Athens

Use in the book

The dialogue opens with a homecoming. "We had got back from the army at Potidaea the evening before," Socrates begins, "and after so long away I was glad to make for my old haunts" (153a). Potidaea lay in the Chalcidice, in the north Aegean. In the wrestling-school of Taureas, opposite the shrine of Basile (153a; see Basile), Socrates finds a great crowd, eager for news: there had been a battle shortly before they left Potidaea, he explains, "and the people here had only just heard the news" (153b). Chaerephon, his excitable friend, tells him, "The word here … is that the fighting was very heavy, and that many people we know were killed in it", and Socrates confirms it (153b–c). He gives "the news from the camp, whatever anyone asked", then asks "about things here at home: how philosophy was doing these days, and about the young men" (153c–d2).

Athens is named once, when Socrates praises Charmides' birth: "I don't suppose anyone else here could easily point to two houses in Athens whose union would be likely to produce finer and better offspring than the two you are sprung from" (157e). The two are his father's house, celebrated by the poets, and his mother's, the house of his uncle Pyrilampes, who, it is said, was thought the handsomest and biggest man on the continent, that is, in Asia, whenever he went as ambassador to the Great King of Persia or to anyone else there (157e–158a2; see Anacreon; Great King and Asia). The city is the field in which the boy's birth is measured.

The cities of the argument are not Athens: they are any city, and none is named. Charmides agrees that a city under a law that made each man weave his own cloak and cobble his own shoes would not be well managed (161e–162a; see Action). If the temperate man knew what he knew and what he did not, and could examine others in the same way, then "a household run by temperance would be bound to be run well, and a city governed by it too" (171d–e); at 172d Socrates doubts that they were right to agree to this. The first city is an example, the second a supposition. In the dream that follows, temperance would rule not a city but "us" (173a–d2; see Art and craft).

Places to read

1. 153a–d2Back from the army at Potidaea, Socrates goes to the wrestling-school of Taureas, gives the news of the battle, and asks about philosophy and the young men "here at home".
2. 157e–158a2Socrates doubts that anyone could easily point to two houses in Athens likely to produce finer and better offspring than the two Charmides is sprung from; his uncle Pyrilampes' embassies to the Great King.
3. 161e–162aCharmides agrees that a city would not be well managed under a law ordering each man to weave his own cloak, cobble his own shoes and make everything else for himself.
4. 171d–172aA household and a city governed by temperance, if the temperate man knew what he knew and what he did not; the picture is recalled and doubted at 172d.

Translation in this edition

"In Athens" renders Ἀθήνησιν (157e). In the Greek it stands with the article, τῶν Ἀθήνησιν, "of those at Athens": Socrates doubts that anyone could point to which two of the houses at Athens would be likely to produce finer offspring, and the English folds the phrase into "two houses in Athens". Elsewhere the city is "here": "the people here" (οἱ τῇδε, 153b), "the word here" (ἤγγελταί γε δεῦρο, literally "it has been reported hither", 153b) and "things here at home" (τὰ τῇδε, 153d), where "at home" is the translator's and keeps the homecoming in view. "City" renders πόλις (polis) at 161e, 171e and 172d; at 162a "a city that is temperately managed" renders a participle with no noun in the Greek.

Ἀθῆναι

Attested: Ἀθήνησιν (Athēnēsin; 157e). Athens, in the old locative "at Athens": Socrates doubts that anyone could easily point to two houses in Athens likely to produce finer and better offspring than the two Charmides comes from. Lemma: Ἀθῆναι.

Other ancient sources

Thucydides, the Athenian historian of the war between Athens and Sparta, describes Potidaea as a colony of Corinth on the isthmus of Pallene, the westernmost of the three peninsulas of the Chalcidice, and a tribute-paying ally of Athens; it revolted in 432 BC. In the battle fought before the city that year the Athenians won, but "of the Athenians themselves a hundred and fifty died, and Callias the general". Thucydides even dates the opening of the war by it: the Theban night attack on Plataea, Athens' ally in Boeotia, came at the beginning of spring 431, "in the sixth month after the battle at Potidaea". The siege went on until the city surrendered in the winter of 430/29.¹ Scholars differ over whether the homecoming of the Charmides is set in 432, soon after this battle, or in 429, after the surrender.

A quarter of a century later Charmides and his cousin and guardian Critias, son of Callaeschrus, were among the men who ruled Athens. Xenophon, the Athenian writer and companion of Socrates, reports in his Hellenica that after Athens' defeat in the war the people voted in 404 to choose thirty men to draw up the ancestral laws by which they would govern, and Critias was among them. In 403 the democratic exiles under Thrasybulus came by night into the Piraeus, the port of Athens, and in the fighting on Munychia, the hill above the harbour, there died "of the Thirty, Critias and Hippomachus, and of the ten rulers in the Piraeus, Charmides son of Glaucon".² Read with this in mind, two passages take on an irony that the edition's notes mark at 172a and 176c: the picture of "us" ruling a city without error, spoken to Critias (171d–172a), and the last lines, where Charmides, since his guardian "gives the orders", tells Socrates, "Count on force" (176c). The praise of two houses "in Athens" can be read in the same light.

