Plato’s Charmides Lexicon

Scope and purpose

This lexicon accompanies the complete Charmides, 153a–176d, in the supplied Charmides: John Burnet's Greek text, identified there as the Oxford edition of 1903 in its corrected 1909 impression, with the English translation and notes of Diotimos Editions, 2026. Its 173 articles explain the dialogue's substantive vocabulary, distinctions, images, persons and argumentative moves. It is meant to be used beside the dialogue, whether the reader begins with Greek or English.

The controlling question is what sōphrosynē is. The supplied translation consistently calls it temperance. The English word keeps the successive proposals attached to one subject, but it does not carry the Greek word's full range: sound judgement, restraint, self-command, moderation, decorum and awareness of one's limits can all matter. Neither a modern rule about alcohol nor a ready-made theory of rational self-control should be substituted for the virtue under investigation. The dialogue tests proposed accounts, often changing their formulation as it goes; it does not finish by certifying a definition.

A useful lexicon must therefore explain more than a word's usual translation. It must show who uses it, in which construction, for what purpose, under which concession, and with what result. The adjective kalos connects physical beauty, admirable conduct and a premise in a refutation. Prattein can concern action, one's affairs or faring well. Knowledge of a subject, knowledge that someone knows, knowledge of other kinds of knowledge, and knowledge that relates to itself are different claims. The articles make these transitions visible rather than presenting a glossary of interchangeable English equivalents.

This is a comprehensive reading and philological lexicon, not a token-by-token morphological concordance or a new critical edition. Distinctive minor words receive attention when they alter the scene, argument, translation or tone. Ordinary repetitions and every case form do not become separate articles. Modern analytical headings are used as finding aids and identified as such; they are not passed off as expressions coined by Plato. The supplementary indexes let the reader move from an original form, an English label, a passage or a theme to the relevant explanation.

How to use an article

Each article follows the series' five-part structure.

The word explains the lexical family and the distinctions needed to read the passages. Greek forms are supplied with readable transliterations. Inflected forms are sometimes retained because they are the forms actually encountered. Printed contextual grave accents and additional accents before enclitics are retained where relevant rather than silently regularized into dictionary citation forms. A dictionary form supplied for orientation is distinguished where it differs from the attested expression. Transliteration helps identification; it is not a pronunciation course or a substitute for the Greek accents and breathings.

In the Charmides follows the term through the dramatic and philosophical work it performs. A character's assertion is attributed to that character. A conditional assumption remains conditional. Cross-dialogue parallels illuminate a local question without making the Republic, Phaedrus or Apology an unspoken supplement to what the Charmides establishes.

The places gives annotated Stephanus references. The annotations explain the contribution of each passage, rather than supplying a string of unexplained numbers. These are selected places within comprehensive coverage: an article need not list every ordinary repetition of its word. References to the apparatus or modern editorial matter are marked as such.

In this edition identifies the supplied translation's choices and relevant textual or interpretive qualifications. The Greek text, an apparatus variant, an English expansion and a modern explanatory note are different sorts of evidence. The lexicon does not make an apparatus reading part of Plato's continuous text merely because the edition prints it at the foot of a page.

See also joins related articles, including contrasts. A link between modesty and temperance does not endorse their identification; a link between medicine and knowledge does not imply that medical expertise answers every question about benefit. Supplementary documentation appears as true footnotes in Word and the PDF, and linked notes in the EPUB and Markdown.

The original-forms and English-aliases index provides lexical access. Within it, a Greek vocabulary register gives 568 individually explained lemma, family and phrase records, each with printed forms and passage references. These records make the smaller lexical details directly accessible alongside the 173 five-part articles. The register distinguishes dictionary headwords from their actual inflected attestations; its record count is not a claim that each label is a different dictionary lemma. Additional brief reading glosses retain useful forms beyond that register. The passage index traverses all 118 extant Stephanus letter sections from 153a to 176d; there is no section 153e. The thematic index offers overlapping routes through ethics, inquiry, drama, history, language and the arts. The contents and indexes in the paginated versions give this lexicon's article-opening pages. Those page numbers are different from Stephanus references, which identify Plato's text across editions.

