Cloak

Use in the book

The cloak first hides the body. With Charmides, Plato's young uncle, beside him and everyone in the wrestling-school swirling round them, Socrates tells the friend to whom he narrates the dialogue, "I saw inside his cloak, and I was on fire, and was no longer in my own possession" (155d). The Greek says "the things inside the cloak": the boy's body, and one sentence joins the sight to its effect.

In the argument, against "doing one's own business", Socrates asks whether a city would be well managed "under a law that ordered each man to weave and wash his own cloak, cobble his own shoes, and make his own oil-flask and strigil" (an athlete's scraper). Charmides thinks not, and grants that a temperately managed city would be well managed; so, Socrates concludes, doing one's own business "in things of this kind and in this way" would not be temperance (161e–162a; see Action). Asked what work temperance produces, Critias, Charmides' cousin and guardian, objects that calculation and geometry have none "in the way that a house is the work of house-building, or a cloak of weaving" (165e; see Art and craft). In Socrates' dream of rule by temperance our "clothing" too would be "expertly made for us" (173b–c); and in the last test Critias grants that, without the knowledge of good and bad, weaving would leave us no less "well clothed", but that our being clothed would no longer come about "well and beneficially" (174c–d; see Art and craft). The garment that hid what set Socrates on fire becomes the plainest of products, and only the question put to it changes: who should make it (161e), whose work it is (165e), and whether it does its wearer good (174c–d).

Places to read

1. 155dSocrates sees inside Charmides' cloak, is on fire, and is no longer in his own possession.
2. 161e–162aSocrates asks whether a city would be well managed under a law that ordered each man to weave and wash his own cloak, cobble his own shoes and make his own oil-flask and strigil; Charmides thinks not.
3. 165eCritias: calculation and geometry have no work as a house is the work of house-building, or a cloak of weaving.
4. 173b–cIn the dream, our equipment, clothing and footwear would be expertly made by genuine craftsmen.
5. 174c–dWithout the knowledge of good and bad, weaving would leave us no less well clothed, but our being clothed would no longer come about well and beneficially.

Translation in this edition

Ἱμάτιον is "cloak" at all three places (155d, 161e, 165e), and ἀμπεχόνη "clothing" (173b). In the last test the perfect infinitives ὑποδεδέσθαι and ἠμφιέσθαι, "to have shoes on" and "to have clothes on", are "well shod" and "well clothed" (174c). That "well" belongs to the English idiom; the Greek says only that we would have shoes and clothes on, and the "well" that is lost at 174c–d is the εὖ (eu) of "well and beneficially". Ὑφαίνειν is "weaving" in the list of things that are "doing something" (161e) and "weave" in the law (161e), and ὑφαντική, the craft, "weaving" (165e, 174c); πλύνειν is "wash" (161e).

ἱμάτιον

Attested: ἱματίου (himatiou; 155d), ἱμάτιον (himation; 161e, 165e). Cloak, a loose woollen mantle. Socrates sees inside Charmides' cloak and is on fire (155d); a city would not be well managed, Charmides grants, under a law that ordered each man to weave and wash his own cloak (161e–162a); and Critias names it as the work of weaving, as a house is of house-building (165e). Lemma: ἱμάτιον.

ἠμφιέσθαι (ēmphiesthai)

Attested: ἠμφιέσθαι (ēmphiesthai; 174c). To put clothes about someone; the perfect, to have clothes on. Socrates asks whether, without the knowledge of good and bad, medicine will make us any less healthy, "or cobbling any less well shod, or weaving any less well clothed"; "No less," Critias answers, and he grants Socrates' reply, that each of these things being done "well and beneficially" will be gone (174c–d). Lemma: ἀμφιέννυμι.

ἀμπεχόνη

Attested: ἀμπεχόνην (ampechonēn; 173b). Clothing, a wrap worn about the body. In the dream "our equipment and clothing and our footwear, all of it, and all our possessions would be expertly made for us … because we would be using genuine craftsmen" (173b–c). Lemma: ἀμπεχόνη.

ὑφαίνω

Attested: ὑφαίνειν (hyphainein; 161e twice); the craft-name ὑφαντικῆς (hyphantikēs; 165e), ὑφαντική (hyphantikē; 174c), "weaving". To weave. Weaving, with healing and building, is among the things that "are surely doing something" (161e); the law Socrates imagines would order each man "to weave and wash his own cloak" (161e); a cloak is the work of weaving (165e); and without the knowledge of good and bad, weaving would leave us no less well clothed, though our being clothed would no longer come about well and beneficially (174c–d). Lemma: ὑφαίνω; ὑφαντική.

Elsewhere in Plato

Socrates' law has a counterpart in the Hippias Minor. Hippias of Elis, the sophist from the western Peloponnese, once boasted in the market-place, Socrates reminds him, that he was the wisest of men in the greatest number of crafts, and that he had come to Olympia, the sanctuary of Zeus where the games were held, wearing nothing that was not his own work. There was a ring he had engraved and a seal, a strigil and an oil-flask he had made himself, shoes he had cobbled, a cloak and a tunic he had woven, and, what struck everyone as strangest and the greatest display of wisdom, a belt like the costly Persian ones that he had plaited himself (368b–c). Cloak, shoes, strigil and oil-flask are the items of the law at Charmides 161e, and the verbs for weaving the cloak and cobbling the shoes are the same in both; Hippias can be read as the citizen that law would make.

In the Republic the farmer who would spend three quarters of his time providing himself a house, a cloak and shoes would "do his own things by himself", in the words of the Charmides' formula (τὰ αὑτοῦ πράττειν), and Socrates sets that life aside before the formula becomes the definition of justice (369d–370c, 433a–b; see Builder and house-building).