Dropides and ancestral Critias

Use in the book

At 157e Socrates praises the paternal family as the house of Critias son of Dropides, celebrated by Anacreon, Solon, and many poets for beauty, excellence, and the other things customarily called happiness. This is a lineage claim inside an encomium. Its immediate use is to make Charmides' apparent promise seem fitting to his inheritance; the later inquiry must determine whether he actually possesses the virtue with which the family is credited.

The genealogy reaches further back than the participants' immediate relationships. The dialogue separately names Callaeschrus as the present Critias' father and Glaucon as Charmides' father. Identifying every generation between these men and the ancestral Critias requires evidence and reconstruction beyond the Charmides. The supplied notes offer a usual modern reconstruction, but the present passage does not count those generations.

Timaeus 20e–21a also links Solon, Dropides, and an older Critias in its account of an inherited story. That is valuable comparative testimony, although the identity and chronology of the Critias who speaks in the Timaeus have themselves been debated. The safe local conclusion is a celebrated ancestral connection, not a completely secure reconstructed family tree derived from one sentence.

Places to read

1. 155aSocrates invokes the family’s kinship with Solon
2. 157e–158a2The paternal house is designated by Critias son of Dropides and its poetic praise

Translation in this edition

The note's genealogical reconstruction belongs to the editorial layer. The patronymic τοῦ Δρωπίδου must not be transferred from the ancestor to the dialogue's respondent.

Δρωπίδης

Attested: Δρωπίδου (drōpidou). Dropides, father of the ancestral Critias through whom Socrates identifies Charmides’ paternal house; not the present speaker’s father. References: 157e. Lexical identification: lemma: Δρωπίδης. See Dropides and ancestral Critias.