Coverage and its limits

The vocabulary audit traversed all 8,322 Greek tokens in the dialogue, comprising 2,134 observed written forms. Of these forms, 1,229 have explicit lexical attestations in the articles or vocabulary material, 505 are assigned to explained inflectional or lexical families, and 400 are routine grammatical or deictic forms for which separate entries would add no distinctive local explanation. Argumentatively important particles, pronouns, constructions and small verbs are retained where they matter. No observed form remains without a recorded disposition in that audit. These are coverage-accounting categories, not a claim that every inflection receives an independent definition or that a dictionary can remove all interpretive uncertainty.

All 568 records in the Greek register contain local explanations; none is merely a direction to another heading. Some original labels identify an inflection, a phrase variant or a grouped family rather than a distinct lemma, and the lexical identification and notes make that status explicit. Further brief entries supplement this register with additional words, senses and contexts. Identical explanations are consolidated only where the Greek form, references and relevant contextual links are also covered. The full articles carry the sustained interpretations; the compact entries preserve vocabulary that would otherwise be easy to overlook.

The conversation and its readers

Socrates narrates a visit to the palaestra of Taureas after returning from the campaign at Potidaea. He reports the conversation to an unnamed listener. Chaerephon welcomes him; Critias introduces his young relative and ward Charmides; Socrates first questions the boy and then the guardian. Narration matters: Socrates tells us how he felt, what he inferred about other people and how their behaviour appeared to him. Those narrative judgements should not be turned into a neutral transcript of everyone's intentions.

The opening joins war, admiration, erotic disturbance, physical illness and the proposed care of the soul. Socrates admits that Charmides' appearance unsettles him. The remedy for the headache brings in a charm, attributed to a Thracian physician of Zalmoxis, and the claim that beautiful words produce temperance in the soul. The treatment is presented through nested reported speech and a medical pretence arranged by Critias. It is philosophically important without being a clinical recommendation or a historical record of Socrates' medical training.

The ending returns to the charm but leaves the headache behind. Charmides wants continuing contact with Socrates; Critias orders it; the language of persuasion and obedience ends in playful threats of force. The invitation to keep examining oneself is thus entangled with authority, dependence and coercion. A reading that notices only the inconclusive definition misses this dramatic outcome. A reading that treats the final joke as a transparent prophecy also exceeds what the dialogue says.

External history adds a disturbing perspective. Critias later became a leader of the Thirty; Charmides was among the Ten governing the Piraeus. Xenophon reports their deaths in the fighting at Munychia in 403 BCE. They were not holders of the same office. The dialogue never recounts this later history, and its historical resonances remain a matter of interpretation. Even the dramatic date of the homecoming from Potidaea requires care: the campaign's different stages make the familiar alternatives of 432 and 429 BCE more than a trivial choice of year. The relevant articles separate the text's evidence from reconstruction.

Xenophon, Hellenica 2.4.19 names Critias among the Thirty and Charmides son of Glaucon among the Ten in the Piraeus. Plato, Symposium 219e–220e supplies related testimony about Socrates at Potidaea; Thucydides 1.56–66 and 2.70 distinguish the revolt and surrender. These sources should not be collapsed into a single unqualified dramatic date.

A map of the argument

153a–154e — Arrival and the object of attention. News of war gives way to questions about philosophy, wisdom and beauty. The crowd's response to Charmides establishes an atmosphere in which reputation is powerful before anyone has examined what the boy possesses.

154e–158c — Soul, body and the charm. Socrates redirects the proposed inspection of the body towards an examination of the soul. The physician's story connects the health of parts with the condition of the whole; temperance is said to arise through beautiful words. Praise of Charmides' family intensifies the question of whether his inner condition matches his appearance.

158c–159a — From possession to an account. Charmides cannot easily affirm his temperance without boasting or deny it without contradicting his admirers. Socrates proposes inquiry. Possession of the virtue is said to produce some awareness and opinion that the Greek-speaking boy can express. This is an assumption governing the proposed test, not yet a demonstrated equivalence between possessing virtue and being able to define it.

159b–160d — Quietness tested. Charmides associates temperance with orderly, quiet behaviour. Socrates introduces examples in which speed and vigour are fine, while temperance has been agreed to be fine. The movement from calm bearing to slowness deserves scrutiny. The conclusion denies quietness a privileged claim to identify temperance; it does not establish haste as the virtue.

