, and takes the argument over.
8. 176a–b2Charmides cannot know whether he has temperance when the two older men cannot discover what it is.

Translation in this edition

Παῖς is "child" when Socrates recalls Charmides as he was (154b), "boy" for the boys in the crowd, Critias' attendant, the beautiful boy in the lines of Cydias, a lyric poet otherwise almost unknown, Charmides' memory of himself and the writing-master's pupils (154c, 155b, 155d, 156a, 161d), and "son" in the address "dear son of Glaucon" (158b), and in "son of Callaeschrus" (169b), said to Critias, a grown man. "Child" at 158b, "blessed is the child … your mother bore", renders no Greek noun. "Young man" renders three words: the plural of νέος (153d), νεανίσκος (154a, 154d, 157c) and μειράκιον (154b); at 162e "this young man" renders only the demonstrative οὑτοσί (houtosi), "this one here". Νεανίας is "youngster" (155a). Ἡλικία is "grown up" in ἐν ἡλικίᾳ (154a), "of that age" (154b), "his years" (157d) and "age" (158c, 162e); τηλικοῦτος is "at his age" at both its places (154e, 162e), and ἡλίκος … γέγονεν is "how big he's grown" (154b). Ἡλικιῶται are "people my age" (156a) and "those his age" (157d). The comparatives νεώτερος and πρεσβύτερος are "younger" and "older" (168c), and ἔτι νεώτερος is "younger still" (155a). The adverbs ἀνδρείως (andreiōs) and ἀνδρικῶς (andrikōs), both from ἀνήρ (anēr), "man", are "like a man" and "very much like a man" (160d–e), so that the English keeps the echo of the Greek.

ἡλικία

Attested: ἡλικίᾳ (hēlikiai; 154a, 154b, 158c), ἡλικίας (hēlikias; 157d, 162e). Age, a time of life, and in ἐν ἡλικίᾳ the age of maturity: Charmides "wasn't yet grown up" when Socrates left (154a). Socrates finds nearly everyone "of that age" beautiful (154b); Critias praises Charmides "as far as his years allow" (157d); his bashfulness was "becoming at his age" (158c); and Socrates tells Critias, "You, though, may reasonably be expected to know, both because of your age and because of the study you have given it" (162e). Lemma: ἡλικία.

ἡλικιώτης

Attested: ἡλικιώταις (hēlikiōtais; 156a), ἡλικιωτῶν (hēlikiōtōn; 157d). One of the same age, a contemporary. Charmides tells Socrates, "You're talked about a good deal among people my age" (156a), and Critias says the boy is thought "to surpass those his age" (157d). Lemma: ἡλικιώτης.

λοιδορέω

Attested: λοιδορουμένους (loidoroumenous; 154a). To abuse or revile; in the middle, as here, to rail at one another. The young men who come in ahead of Charmides, his lovers and "advance guard", are "trading insults with one another" (154a). Lemma: λοιδορέω.

μειράκιον

Attested: μειράκιον (meirakion; 154b). A lad, a youth past childhood. Socrates, who remembers Charmides "when he was still a child" (παῖς), supposes that by now "he must be quite the young man" (154b): the two words mark how Charmides has changed while Socrates was away. Lemma: μειράκιον.

νεανίσκος

Attested: νεανίσκους (neaniskous; 154a), νεανίσκος (neaniskos; 154d), νεανίσκῳ (neaniskōi; 157c). A young man. The plural names the young men, the boy's lovers, who come in first (154a); the singular is Charmides himself, in Chaerephon's "what do you think of the young man?" (154d) and in Critias' joke that the headache will be "a godsend for the young man" (157c). Lemma: νεανίσκος.

νέος

Attested: νέων (neōn; 153d), νεώτερος (neōteros; 155a), νεώτερον (neōteron; 168c). Young. Socrates asks "about the young men" on his return (153d); there would be nothing improper in Charmides' talking with them "even if he were younger still" (155a); and in the argument about self-relation, what is older than itself would be younger (168c). Lemma: νέος.

παῖς

Attested: παῖς (pais; 154b, 156a), παισί (paisi; 154c), παῖ (pai; 155b, 158b, 169b), παιδός (paidos; 155d), παῖδας (paidas; 161d). Child, boy, son, and in address a slave. Charmides was "still a child" when Socrates left (154b), and he tells Socrates, "I remember you from when I was a boy" (156a); the boys in the crowd gaze at him (154c); Cydias' advice concerned "a beautiful boy" (155d); and Socrates asks Charmides, "do you think the writing-master writes and reads, or teaches you boys, only his own name?" (161d). Critias' "Boy, call Charmides" is said to his attendant (155b); in "dear son of Glaucon" (158b) and "son of Callaeschrus" (169b) it is "son", with the father's name, said to the boy and to the grown man alike. Lemma: παῖς.

πρέσβυς

Attested: πρεσβύτερον (presbyteron; 168c). Old; the comparative is "older". In the argument about self-relation, Socrates asks whether what is more than itself will not also be less, "and what is heavier lighter, and what is older younger" (168c). Πρεσβεύων, "went as ambassador", of Pyrilampes (158a), is from the verb πρεσβεύειν and is not listed. Lemma: πρέσβυς.

