1. See Cornford, quoted in J. Gould, The Development of Plato’s Ethics (Cambridge 1955), p. 37; Guthrie, IV, pp. 156, 173–4; Sprague, p. 53; and North, p. 158.

2. The difficulty of this concept has been thought to indicate a more advanced stage in Plato’s philosophical development than that of the other early ‘Socratic’ dialogues and has consequently been used to argue that the Charmides is one of the latest of the early dialogues. See Guthrie, IV, p. 155, and C. H. Kahn, ‘Did Plato Write Socratic Dialogues?’, Classical Quarterly, 31 (1981). PP. 305–20.

3. The best comprehensive treatment of the concept is by North.

4. Cf. Cratylus 41le.

5. Older translations have tended to favour ‘temperance’, but that word now has rather different connotations. ‘Moderation’, ‘soberness’, ‘temperateness’, ‘chastity’, ‘modesty’, ‘restraint’ -restraint’, ‘self-discipline’, ‘self-respect’, ‘discretion’, ‘wisdom’, ‘prudence’, ‘humility’, are among the large array of alternatives, all of which cover at least some of the aspects sōphrosunē. ‘Sense’, meaning ‘good sense’, perhaps best conveys the wealth of counotation of the Greek word, and is probably immediately recognizable as a major virtue in the English-speaking world; but since it fails directly to connote ‘self-control’, which is the primary meaning the word held for Greeks of the fifth and fourth centuries, it has been rejected in favour of that primary meaning.