160e–161b — Modesty tested. The next answer identifies temperance with shame or modesty. An adapted Homeric line about the needy supplies a case where modesty is not good. Because temperance has been agreed to be good, the proposed identity fails on the argument's terms. This does not show that shame is worthless in every setting.

161b–162e — One's own business and a change of speaker. Charmides offers a saying he has heard. Socrates tests literal applications to writing names and producing one's own equipment. The examples expose the need to say what counts as one's own and what “doing” means. Charmides draws Critias into defending the saying; the definition has become a test of its reputed author as well as of its content.

163a–164d — Doing, making, working and awareness. Critias differentiates the verbs and interprets Hesiod so that good, beneficial productions count as work and action properly so called. Temperance becomes doing good things. Socrates asks whether someone can act beneficially without knowing that he has done so. Critias will not admit temperance without self-knowledge, and retracts rather than accepting that consequence.

164d–166c — Self-knowledge and the craft analogy. Critias interprets the Delphic command “Know thyself” as the god's greeting and as equivalent to being temperate. Socrates asks what the proposed knowledge produces. Critias replies that some kinds of knowledge, such as calculation and geometry, have no external product of the kind a builder makes. Socrates accordingly distinguishes a knowledge's subject matter from a separately produced work. A question about an object is not simply a repeated demand for a product.

166c–167b — Knowledge of knowledge and two tests. Critias identifies temperance as knowledge of other kinds of knowledge and of itself. Socrates adds lack of knowledge and articulates the ambitious ability to assess oneself and others. Two questions follow: whether such knowledge is possible, and, even if possible, whether it benefits its possessor. The transition from knowing oneself to a knowledge that knows itself is a central issue, not a harmless change of wording.

167c–169c — Self-relation examined. Sight, hearing, desire, wish, love, fear and opinion supply analogies; greater and smaller, double and half, and other relative terms expose difficulties. Some self-relations appear impossible, others disputable. Socrates expressly leaves the general question open and declines to settle the case of knowledge. These passages do not warrant the blanket conclusion that Plato has proved all self-reference impossible.

169d–171c — A concession and the limit of discrimination. The existence of knowledge of knowledge is granted for the inquiry. But being able to recognize knowledge as knowledge is distinguished from knowing its particular subject. The person who knows only knowledge cannot, on the stated account, test a medical claim by discussing health and disease. Testing what a doctor says and does requires the relevant expertise. This criticizes the proposed all-purpose discriminator; it does not refute every ordinary capacity to recognize an expert.

171d–172c — The attractive political picture and a smaller benefit. Socrates reconstructs the hoped-for life without error, in which agents do what they know and entrust the rest to those who know. He then asks whether a more modest benefit remains: easier learning, clearer understanding and better examination within subjects already learned. This possibility is entertained, not elaborated into an agreed final theory. It must not disappear from a summary that jumps directly from failure to worthlessness.

172c–174d — The dream and the question of which knowledge. The inquiry grants the stronger capacity again and imagines reliable experts in navigation, medicine, war, manufacture and prophecy. Even knowledgeable action does not by itself settle happiness. The question becomes which knowledge makes the difference. Critias names knowledge of good and bad. Ordinary crafts retain their characteristic outputs without it, while the contribution described as doing well and beneficially is withdrawn. Craft success and overall benefit are thereby distinguished.

174d–175e — Supervision challenged and failure acknowledged. Critias tries to save temperance through its authority over the knowledge of good. Socrates asks how a knowledge restricted to knowledge can perform another expertise's beneficial work. The account fails to secure the benefit demanded of temperance. The review of concessions at 175b–d is deliberately severe; it does not amount to a final demonstration that temperance itself has no value. Socrates continues to call it a great good and blames the inquiry.

176a–176d — Commitment without a definition. Charmides does not know whether he possesses temperance, since its nature has not been discovered. He nevertheless wants the charm. Critias treats his obedience as a sign of temperance. Their final exchange with Socrates leaves the reader to assess the relation between examination, submission and force.

