Chapter II: Preface

"The higher ideas, my dear friend, can hardly be set forth except through the medium of examples; every man seems to know all things in a kind of dream, and then again to know nothing when he wakes.... But people seem to forget that some things have sensible images, which may be easily shown when any one desires to exhibit any of them or explain them to an inquirer, without any trouble or argument; while the greatest and noblest truths have no outward image of themselves visible to man which he who wishes to satisfy the longing soul of the inquirer can adapt to the eye of sense, and therefore we ought to practise ourselves in the idea of them; for immaterial things, which are the highest and greatest, are shown only in thought and idea, and in no other way, _and all that we are saying is said for the sake of them._"[1]

"Then reflect ... that the soul is in the very likeness of the divine, and immortal and intelligible and uniform and unchangeable; and the body is in the very likeness of the human, and mortal and unintelligible and multiform and dissoluble and changeable.

"And were we not saying long ago that the soul, when using the body as an instrument of perception, ... is then dragged by the body into the region of the changeable, and wanders and is confused; the world spins round her, and she is like a drunkard when under their influence.

"But when, returning unto herself, she reflects, then she passes into the realm of purity and eternity and immortality and unchangeableness, which are her kindred; ... then she ceases from erring ways, and, being in communion with the unchanging, is unchanging."[2]

LIBRI PERSONÆ

Book I

THERON: _A citizen of the Doric town of Selinous in Sicily. The father
of Charmides._

HERAIA: _The wife of Theron, and mother of Charmides._

PHALARIS: _An athlete; the elder brother of Charmides._

CHARMIDES: _A young Greek rhapsode, who, hearing a story of the living
goddess, Istar of Babylon, becomes inspired with the desire to see
and worship her, and sets out from Selinous to journey to
Babylon._

KABIR: _A Phoenician trader, shipwrecked off the harbor of Selinous,
with whom Charmides travels as far as Tyre._

ABDOSIR: _The brother of Kabir, a citizen of Tyre._

HODO: _A Babylonian trader, head of a caravan travelling between
Babylon and Tyre, with whom Charmides goes from Tyre to the Great
City._

ALLARAINE: _The archetype of song; once a companion spirit of Istar of
Babylon._