Charmides was an Athenian
statesman
and one of the Thirty Tyrants who
ruled Athens following its defeat in the Peloponnesian War. Uncle of
Plato, Charmides appears in the Platonic
dialogue bearing his name, as well as in
Xenophon. He was killed in 403 BC when the
democrats returned to Athens.
This Charmides was not the same man as the father of the great
Athenian sculptor
Phidias, also named
Charmides. Of this second man nothing is known, except that he
lived two generations before the Platonic Charmides.