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.