Chapter 17

offers Charmides a charm to cure the headache. But the charm will do more than cure the headache. 'I learnt it, when serving with the army, of one of the physicians of the Thracian King Zamolxis. He was one of those who are said to give immortality. This Thracian said to me ... "Zamolxis, our king, who is also a god, says that as you ought not to attempt to cure the eyes without the head or the head without the eyes, so neither ought you to attempt to cure the body without the soul," ... "For all good and evil, whether in the body or in human nature, originates, as he declared, in the soul, and overflows from thence, as from the head into the eyes. And therefore if the head and body are to be well, you must begin by curing the soul; that is the first thing. And the cure has to be effected by the use of certain charms, _and these charms are fair words_; and by them temperance is implanted in the soul, and where temperance is, there health is speedily implanted, not only to the head, but to the whole body."' (Jowett's Translation.) Apuleius scarcely makes a fair use of Plato's words, which he has so far detached from their context as to give them almost entirely a new meaning.

_Zamolxis_, probably an indigenous deity of the Getae. Greek legend made him a Getan slave of Pythagoras, who on manumission went home, became priest of the chief deity of the Getae, and taught the Pythagorean doctrine of the immortality of the soul.