Use in the book

Athens is initially the greatest Greek city in the portrait of Alcibiades’ advantages. Its public deliberation supplies the practical test for his knowledge: what could he properly advise its people about? Yet the city’s prominence does not secure its politicians’ education, and the faults of local competitors do not excuse his own deficiencies. The object of ambition later becomes a potential corrupter, figured as a handsome beloved at 132a. Finally the city’s strength appears as the force Socrates fears may overcome both interlocutors. This movement makes the civic setting integral to the drama: the private conversation aims to prepare a future adviser for the public body that can also undo that preparation.

Places to read

1. 104a–104bThe city magnifies Alcibiades’ inherited advantages.
2. 105a–107d2345The approaching appearance and subject of advice are tested.
3. 118b–120b234Local politicians are criticized as a misleading competitive standard.
4. 132aThe people becomes a seductive and potentially corrupting beloved.
5. 135eThe city’s strength supplies the final apprehension.

Translation in this edition

“City” and “people” are not automatically interchangeable: polis can name the whole civic community, while dēmos can point to the assembled or political people. The edition’s historical accounts of later Athenian events remain note-level background.

Ἀθηναῖος

Attested: Ἀθηναίοις (athēnaiois; 105b); Ἀθηναίων (athēnaiōn; 105a). Athenian; the citizen body Alcibiades wants to advise and later fears being corrupted by. Lexical identification: lemma: Ἀθηναῖος. See Athens and the Athenians.

Use in the book

At 141a Athens is the first stage in an expanding offer of rule. At 141e–142b its former generals supply nearby evidence that a desired office can lead to exile, death and harassment. The speakers’ claim to know these cases firsthand makes the consequences of public ambition locally intelligible without identifying individual generals.

The Ammon narrative presents Athens as both distressed and argumentative. Defeat at sea and on land leaves it at a loss; the embassy seeks escape but explains the problem by an assumed imbalance between its own magnificent worship and Sparta’s divine favour. The supposed evidence of deservingness is financial and ceremonial.

Socrates includes himself in the criticism, saying that we make a simple argument when we claim superiority on this basis. The word recalls one of the politely auspicious names for unintelligence. Thus the attack is not simply outsider denunciation of another city: it is a self-implicating diagnosis of his own city’s bad inference.

The alternative applies equally to a city and a private person. Either can spend lavishly despite wrongdoing, and either needs to be assessed by the appropriate knowledge and conduct. The dialogue supplies no programme of constitutional reform or historical explanation of a particular war’s full course; it uses civic experience to test what counts as a benefit and what the gods honour.

Places to read

1. 141a–141bAthenian tyranny is the first offered object of Alcibiades’ ambition.
2. 141e–142bThe city’s generals illustrate the costs of public office.
3. 148d–149b2Athens’ reported embassy asks why Sparta wins despite supposedly inferior worship.
4. 149e–150aSocrates includes his own community in the criticism of gifts and expenditure.

Translation in this edition

The Ammon story is unattested elsewhere according to note 34, and its defeats should not be assigned to a securely dated campaign that the dialogue does not name. The introduction’s chronological conflict involving Archelaus and Pericles further counsels against reconstructing one exact historical date from the civic examples.

Use in the book

Socrates introduces Hipparchus first as a citizen shared by himself and the companion. The possessives “mine and yours” make an ancient political figure part of a common civic inheritance. The ensuing narrative turns the citizen body into both the object of education and the population over which Hipparchus wishes to rule. The formulation at 228c therefore joins civic improvement with political authority rather than treating education as detached private cultivation.

The audience for the programme is broad in geographical terms. Citizens around the town are educated first; inhabitants of the country are then reached through roadside Herms. The text does not say that only urban residents are citizens. Nor does it describe the programme as universal education for all people living in Attica: women, slaves and non-citizen residents are not separately discussed, and their inclusion should not be inferred from the English breadth of “people.”

The noun for citizens also controls the competition with Delphi. Hipparchus wants “his citizens” to rank his sayings above the Delphic inscriptions. The cultural claim has a political audience, and admiration becomes one way of connecting that audience to its ruler. At the same time, Anacreon and Simonides are identified by non-Athenian origins: the city’s education is enhanced by bringing in poets from elsewhere.

At 229b the focus shifts from citizens as learners to Athenians as people ruled. Their purported memory of nearly Cronian happiness sets a civic judgment beside the individual judgment of wisdom. Both are reported by Socrates rather than independently demonstrated. The dialogue draws on shared identity to make its story matter, but it offers no developed account of citizenship law, franchise or democratic equality.

Places to read

1. 228bΠολίτῃ μὲν ἐμῷ τε καὶ σῷ — The common civic identity includes both interlocutors.
2. 228cἐκόμισεν εἰς τὴν πόλιν — Anacreon’s destination is the city.
3. 228cπαιδεύειν τοὺς πολίτας — Citizens are the explicit educational audience.
4. 229bἐν Ἀθήναις — The political retrospect is expressly located in Athens.

Translation in this edition

“Fellow citizen” renders the relational force of πολίτῃ with its possessives, while “citizens” elsewhere names the educational population. The edition’s “town” for ἄστυ allows “city” and “citizen” to retain their wider civic associations. Its translation should not be flattened into a single undifferentiated word for all four Greek expressions.