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"Charmides hath fallen in love with this slave, but it was love so different from any love which he had felt before for a woman, that it ought to have had some other name. It was a love of the soul, of that which was immortal, of God in her; it was a love too, of no mere temporary phenomenon, but of reality outlasting death into eternity.
His son was well and sure of victory. "Come, little son," he called to Charmides. "You must be as hungry as a wolf. But first our thanks to the gods." A slave had poured a little wine into a flat cup and stood now offering it to his master. Menon took it and held it high, looking up into the blue heavens. "O gracious Hermes!" he cried aloud, "fulfill thy omen!
But Charmides was looking at the sacred place and its soft shining statues in the sky. "Let us walk around the wall," he said. So they left the river and passed the gymnasium and the gate. Along this side the wall cast a wide shadow. Here they walked in silence. Here there were no tents, no torches, no noisy people. Everything was quiet in the evening air.
When Socrates, in Charmides, tells us that the soul is cured of its maladies by certain incantations, and that these incantations are beautiful reasons, from which temperance is generated in souls; when Plato calls the world an animal; and Timaeus affirms that the plants also are animals; or affirms a man to be a heavenly tree, growing with his root, which is his head, upward; and, as George Chapman, following him, writes,
I am glad to find that you remember me, I said; for I shall now be more at home with you and shall be better able to explain the nature of the charm, about which I felt a difficulty before. For the charm will do more, Charmides, than only cure the headache.
"I have done enough for Athens in giving her such a glorious son." As the three walked back to camp, Menon said: "Who shall write your chorus of triumph, Creon? Already my messengers have reached Athens, and the dancers are chosen who shall lead you home. But the song is not yet made. It must be a glorious one!" Then Charmides blushingly whispered, "May I sing you something, father?
"I give thee thanks," rejoined the maiden, "and relying on this assurance, I will venture to plead for this helpless orphan, whom the gods committed to thy charge. The counsels of Aspasia have led her into error; and is the son of Charmides blameless, for bringing one so young within the influence of that seductive woman?"
"It is wonderful to me," said Charmides, as the last movement drew to a close of liquid melody, "that these sounds should pass into the heart like wine, heightening and uplifting the thought there is nothing so beautiful as the discrimination of mood with which it affects one, weighing one delicate phrase against another, and finding all so perfect."
His father was Charmides, who is believed to have been an artist, because the Greeks, in their inscriptions, did not associate the name of the father with that of the son unless both were of the same calling.
Critias, when he heard this, said: The headache will be an unexpected gain to my young relation, if the pain in his head compels him to improve his mind: and I can tell you, Socrates, that Charmides is not only pre-eminent in beauty among his equals, but also in that quality which is given by the charm; and this, as you say, is temperance? Yes, I said.
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