ἀνδρῶν (andrōn)

Attested: ἀνδρῶν (andrōn; 154c), ἄνδρα (andra; 154d), ἀνήρ (anēr; 158a), ἄνδρες (andres; 160e), ἀνδρί (andri; 161a), ἀνδρός (andros; 169a). A man, as against a woman or a boy. Once it names the grown men as an age-group: "With us grown men that was less surprising" (154c), where Socrates sets his own company against the boys. At its other places it is simply "man", with no thought of age: the "invincible man" Charmides would be if his soul were well made too (154d), Charmides' uncle Pyrilampes, than whom, it is said, no man on the continent, that is, in the Persian empire, was thought handsomer or bigger whenever he went there as ambassador (158a), temperate men who are good men (160e), Homer's "man in need" (161a), and the "great man" needed to determine whether anything can have its own power in relation to itself (169a). Lemma: ἀνήρ.

γέγονεν (gegonen)

Attested: ἐγεγόνει (egegonei; 153b), γεγονέναι (gegonenai; 153c), γέγονεν (gegonen; 154b), ἐγένετο (egeneto; 155b, 162c), γεγονός (gegonos; 157c), γενέσθαι (genesthai; 157d, 169a, 169d), γέγονας (gegonas; 157e), γεγονότα (gegonota; 158a, 174a), γιγνόμενα (gignomena; 159d), γίγνεσθαι (gignesthai; 163c, 166d, 174c), γίγνηται (gignētai; 163c), γένοιτο (genoito; 164c, 175c), γεγονότων (gegonotōn; 174b). To come to be, become, happen, be born. At 154b it measures the change in Charmides since Socrates left: Socrates will know in a moment, Critias says, "how big he's grown and how he's turned out" (ἡλίκος καὶ οἷος γέγονεν); at 157e and 158a it is birth, "the two you are sprung from" and "Born of such people". Compounds such as παραγίγνομαι and ἐγγίγνομαι are not listed. Lemma: γίγνομαι.

λοιδορουμένους (loidoroumenous)

Attested: λοιδορουμένους (loidoroumenous; 154a). To abuse or revile; in the middle, as here, to rail at one another. The young men who come in ahead of Charmides, his lovers and "advance guard", are "trading insults with one another" (154a). Lemma: λοιδορέω.

νεανίαν (neanian)

Attested: νεανίαν (neanian; 155a). A young man. Socrates asks Critias, "why don't you call the youngster over and show him off to me?" (155a). Lemma: νεανίας.

Elsewhere in Plato

The Republic makes age a condition of argument. Those chosen from among the guardians are to be tested in dialectic when they pass thirty (537d), and one great precaution, Socrates tells Plato's brother Glaucon, is to keep the young from tasting arguments at all. Youngsters who get their first taste of them treat them as play and use them only to contradict; they copy the refuters and refute others themselves, and, like puppies, enjoy worrying and mauling with words whoever comes near. The older man wants no part of that frenzy, and takes as his model the one who is "willing to converse" and to look for the truth (539b–c), in the same Greek words (τὸν διαλέγεσθαι ἐθέλοντα) that Socrates used of Charmides at 154e (ἐθέλει διαλέγεσθαι). Charmides, who laughs slyly, looks across at his guardian and keeps prodding him (162b–d), can be read as one of these young men in small; but in the Charmides it is the older man who loses his temper. Callicles in the Gorgias tips the scale the other way. Philosophy, he tells Socrates, is an attractive thing if one handles it in moderation at the proper age, and there is nothing shameful in a lad's pursuing it, but in an older man it becomes laughable, while a small child's lisping and playing please him as fitting the child's age (484c–485b). His words for that fitness, πρέπον τῇ … ἡλικίᾳ, are those of the narrator's remark on Charmides' bashfulness (τῇ ἡλικίᾳ ἔπρεψεν, 158c).

Later readings

Aristotle's ethics can be read as giving the reason for the expectation of 162e, and its limit. The young man, he says, is not the right audience for the study of politics, since he has no experience of the business of life, which is what its arguments start from and are about; and youth of years and youth of character come to the same thing here, since the shortfall is due not to his years but to his living by feeling and chasing each thing as it comes.¹ In the sixth book he notes that the young turn into geometers and mathematicians, clever in such matters, but no one supposes that they become practically wise; for practical wisdom deals with particulars, particulars are learned through experience, and a young man has none, since experience takes a long while to build. He then asks why a child can become a mathematician but not wise, nor a student of nature, and offers his answer as a further question: is it that mathematics works by abstraction, while the starting-points of the other two come from experience, so that the young repeat them without being convinced?² Charmides, offering a definition he once heard someone say (161b), can be read as the young man who says what he does not yet believe; Critias, who has the years and the study but is "eager to shine" and angry when crossed (162c–d), as the man who is young not in years but in character.

Use in the book

Lysis initially explains his restrictions by saying he is not yet of age. Socrates counters that the parents already trust him with reading, writing, and lyre-playing without waiting for him to reach the required age.

The phrase ἡλικίαν ἔχω means to be of age in this context, rather than merely to possess an age. The argument relocates the relevant threshold from years to demonstrated understanding. It does not supply a numerical age for Lysis or establish that age never matters in any activity.

Places to read

1. 209aΟὐ γάρ πω, ἔφη, ἡλικίαν ἔχω — For I am not yet of age, he said.
2. 209c

Use in the book

The Hermetic account distinguishes activities present from human generation from purer activities cooperating with the rational soul as age changes. Psychic functions are therefore described as becoming operative at different stages. The text does not give a fixed age at which every person reaches rational maturity.

Places to read

1. I.41.6.6Different activities accompany different stages of development.

Translation in this edition

“Age” is direct; “maturity” fits only where the developmental direction is explicit.