Distinctions worth keeping open

Second-order and reflexive knowledge. A knowledge of other kinds of knowledge takes knowledge as its object. A knowledge of itself is reflexive. Critias joins the two; an account that mentions only one can conceal the demands placed on the other. Likewise, the human possessor's knowing himself does not follow without argument merely from a knowledge's knowing itself.

Knowing that and knowing what. These are useful modern labels for the discriminations made around 170a–d. They are not a simple ancient anticipation of a contemporary theory of propositional knowledge. The local issue is whether knowing that knowledge is present identifies its subject and licenses examination of a specific claim. At 175c the wording concerning knowing what one does not know is particularly delicate: the qualification “that one does not know” must be retained.

Possibility and benefit. Failure to establish the first is not the same as proof of impossibility. Granting existence for argument does not establish it. The later challenge to benefit examines increasingly generous concessions and cannot simply be read backwards as the conclusion of the earlier analogies.

Fine, good and beneficial. The dialogue uses these together but does not make them a single word. Fine or beautiful appearance, good character, correct performance, a useful product and a beneficial life can come apart in precisely the examples under discussion. The articles preserve the changes in the standard of evaluation.

Socratic practice and Critias' formula. The language of examining knowledge and ignorance resembles the Socrates of the Apology. Whether the Charmides attacks that practice, distinguishes it from Critias' overambitious account, or prompts a deeper reconstruction is disputed. It is reasonable to study the difference between Socrates' avowed uncertainty and Critias' authority; it is not reasonable to declare a single resolution as the dialogue's explicit last word. A major recent commentary by Voula Tsouna develops a distinction between Socratic recognition of limits and Critias' expansive claim. That is a named interpretation, not a substitute for the primary argument.

Voula Tsouna, Plato's Charmides An Interpretative Commentary (Cambridge, 2022), chapter 1, “Introduction,” pp. 1–56, doi:10.1017/9781009036610.001. The introduction expressly surveys competing readings and presents its own distinction between two conceptions of self-knowledge. The lexicon's local analyses remain accountable to the cited dialogue passages.

Knowledge of good and bad. Its importance at 174b–d is unmistakable, but its content is not defined there. The passage can supply a constructive direction without delivering a finished account of ethical knowledge. Nor does the appearance of the same theme elsewhere in Plato cancel this dialogue's ending in perplexity.

Text and documentation

The Greek has been checked against the Perseus digital Burnet text across the dialogue. A targeted comparison with images of a printed Burnet volume III also confirmed important readings at 156d, 170a–b, 174d and 175c. The exact impression of that scanned copy has not been established, and the sample is not a full print collation. The supplied edition itself reports using Perseus, so agreement between these files is corroboration of textual fidelity, not an independent manuscript collation. The apparatus belongs to Burnet's edition and the supplied transcription; this lexicon does not claim to replace either a modern critical apparatus or specialist textual scholarship. Individual qualifications are given where they affect an article.

Angle brackets and square brackets have editorial meanings. At 167a–b the supplied English marks supplemented words in the statement of what one knows. At 169a Burnet brackets “except knowledge”; at 174d he brackets words rendered “the beneficial” if retained. Such material cannot be used without qualification to prove that the argument already assumes its disputed conclusion. The supplied edition also records uncertain apparatus characters and an unidentified siglum Θ. Lexical interpretation should not turn that admitted uncertainty into a confident identification.

The sources below provide ways to check the text and to pursue arguments beyond this lexicon. The articles' ancient references identify the passage used; external parallels are contextual unless explicitly stated otherwise. The supplied multi-dialogue lexicon was consulted as a comparison for coverage, while the explanations here were developed from the Charmides. It is not cited as an authority for Greek meanings or disputed interpretations.

Plato, Charmides, in John Burnet, ed., Platonis Opera, vol. III (Oxford, 1903); supplied Charmides identifies the corrected 1909 impression and provides the Diotimos Editions translation (2026) Perseus Digital Library Greek text: Burnet's Charmides, for passage-level comparison Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott and Henry Stuart Jones, A Greek–English Lexicon Voula Tsouna, Plato's Charmides An Interpretative Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2022), especially the open-access introduction Plato's Shorter Ethical Works, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, section on the Charmides, for a concise philosophical orientation Episteme and Techne, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, for the relation between knowledge, craft, subject matter and productive result