Oil-flask and strigil

Use in the book

Socrates asks whether a city would be well managed if each person had to weave and wash his own cloak, make his own footwear, and provide his own oil-flask, strigil, and other belongings on the same principle. Charmides rejects the arrangement. The everyday objects test “doing one's own business” by pushing possession into a demand for universal personal production.

The equipment is especially well chosen for the scene. Those gathered at a palaestra can recognize the flask and scraper as ordinary requirements of exercise, just as they can recognize the value of a specialist who makes them. The example is not an inventory of luxuries; it is a concrete way to show why a user's owning an object does not mean that making it must be his exclusive business.

Neither object returns as a symbolic instrument with a secret technical meaning. Their modest specificity is their philosophical value: familiar kit makes the strained interpretation of a general formula visibly unworkable.

Places to read

1. 161e–162aThe equipment is included in the hypothetical rule that everyone make only his own belongings

Translation in this edition

The edition's “oil-flask” makes the use of lēkythos intelligible, while “strigil” is explained in a note. The forms in the Greek are singular accusatives, not names of separate branches of knowledge.

λήκυθος

Attested: λήκυθον (lēkython). An oil-flask; one of the everyday objects each citizen would have to make for himself under an absurdly literal law of doing only one’s own business. References: 161e. Lexical identification: lemma: λήκυθος. See Oil-flask and strigil.

στλεγγίς

Attested: στλεγγίδα (stlengida). A strigil or scraper for cleaning the body after exercise; paired with the oil-flask among objects each citizen would absurdly have to manufacture for himself. References: 161e. Lexical identification: lemma: στλεγγίς. See Oil-flask and strigil.